Clyde Rathbone

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Clyde Rathbone (born 23 July 1981 in Durban, South Africa) is an Australian rugby union player. He currently plays for the Brumbies in Super 14 and internationally for Australia. He began his Australia career as a centre, but now mainly plays wing.

He spent his entire childhood in Durban and played most of his rugby as a South African junior, representing South African Schools and even captaining the under-21 national team to victory in the 2002 U21 Rugby World Cup. In the same year, he made his debut in the then-Super 12 for the Sharks. However, at the end of 2002, he chose to move to Australia, for which he was qualified to play by virtue of having an Australia-born paternal grandmother.

Rathbone joined the Brumbies for the 2003 season. After considerable speculation in the rugby world over which country he would represent at Test level, he opted for the Wallabies. This decision was very pleasing to Australians but not to South Africans. Rathbone made his Test debut in June 2004 against Scotland, and went on to score a hat trick of tries against England the following week. His form in the June Tests earned him a starting wing position for that year's Tri Nations Series. During that competition, he rubbed salt into the South African wounds by scoring a match-winning try against his former countrymen in Perth. When the Wallabies went on tour that November, he scored a pair of tries against Scotland at Murrayfield, but suffered a groin injury that kept him out of the year's final Test against England.

2005 was not the year it promised to be. Rathbone was injured for most of it, missing the Autumn series of Tests. In these tests, wingers like Drew Mitchell and Mark Gerrard have played well, but a fully fit Clyde Rathbone will likely be a strong competitor to play on the wing for the Wallabies.

in 2006 Rathbone has had a relatively quiet super 14 season, but over the summer break of 05-06 he got married to his long time girlfriend in their hometown of Durban. Rathbone's family have announced that they will relocate to Canberra this year. with both of his brothers Rory and Luke enrolled in Marist college

[edit] External link

In other languages