Rugby Union: Guscott achieves lift-off in space age: England have a centre who is the very model of a modern international but his attitude on and off the ptich has often been misunderstood. Steve Bale talked to him

IF YOU want evidence that the star syndrome has struck rugby, look no further than Jeremy Guscott. 'He's gorgeous, articulate, self-possessed without being arrogant, and passionately interested in what he does.' Phew. He's not bad at rugby, either.

As the panegyric came from Guscott's business manager, one Maria Pedro, (yes, some rugby players have business managers these days) in the immediate aftermath of one of rugby league's failed attempts to lure him north, perhaps we should recognise a partial witness. She would say that, wouldn't she?

On the other hand, as the Irish will find at Lansdowne Road on Saturday, this Rolls-Royce of centres has the most outrageous and comprehensive gifts of anyone in the England team and for years now people have been longing to see them in greater evidence out there on the field. With his Bath playmate Stuart Barnes alongside, at last it really happened against Scotland a fortnight ago and suddenly his career - in rugby, that is - is flowering anew.

It has not always been like that. Naturally enough for such a natural, there have been grand moments but, whether Guscott and the rest of his England colleagues like it or not, they have seemed lately to be fewer than his or their talents warranted. Individual brilliance consciously dimmed by the greater good of victory is, however understandable, profoundly regrettable.

Not that Guscott sees it that way. Some of us may wish he had been at the very least frustrated whenever England fixed on the forward route but that only goes to show how little we truly know of him. At 27, he is an enigma, partly of his own making but equally of ours.

Indeed if ever there was an England player of the current, successful generation who was misunderstood it was Guscott. If he can give the impression of not being too bothered by it all, it may be because he can do it all. To borrow from la buena Maria, this is not arrogance but self-possession and the plain fact is that he does not let rugby rule his existence.

Hence his occasional mid-season departure on vacation or on transatlantic modelling assignments. Hence, perhaps, the languid air which suggests - even in the fiercest international, for heaven's sake - that this is not all that life has to offer. 'Between the ages of 19 and 24 I believed rugby was absolutely everything. It was my only interest.

'My social friends were involved in rugby as well, mostly players and also some of the kids I grew up with. But by talking to experienced players and others who had finished playing, you soon realise this isn't going to be your life. So I made a quick turn- around and found activities outside rugby to keep me occupied.

'I wouldn't think twice about taking a holiday during the rugby season if my wife felt we needed to go away, whereas four or five years ago I would have totally disagreed and said no. Rugby gives you a lot of introductions and does you a lot of favours but your real life is at home with your family and your working life.

'What I do externally as Jeremy Guscott the rugby celebrity isn't very much, the occasions are few and far between, but I do maximise those opportunities because I'm not going to be Jeremy Guscott the rugby celebrity for very much longer.'

In fact, Guscott works in the marketing department of British Gas but he has been across the world to model clothes as well as to play rugby and has presented television programmes in the West Country. He exemplifies the modern, photogenic, quasi-amateur rugby international's freedom to explore avenues that would have been closed during rugby union's recent old days of rigid amateurism.

At the same time, he feels unchanged as both person and personality. 'Rugby union has grown bigger and stronger, has a bigger audience watching it now, and the means to gain income indirectly from the game are that much greater. If everybody could enjoy the game and benefit from it as much as I have, that would be wonderful.

'But I see the benefits coming indirectly from the game as a complete bonus. If they weren't there, I would still be the same person. I would still be working for British Gas. I would still be paying my mortgage and looking after my family in the same way.'

Guscott would acknowledge that he was not always so clear-headed or cool-headed and even now, as the improbable incident which preceded Fran Clough's dismissal in last Saturday's Bath-Wasps match showed, he can court controversy.

Given his heart-throb status, it is fairly remarkable to recall that he made his England debut in Romania in 1989 and the subsequent Lions tour of Australia only as a late replacement when Will Carling - who he partners in Dublin for the 27th time - withdrew with a shin injury.

Yet within a couple of months his reputation had already been established. He began with three tries against Romania and, when promoted to the Lions team who won the second Test in Brisbane, scored a try of sensational confidence and virtuosity accelerating on to his own grubber-kick. In those two matches he had set a standard by which he would forever be judged. It has not been that he has failed to live up to them so much that too often for rugby's aesthetes he has not been given the chance.

After the Scotland game, which contained his 16th England try in 27 matches and a breathtaking contribution to Rory Underwood's, you might have imagined him to feel a sense of liberation, but no. In his maturity, he easily accepts that what has gone before was for the greater good. So much for Guscott as prima donna. Male modelling, on the other hand, is a different matter . . .

Guscott's tactical and strategic view, like those of all his team-mates, was coloured by the depths of displeasure England plumbed when they lost the 1990 Grand Slam match to Scotland. 'We got together after the disappointment of '90 and said 'Look, we are a capable side. Let's look to our real strengths, develop those and play to them.' It was a case of knowing we had the overall power, the dominance up front, and it seemed silly not to exploit it.'

But what about all that threequarter talent going to waste, being used as bludgeons if at all? If ever there was a rapier of a centre, it is Guscott. 'As ugly as it looked to some people, or perhaps as pretty as it looked to the connoisseurs, we were out there to please ourselves,' he said. ' In any case, I can't say that in every game I'm going to go out and get the ball in acres and acres of space.'

'At the same time there's no getting away from the fact that I do like running with the ball; it makes me feel good. I like that challenge of being in open space and taking on opponents. But there isn't that space in international rugby, not in my position. The only time you see space is when defences are broken down.

'I'm like the England side as a whole. You set standards in your good games and are measured by them all the time. If you drop below them, maybe through no fault of your own, that's a fact of life. Given space, I know what I can do, but I've become a heavily marked man and can't expect or be expected to do it all the time.'

This sounds like a plea for understanding of Guscott the occasional rugby genius, and Guscott the ordinary guy would like some of the same courtesy too. His relationship with the media has been a mixture of uncertainty and unease ever since he first illuminated the scene but, to most minds, there never was anything wrong in letting your rugby do the talking so he feels no particular need to justify himself.

Guscott set out on his international career intent on succeeding as a player rather than an interviewee and became known as aloof and unapproachable. Unfair, he insists. 'It's a typical case of grapevine and hearsay, and I suppose until people in your business are brave enough to come up to me and talk to me it will continue,' he chided.

'In the beginning I didn't want to get wrapped up in the media because I really wanted to concentrate on my rugby. Being brand new to it, I heard all sorts of things: that they make you or break you, and if you don't co-operate you won't remain an international for long.'

Guscott treated that sort of thing with the disdain it deserved and got on with making a go of his various careers - on the rugby field, on the catwalk, in the marketing department. He would, however, like the world to know that he is also quite a nice bloke.

'I believe I'm very approachable and I'll talk to anyone,' he said. 'Sometimes the media don't understand me, which I find a big joke. But I'm old enough, big enough and mature enough to be able to answer any criticism and accept any praise.' Usually, though not quite always, it is the latter.

(Photograph omitted)