Rugby: Blues' blast from the past

By CHRIS RATTUE

David Morgan? Didn't he play down the line somewhere? Maybe Otago. The name is familiar.

That's the common response when the name of the Blues' new prop surfaces. Not exactly a no-name, but hardly a household name either.

If the handle rings a bell somewhere deep in the rugby hard drive, then that's because the 30-year-old Morgan was once a bright front-row prospect in New Zealand rugby.

Auckland under-16 and secondary schools representative, New Zealand under-17s, NZ Colt from 1988-90 - the last year as captain - and a handful of matches for Laurie Mains' Otago in 1989 and 1990 and Wellington the following season.

Maybe more significantly, the specialist tighthead packed down as a 21-year-old alongside Sean Fitzpatrick in a national trial, opposing soon-to-be All Black tourist Laurence Hullena on an overcast wintry day at the Palmerston North Showgrounds in May, 1990.

Later that year, Morgan headed off to Canada with the national development team which included his Blues captain Robin Brooke and other notables such as Olo Brown.

But Morgan cut short his own New Zealand rugby career and any prospect he might have had of making the All Blacks when he followed a couple of mates, including the former Wellington wing Nigel Geany, into French club rugby.

In a story similar to that of last year's Auckland NPC prop Scott Palmer and the Auckland-born Legi Matiu, who has just made the French Six Nations squad, an intended short spell in the exotic climes of French rugby has turned into a complete change of lifestyle for Morgan.

He has lived in France since 1992, and still plays for perennial finals contenders and European Cup entrants Bourgoin, a town of about 30,000 people near Lyon. His return to New Zealand had plenty to do with the appointment of Gordon Hunter as the Blues coach.

Morgan, whose parents still live in Matamata, moved to Auckland in 1982 to begin five years of boarding at Sacred Heart College, where Craig Innes was also a student. Morgan then headed to Otago University to do economics and Hunter, the coach of the famous University A side, was the first to select him for senior club rugby.

With the retirement of Olo Brown leaving Auckland thin on the tighthead side, Hunter contacted Morgan while he was in Europe for last year's World Cup. Morgan jumped at the chance, although he had to do some hard bargaining with his French club where he still had a contract.

Morgan is the one true tighthead specialist in the Blues squad, with the other props being his old NZ Colts team mate Craig Dowd, Paul Thomson and Nick White, although Dowd in particular can play on both sides.

Morgan says French rugby has certainly honed his scrummaging.

"I don't know if there are that many players who could go there and cut it in the scrums," says Morgan.

"Kevin Nepia was released by his club there because they reckoned he wasn't up to it.

"They just place an enormous emphasis on the scrum because they believe it is a big key to winning. As you saw in the World Cup, most teams don't have much joy against them.

"When I first went over it was fairly wild in the front row with eye gouging, knee drops, biting. But it has been cleaned up quite a bit."

Morgan, whose French girlfriend Muriel will join him soon, is on a one-year Super 12 deal. He and a mate have converted a bar into a Celtic-type pub but he says that business would not force him back to France. His immediate future, it seems, will depend heavily on just how his first Super 12 season turns out.