Virus Ends Brock's Hope Of A Fitting Career Finale

On the first weekend of January this year in the foothills of the Pyrenees, the visitors made a tactical change then of such insignificance that it vanished into the minutiae of just another Saturday.

- Peter Jackson

Word of La Rochelle’s decision to substitute one fly-half for another towards the end of a runaway win at Pau on January 4 would have wound up on the technological spike reserved for trash of the ‘So What?’ category. Time and tide wait for no man.

Viewed through the prism of a world tied to the ball-and-chain of Covid-19, it can be seen now in a very different light.

Nobody had any way of knowing back then that the oldest No. 10 of the professional era was leaving the bench for the last time, that fate in the deadly form of a pandemic would conspire to end a run of almost 20 years in the dead of winter when he just might have made it to another Top 14 finale in high summer.