The Roff with the smooth
Last updated: 30th November 2007
Joe Roff talks to the Rugby Club
Oxford University v Cambridge University
3.30pm, Sky Sports 1 & HD1
Thursday December 6 2007
The 126th Varsity Match at Twickenham will be the stage for a modern day great to call time on a world class career.
Whether Oxford University beat Cambridge University on Thursday - live on Sky Sports - and end a two-game losing streak in one of the game's old rivalries, Wallaby World Cup winner Joe Roff is going to hang up his boots.
He has enjoyed the good and the bad of World Cup finals, beating France in 1999 and losing to England in Sydney in 2003, and was also part of the Australian squad that beat the British and Irish Lions in 2001, scoring an important try in the decisive second Test.
He is a Super 12 winner with the ACT Brumbies and his rugby career has taken him to Biarritz, in the French championship and the Heineken Cup, and now to Oxford.
In such a long and illustrious career, it is only fair that the 32-year-old from Sydney has begun to forget a few of the details.
"The memories are beginning to tear at the edges a little now," he told Sky's Rugby Club. "It feels like a long time ago. Certainly the young guys that I play with here at university seem to give me a hard time for being the oldest man in world rugby.
"I am very, very fortunate to have played for some great sides for the past 10 or 11 years. I really do consider myself a very lucky rugby player and they provide great memories."
"Every time I try to mention the 1999 World Cup, they remind me of the 2003 World Cup. It's all in balance."
While Roff was preparing for another crack at the Bowring Bowl, the trophy England's old universities play for, his former international veteran team-mates Stephen Larkham and George Gregan were having another shot at winning the Webb Ellis Cup.
Does Roff have any regrets that he might have given up his Wallaby jersey too early?
"Not all," he says. "You need to know when the time to move on is and George and Steve don't know when that is.
"George is an enigma. He has been going for ever and probably could go forever. Steve is being held together by strapping tape these days.
"I certainly think that for me, I cut it at the right time. The move to here, where in many respects I feel I have gone full circle and back to playingin a team where you play for all the reasons that you started playing, which I am rally enjoying."
And what about that final game? Can Roff go out on a high, as perhaps he deserve to?
"I can't wait for the match," he says. "It is a great way to finish, in one of the most historic games on the rugby calendar, to run out for the dark blues.
"I just hope that the rugby gods are kinder to the dark blues this year than they have been for the last few. It would be lovely to out on a winning note."
