KEY POINTS:
Jerry Collins is 28 tomorrow. It seems absurdly young to pen an obituary of an outstanding career.
After all, Richie McCaw will reach the same milestone on New Year's Eve and he remains in a class of his own in world rugby.
But to see Collins, a great
All Black, looking ponderous and plodding his way through a French Top 14 Championship match at Montauban last Friday night was to witness the tragic decline of a once great talent. It was horrible to see it.
The former Hurricanes tough man may be earning a king's ransom - reputed to be between ¬350,000 ($763,812) and ¬400,000 a season at Toulon. But right now, money seems the only consolation Collins has left.
He certainly doesn't look as though he's enjoying his rugby.
He shows no spark whatever and he appears a pale, pathetic imitation of the once dynamic, fearsome forward upon whom some outstanding All Black teams relied.
The whisper when Collins quit New Zealand was that his best days were behind him, he'd given too much in the All Blacks' cause. The critics said he hadn't much left in the tank.
The saddest conclusion you had to draw after Collins' Toulon had suffered another humiliation, a 42-20 thrashing by the unfancied Montauban, was that the critics were right.
You couldn't fault Collins' tenacity.
Midway through the second half, with Montauban a mile ahead at 42-3, Collins took a tap penalty and hammered away into the heart of the opposition defence.
Perhaps it was a raging against the dying of the light, but it was a rare, isolated flash of the old Collins.
There is precious little evidence that Collins is proving any sort of inspiration to struggling Toulon.
Beaten at home the previous week by Castres, Toulon subsided quietly to Montauban, their sixth defeat in nine Top 14 games. Only Collins' fellow back row man, South African international Joe van Niekerk, stood out.
Collins needed 36 minutes to make his first real run, and it covered little more than 10m. Worse still, he became isolated and turned over possession.
His pace and power seem to have vanished, his threat extinguished.
Jerry Collins looks passive. Far, far too often, he hung off the side of rucks and mauls, head bent, watching. Too often, he took the ball standing still. And when Montauban attacked, he was only capable of hauling down someone in immediate proximity.
When Toulon scored their second try, Collins was way too slow to save the score, even though he seemed close by. That spring in his murderous step had gone.
Collins finds himself in the midst of a French nightmare. Victor Matfield and Anton Oliver, two experienced fellow forwards who could have helped him make a huge difference at the club this season, took one look and booked their flights out. Both rejected a fortune to stay, Matfield around ¬500,000 and Oliver about ¬300,000.
Both knew something about the club that Collins clearly didn't.
The president, Mourad Boudjallel, a self-made multi-millionaire, wants trophies on the wall of famous players.
He has the money and buys whom he wants but doesn't know anything about how to run a rugby club.
One wonders how much longer coach Tana Umaga will survive in an increasingly desperate atmosphere.
Umaga's team were hopeless against Montauban. They were asleep for their opponents' first try, they turned over possession constantly and had no structure or belief whatever.
They've bought badly and ended up with a lot of has-beens or nearly-men. This shambles is a sad indictment of the 100-year-old club.