Mark Cueto

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Mark John "Frank" Cueto (born December 26, 1979 in Workington, Cumbria) is an English international rugby union player. He plays on the wing for Sale Sharks and England .

He owes his surname to a Spanish great-grandfather Antonio, who sailed from Santander in the 1900s and settled in Maryport, Cumbria, where he set up a fish-and-chip shop. His Cumbrian home town of Workington is in an area more associated with rugby league than union. Although he played his first rugby game as an eight-year-old in Workington, and played after he moved with his parents to Wolverhampton, he did not grow up playing the game. When he was 10 years old, his parents moved again to Crewe, where he took up football instead of rugby, becoming a keen Manchester City fan. He did not play rugby again until he was 17. His early club was Altrincham Kersal.

Cueto made his début for Sale Sharks against Bristol Shoguns in 2001 and made the England tour to Argentina in 2002. He has been a fixture in the England A team since 2002 and has represented England at rugby sevens.

He was not selected for the full England squad during Clive Woodward's reign as head coach, having to wait until November 2004 for his début against Canada at Twickenham, when he scored two tries. He has averaged a try a game in his brief England career to date.

In 2005, he was called up to the British and Irish Lions for their New Zealand tour after original selection Iain Balshaw was ruled out due to injury. He featured in the third Test at Eden Park, Auckland.

Cueto has also seen success at club level in his five years at the club, winning the European Challenge Cup twice, first in 2002 (then known as the Parker Pen Challenge Shield) when Sale beat Pontypridd 25–22 at the Kassam Stadium in Oxford, England on 26 May 2002. He was also part of the Sale team that beat Pau, the champions in 2000, by 27 points to 3, also at the Kassam Stadium on May 21, 2005. Cueto scored a try in the victory.

He is also, at the time of writing (February 15, 2006), the third highest try scorer in the history of the Guinness Premiership, with former Leicester flanker Neil Back and his still active fellow club winger Steve Hanley.

Cueto helped Sale Sharks to top the league in the 05/06 season and carry that form through to win the season ending play-offs, beatin Leicester Tigers in the final, to become Premiership champions for the first time.

Cueto appears alongside All Blacks captain Richie McCaw on the cover of the United Kingdom version of the EA Sports game Rugby 08.

Cueto was a prominent member of England's 2007 Rugby World Cup in France. He started the first match of England's defence of the title at full-back against the USA. He also played in England's embarrassing 36-0 defeat to South Africa. Having been dropped for the next match against Samoa, he was installed to the English defence for the encounter with Tonga, which ensured England's progression through to the quarter-final stage. He was left out of the surprise quarter-final victory against Australia and the even more surprising semi-final victory over France due to a niggling injury. During the semi-final, England wing Josh Lewsey suffered a pulled hamstring and was forced to miss the final.

Cueto was selected to take his place for the historical 2007 final against previous pool opponents, South Africa. His participation in the match became memorable when he was controversially denied a try in the second half of the march by Australian match official Stuart Dickinson. After a great deal of deliberation over real-time footage (and facing a language barrier with a French television producer who did not provide the stills he wanted) Dickinson disallowed the try on the basis of Cueto's left foot entering touch (touching the side-line) before the ball was grounded. This was not immediately obvious and Cueto's left leg was subsequently raised within the boundary of play, travelling over it after the ball was on the ground; this led many to believe the judgement had been wrongly made on the basis of the latter movement. A division of opinion still exists, although most experts including BBC Radio 5 Live presenter Ian Robertson subsequently backed Dickinson's decision. [1]

At the time of writing, (October 18, 2007), Mark Cueto has scored 13 tries over a 23-cap Test career for England.

[edit] External links

• Official England Rugby profile
• Player profile on Sale website
• Mark Cueto photo by sportingheroes.net