Harry Dorkey . . . you're a beauty

14 April 2012

As a bloke who is supposed to have called the English "arrogant", " chauvinistic" and "intolerable" and who famously suggested earlier this year that he despised them as much as they despise everyone else, Imanol Harinordoquy, all 6ft 5in and 16st of him, definitely looked like an interviewee to be treated with caution.

Should have known better, of course. The young French star who, on the face of it, seemed most likely to shatter a growing mood of entente cordiale in the build-up to Sunday's World Cup Le Crunch turned out to be the absolute model of politeness and goodwill.

In a way, Harinordoquy, possibly the world's best No8 at the tender age of 23 and a rival to fly-half hero Frederic Michalak as Les Bleus' No1 poster boy, has been set up as the symbol of the great divide with the comments he supposedly made to a rugby magazine in February.

It was inflammatory stuff which supposedly marked a splendid escalation of the fond legend of Anglo-French pre-match slagging and slugging, a tradition continued gently here yesterday by coach Bernard Laporte's own cheery stuff about having no love for the English.

Yet Harinordoquy was in no mood to be hung out as a potential hate figure for Sunday's game.

"I've a semi-final to play and I don't want to get into talking about what I said or didn't say a year ago.

"I'm concentrating on the match because it's going to be hard enough and I cannot afford any distractions," he shrugged.

So team manager Jo Maso did the talking on this subject for his young superstar.

"No, it was a joke what Imanol said. Obviously, these things go on - Brian Moore once used to do similar things - but it's all just a bit of fun really. It's like when I was supposed to have said we French and English haven't liked each other since the 100 Years War; it was all completely misinterpreted," he said. Harinordoquy apparently told French reporters that his magazine comments had been souped up and had applied only to one unpleasant Under-21 international he'd played in. Certainly, it did not sound like the guy who, describing himself today, mused "I'm very quiet and can be very nervous" before conceding that he will speak his mind if the mood takes him.

"He's a humble lad, from a very strong, traditional family background who carries the right values and respect for what's important," was Maso's tribute. "Imanol's one of the most pleasant guys to have around but one who keeps his feet on the ground when people tell him he's the best in the world."

Which is increasingly what his admirers are doing.

Harinordoquy has again looked the perfect prototype of rugby's new back-row generation here - powerful, athletic and so unfeasibly quick that you could easily imagine him lining up in the centre - even if the Australian commentators cannot seem to quite get a tongue around his Basque name, offering us instead something which sounds suspiciously like Harry Dorkey.

Coach Laporte has seen nothing to make him reconsider his assessment that "Imanol has everything - youth, bravery and sometimes a little craziness". Here, particularly with his supreme performance against the Scots, he reminded us of why he once noted that he feels he should play every game as if it might be his last.

Yet Harinordoquy, whose picture shot in front of the Eiffel Tower greets passengers at all the World C u p city airports here, does seem modest about his own rare talent and increasingly high profile.

Indeed, one suspects he is quite happy to let Michalak take more of the spotlight as potentially the leading contender for player of the tournament.

Last year, a panel of former rugby greats voted him the best No8 in the business, marking an astonishing rise for a young, well-to-do French Basque who'd been brought up playing pelota (a game similar to lacrosse), who'd only taken up rugby in his mid-teens and was still an unknown at the beginning of last season.

Harinordoquy couldn't see it. "The best? It's difficult for me to say whether I'm the best No8 in the world now," he pondered, asking how he could be compared to, say, Lawrence Dallaglio "who is stronger than me, a completely different sort of player". What he did enjoy, though, was being considered one-third of possibly the best back-row trilogy in the world now, rivalling their English elders. "You think Serge (Betsen) is quiet and cool but inside he's all fire. Charle (Olivier Magne's princely nickname comes from Charlemagne) is the extrovert, the one who gets most angry. One thing we all have in common is that we hate losing."

Particularly to England? Harinordoquy gave a smile but was not about to rise to the bait again. If he really does hate the men in white, this spectacular young giant will doubtless find his own special way of demonstrating it this weekend.

Harry Dorkey . . . you're a beauty

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