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Playing top-level sport, in the end, is less about talent than the ability to bounce back from failure. “I’ve failed over and over again in my life and that’s why I succeed,” said the great Michael Jordan, who knew a little about turning talent into consistent achievement. There is not a single great athlete who, at one stage or another, has not experienced a jolt of gut-twisting dismay.
Sometimes, as happened to Marcus Smith on Easter Saturday, the worst of moments can collide with the most uplifting. Which is where this piece simply has to start. There have been hundreds of tries scored in this long northern hemisphere season but none liable to stick longer in the memory of everyone present at the Twickenham Stoop at the weekend for the Harlequins v Montpellier fixture.
It was just before the half-hour and the game had already been lively. Quins had made a fast start but Montpellier were still ahead in the tie and, as their director of rugby, Philippe Saint-André, memorably observed afterwards, had not just come over to London “to take the sun and drink beer”. At which point Danny Care, ever the optimist, leapt acrobatically to keep a restart in play inside his 22 and shovelled the ball backwards in the direction of his half-back partner Smith.
The rest was a glorious blur, as if someone had pressed the fast-forward button. Having scooped the ball deftly off the deck, Smith took off like a scalded Easter bunny, throwing a cheeky dummy to André Esterhuizen before goose-stepping and accelerating past five Montpellier defenders. He had almost made it to the 10-metre line when he found the speedy Cadan Murley who expertly drew the final defender to put Joe Marchant over. It will be mighty hard to beat as the European try of the season.
Which was why no one at the Stoop saw the unexpected final twist coming. Smith, having had another scampering try disallowed, appeared to have clinched victory for Quins when another beautiful little delayed pass put the ever-improving Louis Lynagh over for his second try of the game. All that was needed, with Quins now only one point behind, was the angled conversion from close to the 15-metre line. Smith had slotted his previous four conversions without missing a beat and, normally, it would have been a routine kick.
Except that this time it wasn’t. Smith tugged it a fraction and the ball sailed the wrong side of the left upright. It was so close that many Quins fans assumed it had gone over. Even the assistant referees behind the posts looked at each other as if slightly baffled. From the stands it looked as if Smith had not even conceived of the possibility of it missing.
So what kneejerk conclusions should we draw? That Smith is a flawed genius? That he choked at the crucial moment? That it just goes to show that the 23-year-old is not yet quite the finished article? Perhaps all those things are true but how many people were thinking or saying that an hour earlier? It just depends upon which of the two Saturday snapshots you perceive as the most telling.
A more reasoned response, perhaps, is to remind ourselves that sport is played by human beings. The best snooker players miss the occasional black, even Wimbledon finalists find the net on match point. Does that render all the other shots they play irrelevant? Of course not. It just underlines that talent on its own is not always enough.
It feels as if we are entering Rory McIlroy territory here. How good was he during the final round at Augusta? How many dull lives does his fabulous swing enrich? Sure, but how come he has never won a Green Jacket? At which point people tend to forget the fact he has finished in the top 10 in seven of his 14 trips to the Masters and is still only 32. Once again there is a choice of narrative, as there is with so many top sportspeople. Which merely underlines the universal truth: the more you achieve, the greater the expectation to keep doing it.
Quins’ senior coach Tabai Matson also made an interesting point after the game when he pointed out that the margin of error involved is so tiny that playmakers and goalkickers should be treated more sympathetically. “The guys who touch the ball the most get a bit of leeway,” he stressed. Which is worth bearing in mind whenever we discuss mercurial fly-halves, in particular.
If Finn Russell, as he did again for Racing at the weekend, creates a try with a beautiful pass over the top, the number of people basking in its gorgeousness tend to be fewer in number than those asking why his Six Nations form for Scotland tailed off. Danny Cipriani, Owen Farrell, George Ford and even Beauden Barrett have also had to battle similarly split opinions, as has every Welsh fly-half since Barry John.
But what, ultimately, is better? A mechanical robot who barely makes a mistake but creates very little? Or a magician who makes the occasional howler? The answer is an athlete who learns from their mistakes and, as per Jordan, emerges the stronger for the experience. Saturday’s aberration will sting but, perversely, it could just be the making of Smith’s career. What we already know for certain is that the game is fortunate to have him.
