By Duncan Wood
June 15 2002

Will Daryl Gibson be the mysterious, 'phenomenal' new signing to be unveiled at the Memorial Stadium shortly? The club haven't made any firm comments but the grapevine is buzzing!

I have to admit that he wasn't the first name that I thought of. I started to list the names of 'phenomenal' current All Blacks. Andrew Mehrtens, Christian Cullen, Jonah Lomu, Tana Umaga sprang to mind. I dismissed them because I thought that they would all be reluctant to move overseas before the World Cup in 2003.

It was then that I thought about recent New Zealand centres and the names of Mark Robinson, Mark Mayerhofler, Aaron Mauger, Pita Alatini and Daryl Gibson all came to mind. All of them are damned good players.

"Scoop" first dropped a massive hint on the messageboard this week. He listed Gibson's player profile and then confirmed that his sources are pretty good. Since then, the Bristol Evening Post have also run a piece claiming that Gibson could well be unveiled in the next few days.

The club have made no comment. All Malcolm Pearce said this week was that a signing was on the way and that he couldn't be named for legal reasons but that a 'Heads of Agreement' had been signed.

He could well be a very valuable signing. At 27, he is arguably at the peak of his career. He is certainly not an ageing southern hemisphere player in the twilight of his career.

He plays inside centre so he'd be a straight swap for Jason Little. He's part of the set up at the Canterbury Crusaders who are the current Super 12 champions where he has been battling it out for the number 12 shirt with All Black vice captain, Aaron Mauger. He played against Italy last week and came off the bench against Ireland today.

He first came to prominence in 1998 playing for the New Zealand Academy against England and featured in RWC 1999. He has also played for the New Zealand Maoris. In 14 tests he has scored 1 try and he's made 77 appearances for Canterbury, 11 in 2002 with 3 tries.

If he is to be the Shoguns' new signing, I'm sure we'll find out in the next few days.