By JIM WEBSTER

Only last week, this writer drove to the south coast to visit an old friend – John Thornett.

He’s living down there in an aged care facility near Moruya Heads and we spent several happy hours together with his wife Viv and another former Norths’ forward John Braund reminiscing about old times, laughing at some of the other rugby players we knew and generally just enjoying ourselves.

Thornett captained the Wallabies on the 1966-67 tour of the British Isles and France, which I was fortunate enough to cover for The Sydney Morning Herald.

It’s hard to imagine that was nearly a half-century ago.

Yet having seen so many Wallaby teams in action since those days in the sixties, and witnessed their captains, I still rate Thornett as among our best leaders – if not the best.

It so happens that Wallabies coach Michael Cheika has the task ahead of him of choosing our next captain, probably between Michael Hooper and Stephen Moore.

He says that whoever he chooses to lead us against South Africa when the Rugby Championship starts in Brisbane on 18 July will remain in the role for the Rugby World Cup.

It’s hardly an easy choice, with Hooper the last captain and Stephen Moore the captain before and, given what lies ahead, it’s a very important decision which the coach has to make.

The question one must always ask is: what exactly makes an outstanding captain?

Thornett, or Thorn as the players have always called him and still do, simply oozed respect, both on and off the field.

He was always calm, never losing control of his emotions physically or mentally – even though he played his rugby in the tight five – and so when it came to decision-making on the field he could always be relied upon to do the right thing by the Wallabies.

But the great respect for him continued off the field. He was always well-mannered, never showed any bad feelings that he might have had and was seen on the streets as still being their team leader.

To this very day, any Wallabies who toured with Thornett still talk of him as being their captain and, if you don’t believe me, just ask any of those who played through the Thornett era.

One other Wallaby captain stands out in my view and that was Andrew Slack.

The Queensland centre led the Wallabies on their famous Grand Slam tour in 1984 and he, too, kept his emotions on the field in full check. He never argued with any referee, always made the correct choices when it came to decision-making and again had the overwhelming respect of the other players.

Interestingly, that Grand Slam team contained some of the legends of Australian rugby.

Just look at the lineup we fielded against England at Twickenham: R Gould; D Campese, A Slack ©, M Lynagh, B Moon; M Ella, N Farr-Jones; S Tuynman, D Codey, S Poidevin, S Williams, S Cutler, A McIntyre, T Lawton, E Rodriguez.

Wow!!! Campese, Lynagh, Moon, Ella, Farr-Jones, Poidevin and so the list rolls on….

If you had to rate that lineup from one to 15 purely in terms of rugby ability, Slack would definitely have been in the bottom half – and he would agree with me.

Yet Slack was another captain who held enormous respect, both on and off the field, and no-one on that tour would have thought of suggesting another player for the task.

But I cannot continue without mentioning Nick Farr-Jones, who led us to victory in the 1991 World Cup. He’s just a smidgen behind Thornett and Slack in the captaincy evaluation stakes. Calm, deliberate and also highly respected off the field.

So, now it’s over to Cheika to decide who’s to do the job in this very important year.

The point I would make is that those two great captains I have mentioned – Thornett and Slack – had as much respect from their fellow players off the field, as they did on it, and that should be very prominent in Cheika’s thinking when he makes his choice.