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FOLLOWING the disappointment of losing the 2015 Rugby World Cup final to the All Blacks, David Pocock was already thinking about taking some time away from rugby.

It was a combination of the rigors of the game and a calling to dedicate an extended amount of time towards some of his other passions.

Rugby had dominated his life from a young age when he moved from Brisbane to Perth as a 17-year-old to join the Western Force academy. Rugby has clearly taken its toll on his body; his hands bear the surgical scars and crooked fingers of someone who has competed in many breakdowns, and four knee surgeries, including two ACL reconstructions, have been par for the course of playing with Pocock’s kind of reckless abandon.

After a decade of professional rugby, playing through two Rugby World Cup cycles, it was time for something different.

The strong calling to other walks of life did not diminish the loyalty he felt towards the ACT Brumbies after the patience and understanding they had shown him through two successive knee reconstructions. Pocock felt he owed the franchise at least one full season across 2016, so a one-year contract followed that left many commentators trying to guess his next move.

“I felt like the Brumbies had shown so much faith in me, I wanted to be there in 2016 for them, but after that I knew I wanted something a little bit different or a break. I’d never really seen myself playing into my thirties, so I guess mentally it was time to retire or take some time off and get back into it. I really don’t like the term ‘sabbatical’, it seems like a term more fitting for a tenured professor. To me it was some time away from rugby and something different.

When I talked to (Wallabies coach Michael) Cheik about it, he didn’t seem surprised at all. He seemed to see it coming, so he was happy to work with that and come up with something creative.”

The plan was fairly unclear for the Pococks and they had talked about all sorts of options, from David trying to do some study to spending some time travelling. They decided on a full year away from Australian rugby, but only six months out of the game altogether, and Rugby Australia offered David a two-year contract across 2018-19. In the end he decided a full year away from rugby was too long and, having always wanted to experience another competition, signed up for a stint in Japan with Panasonic Wild Knights in the Japanese Top League.

While the Pococks were in Zimbabwe, Rugby Australia continued to battle bad press across 2017. It became known that Pocock was being paid during his time away. Many pockets of the mainstream media had a field day and the headlines proved crippling for some of the funding efforts the Pococks were trying to co-ordinate for community projects they were involved with in Zimbabwe.

‘‘In hindsight now, it has been pretty disappointing all the stuff about being paid for a year off. After I agreed to sign for 2018 and 2019 they asked if they could average some payments across the three years instead of just two, which is apparently not uncommon, so when people started talking about me ripping off Australian rugby, I was really surprised.

I think the worst part was that it definitely made it harder in Zimbabwe. A couple of the stories that ran in Australia were printed verbatim over there, and then people just thought I was printing money.

There was a development project I had been working on for a couple of years that I’d put money into, but needed a lot more to scale it, and we had some investment lined up. But all of a sudden they were thinking we could just put in a few million US dollars, so that didn’t go ahead. We’re now in talks with another group so I’m hopeful that it will go ahead at some stage.’’

The Pococks have lived more than a decade donating substantial amounts of their income to community development and conservation projects.

Understandably one may ask where was Rugby Australia to protect their star player when these damaging and untrue headlines played out, but the governing body rightly has a strict policy of not discussing any player’s contract terms in any detail. That meant the misguided media had to draw their own conclusions based on what they thought they knew, and sadly the Pococks had to accept the unfounded scrutiny before moving on with their plans.

Cheika had played a key part in negotiating an outcome that would prolong the career of arguably his best player from Rugby World Cup 2015, and the former CEO of the national governing body, Bill Pulver, made no apologies at the time for being creative with contracts to ensure they would keep top players in Australia, away from the lucrative money offered in Europe.

“We are at such a financial disadvantage that we have to be creative about the way we retain our talent. That means we will do our best to put a proposal in front of our very best that addresses their needs,” Pulver told Georgina Robinson from The Sydney Morning Herald in December 2016.

“We do that every year. We’re not going to stick our head in the sand, and say there’s one way to contract people and take it or leave it. If you want to surround yourself with the best possible people then you need to be as flexible as possible.” — Sydney Morning Herald