As a rule I am neither in favour of celebrity rugby players nor galactico-style signings by clubs with a history of financial murk.
While I would not even begin to argue that Zinzan Brooke’s spell at Coventry was a contributory factor behind that club’s meltdown several years later, such acquisitions demonstrate the lack of realism that has blighted so many in the professional era.
As Moseley and Bees have proved it’s easy enough to go bust without wasting cash on a washed up internationals but if you’re determined, bringing a faded star to a club watched by a man without a dog is about as quick a way to the administrators as handing out £50 notes with every pint.
Yet the lure of basking in fading glory is too powerful for some to resist, just ask anyone whose hired Jonah Lomu in the last few years.
However, nothing comes close to the possibility of former Wales pin-up boy Gavin Henson going to London Welsh.
The Exiles’ managing director John Taylor has offered an olive branch to a player whose decline from his wonderful Mathew Tait-chucking best has been as spectacular as any in the last decade.
Taylor describes the move for Tango Man, a brilliant double entendre of a nickname given both his skin colour and his imminent appearance on some stupid Dancing with Celebrities on Ice programme, as a ‘no brainer’.
It certainly is that. You need to have no brains to think such an arrangement will prove to be the watershed Henson’s rugby career needs.
But let’s not allow that to stop us ogling at the madness. As celebrity rugby players go Henson is in a league of his own.
As a person I am sad his relationship with Charlotte Church has not worked out and as a rugby journalist I would love to see him back on the pitch having earned his Wales shirt.
But if Henson does go to Old Deer Park just in time for their trip to Moseley on October 16, it would be the nadir of a wonderful talent.
My advice to him would be to work through the issues he has with Ospreys, get himself back in shape, even if that takes another year and when he gets his chance take it with both of his uniquely talented hands.
But the route to that does not go through Kew and for the sake of both parties I hope it comes to nought.
