Top 10 lessons we've learned from switching codes

Sonny Bill Williams. Photo / Getty Images

Thurston's staying, Gasnier's coming back, Folau can't make up his mind, Sonny Bill is lying back in the South of France and dreaming of Pukekohe. Oh, the mad, sad world of code switching.

The players - and even the codes - may have changed, but it's been going on for over a century.

As long as people chase pig skins around in painted rectangles (and ovals) for a living, there'll be offers on the table.

The only colour that matters is the colour of the money, writes Steve Deane

1 The Northern Union, 1895

The ultimate code switch - 22 northern England rugby clubs meet (well, 21 with Stockport on the blower) at the George Hotel in Huddersfield and vote to quit the Rugby Football Union.

The split is over many things, but most of them boil down to money. The RFU isn't happy about clubs charging spectators to get into grounds.

The players aren't happy about not receiving compensation for missing work. Within 15 years, more than 200 RFU clubs had joined the revolution.

It took 11 years to sort out the ruck, with the play-the-ball replacing an every tackle scrum in 1906.

The lineout lasted just two years, abolished in 1897.

WHAT WE LEARNED: Plenty of rugby players want to be paid for their efforts. Those that don't are mainly posh southern knobs.

2 1907/08 All Golds

When news breaks of Albert Baskiville's plan to assemble a professional rugby team to tour the Northern Unions it is widely denounced in New Zealand - a country that is to remain a bastion of shamatuerism for another 87 years.

There is one group, however, who seem to quite fancy the idea - rugby players.

Of the 200 provincial players trotting around, 160 put their hands up for selection.

In the end the tour includes nine All Blacks and 14 provincial players, a large number selected from the Wellington and Auckland teams that had recently been battling over the Ranfurly Shield. The tourists received a 70 per cent share of the gate from matches, with each player pocketing £300.

WHAT WE LEARNED: Plenty of Kiwi rugby players want to get paid for their efforts too. Those that didn't probably owned farms.

3 George Nepia, 1935

Whether or not it's a case of union-inspired revisionist history, the prevalent view seems to be that George Nepia didn't really want to go and play league for Streatham and Mitcham in 1935 - and later regretted doing so.

But, given there was a Depression going on, he certainly did want the 500 quid on offer.

A star of the 1924 Invincibles tour, Nepia is perhaps the most revered All Black to jump ship.

Some suggest being overlooked for 1926-27 Maori tour because of an apparent mix-up over his availability and the 1928 South Africa tour on racial grounds may have aided his decision.

But that would be drawing a fairly long bow. Nepia played for the All Blacks plenty of times after those disappointments. The likely truth is that he simply needed the money.

WHAT WE LEARNED: George Nepia liked his family and, during the Depression, even farmers had it tough.

4 Kent Lambert: 1977

An 11-test All Black, Lambert was rated the country's strongest union prop when he signed a three-year contract with Penrith.

A 17-stone (108kg) part-time shearer and freezing worker from Wairoa, Lambert was another financial migrant to league.

In five years as an All Black he made five tours, missing out on around five years' income. In 1977 he played in the first test against the Lions, but he had his appendix removed six days later.

Outspoken about the financial plight facing leading players, Lambert quit the amateur code aged just 25. Troubled by injury and - by some accounts - the mobility requirements of the 13-man game, his league career never reached any great heights.

WHAT WE LEARNED: Shamateurism wasn't kind to the working man. Tough scrummaging props don't necessarily make great league converts.

5 1990

What had been a trickle became a flood in 1990, with John Gallagher, Matthew Ridge, Frano Botica, John Schuster, Daryl Halligan and Brett Iti all packing their bags and heading for league.

A mixed bag, that lot.

Incumbent All Black fullback Gallagher bombed at Leeds after being dumped on his head in his first match and then consistently targeted by league ruffians miffed at his massive paycheck.

Ridge prospered in a game that loves super-sized egos, Botica and Halligan scored a heap of points on opposite sides of the globe while Iti did okay at Bradford.

WHAT WE LEARNED: The wall is coming down for sure. Shamateurism is unsustainable. Gallagher looked like he was a Kiwi for a while, but was really a Pom at heart.

6 Jonathan Davies and Iestyn Harris

The Great Deserter and Great Saviour of Welsh rugby. Davies was a running union fly-half in the classic Welsh mould, Harris a gifted running league standoff.

Davies chucked in union after the Welsh were mercilessly flogged in New Zealand and lost at home to Romania.

Lancashire-born Harris went the other way after Cardiff dangled a cheque for 1.5 million quid in front of his face.

The son of a union-to-league convert, Harris was hailed as the player who could transform an incredibly crappy Welsh team into something less crappy. He couldn't.

His first match was a 16-30 loss to Argentina. A couple of years later he packed it in and went back to league with Bradford, pocketing another £1 million in the process.

Davies' body ended up back playing union, but his heart never left league.

"It's the first time I've been cold for seven years, I was never cold playing rugby league," he said when asked about the difference between the codes.

WHAT WE LEARNED: It takes more than the loss of a great fly-half and the arrival of a moderate league standoff to change the state of Welsh rugby. Iestyn Harris has a great agent.

7 Tana Umaga and Jason Robinson

Throughout his esteemed All Blacks career, Tana Umaga's vision was one of his greatest assets.

His ability to see the big picture meant he was usually in the right place at the right time to do something spectacular.

The same could be said of his career choices. A giant of the Wellington club league scene with Wainuiomata while still a teenager, Umaga was the first leaguie to see things opening up in a rival code hurtling towards professionalism.

In 1994 he switched to union and was perfectly placed to ride the surge of interest in the shiny new Super Rugby of 1996. Years later, he was one of the first aboard the French rugby gravy train.

Wigan's Jason Robinson was the English equivalent, dabbling with Bath on a short-term contract in 1996 before switching over full time in 2000.

WHAT WE LEARNED: The tide has turned. Union is now a viable career option for aspiring professionals. In an open market, league is in trouble.

8 Brad Thorn and Tiaan Strauss

Thorn stands alone for several reasons. Not only is he a leaguie who has made it as a tight forward in rugby, he has done so twice. Remarkable.

He has also swapped countries as well as codes, which isn't so rare when you consider the likes of Kiwis-cum-Ra-Ras Henry Paul, Lesley Vainikolo and Shontayne Hape.

So far, at least, you could argue that Thorn is the only one to do it well.

Unless you count Bill Hardcastle, who played for the All Blacks, Wallabies and Kangaroos at the turn of the 20th century.

A rugged forward, Strauss made the most of the open market, playing union for South Africa, league for Cronulla and then union for the Waratahs and Australia.

WHAT WE LEARNED: Brad Thorn is a freak and a throwback to a bygone era. Saffers can play league, although not that well - and they'll soon scurry off and burry themselves under a ruck somewhere.

9 Lote Tuqiri, Mat Rogers, Wendell Sailor, Ryan Cross and Timana Tahu

Looking at that list, union fans with any sort of memory would likely mutter some kind of agricultural metaphor - cows coming home to roost or chickens grazing in the neighbour's paddock.

But it's also a bit of an indictment on Australian rugby's ability to produce outside backs.

And it's not as if throwing cash at leaguies produced staggering results.

Wendell Sailor did well, but suffered from white-line fever (in more ways than one), Lote Tuqiri was sacked for being himself, Mat Rogers and Ryan Cross were average and Timana Tahu, as he himself predicted, got bored chasing kicks.

WHAT WE LEARNED: Australian rugby union has hardly produced a decent outside back since Campo. If you've played representative league and you fancy a Wallabies jersey, all you have to do is ask.

10 Karmichael Hunt, Sonny Bill Williams, Mark Gasnier, Israel Folau

Hold the phone, it's the bleeding AFL on the line. As if code-switching wasn't a big enough issue already, in comes the money-bags world of small-shorts-big-fields Victorian rules footie to poach Karmichael Hunt.

Talk about picking your targets. Special K, of course, is no stranger to switching allegiances, having once been a Kiwi and staunch cornflakes man. Will it work?

Well, Hunt apparently staggered AFL scouts in testing before making the jump, but it remains to be seen how he'll go under live fire.

His AFL career starts next year. Until then he's cooling his time in French rugby along with Sonny Bill Williams and Mark Gasnier.

Israel Folau is on AFL's wish list, while Johnathan Thurston has just rejected French rugby and Gas is coming home.

SBW will soon be adjusting to life at the foot of NZ domestic rugby, if you believe some reports.

WHAT WE LEARNED: AFL wants league stars and has the cash, but no-one knows whether they will be any good. French rugby wants league stars but, while the money is good, it's pretty much career suicide to accept it. And players will eventually come back. Special K also has a very good agent.