Article courtesy of the Courier Mail

KARMICHAEL Hunt continues to excel at rugby union and we at the Gold Coast Football Club couldn't be happier.

Karmichael has now helped his side through to the final of Europe's Heineken Cup and this excites us on two fronts. Firstly, we now know exactly when we will be getting him back and can start to plan how and when we introduce him into our side and begin his education as an AFL footballer. But most importantly, it says to us he has become elite at rugby union. He has learnt on the job in a very short period of time and that bodes well for his next transition to an AFL player.

In just six months Karmichael has not only adapted but excelled at a new game to the point he has become the key playmaker for Biarritz at flyhalf. I don't pretend to know too much about rugby but we know Biarritz offered him a new deal, which tells us they think pretty highly of him. I caught the semi-final on the weekend on ESPN and he was certainly in the thick of the action. One kick for touch was a perfect drop punt that travelled about 50m.

The Heineken Cup final is on May 22, which means we will expect Karmichael back with us on the Gold Coast some time the following week. What Guy McKenna and our match committee have to decide now is "How quickly do we get him on to the park?". Our first two games after his return are away trips so there is every chance Karmichael's debut for the club will be in Melbourne.

Our thinking at the moment is to give him maybe three games over four or five weeks before we wrap him in cotton wool. But we won't really know for sure until he gets back. He might come back in terrific nick and be ready to play out the year. However, our gut feeling is that after back-to-back seasons in the NRL and French rugby, he could do with a rest before starting his preseason with us in October.

He will start training with his new teammates and will play within a
couple of weeks of his return. He will have the match fitness to play a game of rugby, but we need to see what his endurance base is like and how his kicking is. He took a footy over to France with him but we have given him no instructions about how often we expect him to practise with it, if at all, because we wanted to give him every chance to become a good rugby player.

His education will continue even after he has played a few games and is on ice.