Biography
He was educated at both Narrabeen North Primary School and Narrabeen Sports High School, where he started playing rugby league, representing Australian School Boys in that code before switching to Rugby Union. Gerrard made the Australian Schoolboys team in 1999.
He went on to play for the Warringah Rugby Club and represented Australia in the national under-19s side in both 2000 and 2001; also in 2001 he represented Australia in the under-21s side. After the successful appearances for junior representative sides, he made his Super 12 debut for the New South Wales Waratahs. He continued to make the under-21 Australian side up for the next two years, before touring Japan with Australia A in 2003. He signed for the ACT Brumbies for the 2003 season. He made his debut for the Brumbies against the Sharks at Durban, scoring a try. He played for the Brumbies in 2004, with the team winning the championship. He missed out on a mid-year test match against England in Brisbane due to injury. He was a member of the Australian squad that toured England, Scotland and France at the end of the year but did not play because of a recurring hamstring injury. In late 2005 he made his Test debut for Australia when he came on as a replacement against Italy in Melbourne.
Gerrard moved to Japan and spent two years with the Kanto Shining Arcs.
During the coronation of the present King of Tonga, Mark Gerrard played for Tonga during the coronation rugby match in the Teufaiva stadium.
Gerrard moved back from Japan to join the Melbourne Rebels for the start of the 2011 Super Rugby season. He played 11 of the Rebels 16 games that year. Later in 2011, Gerrard was named in the 40-man Wallabies squad.
In May 2012, Gerrard was expected to play his 100th Super Rugby game.
Read more about this topic: Mark Gerrard
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The death of Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the biography of authors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A biography is like a handshake down the years, that can become an arm-wrestle.”
—Richard Holmes (b. 1945)