I remember susoecting that Geech was a not very good selector for a while. I always thought he was respected for being a top bloke with integrity, a good motivator and one who had longevity, having faced a lot of uphill struggles in his career, and that he had taken a Wasps team pre made as successful by Warren and overseen its slow, managed decline as players got older, extracting what he could from the memory banks.
Then I read his laudation of Farrell as the 'ultimate test match animal' and I knew that I was right. The phrase is arsenic, and the moment it is out something fishy is up, and it is only used to justify the unjustifiable selection wise. It's the equivalent of Eddies' gut or the 'hunger I see in the eyes.' type phrases, also used about Faz. Bollocks ' hunger in the eyes', it is performances on the pitch, end of.
This test match animal stuff is normally bought up to justify someone being selected who isn't as good as someone else or who is horribly out of form/recovering from injury with no games behind them. It I always a sign of weakness. Farrell has a lot of coaches select him and justifiably so with his previously reliable boot, until the last four to five years where his limitations have become increasingly apparent- the same way he speaks to refs, the same tackle issues, the lack of vision and his snuff movie approach to creativity. Deciding you want Farrell over Fiver because you want limited winning rugby and have a pack to do it? Fazball it is, that's fine. I wouldn't like it myself because winning limited rugby turns into limited losing rugby the moment the pack creaks, but its fine in and of itself. However, we haven't had that pack for a while, and we long since past the point where Farrell should have been anything other than a bench option for when we are 20 points up with 30 to play and some conservatism is needed. Frankly I am not even sure then, given his inability to control himself. T Cup and all that phraseology aside, he doesn't keep his head and frankly has gotten away with more than he should based on his position. I suspect 2003 Woodward would not have stood by him, and yeah, it is easy for people to snipe from the sidelines, but if we can't work out now that Fazball isn't winning, we never will.