ISRAEL DAGG

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Israel Dagg comes with a range of weaponry, to such an extent that it is hard to say there is one thing that makes him the player he is.

Well, maybe that’s not true, there is an intangible thing – which is the way he trusts his instincts and backs himself to try what he sees.

It may sound a little flaky as an explanation about what sort of player he is, but it shouldn’t be read as Dagg being hard to define. He is a brilliant rugby player – that’s all that matters.

He is blessed with pace, size and all round skills. More than that, he has an incredible feel for the game.

He can pop up where he shouldn’t. He can see where the space is on the field and think on his feet to find ways to exploit it. He’ll run when defenders think he’s going to kick and he’ll kick when they think he should run. He can step and swerve, has a powerful fend and is big enough to bump o tacklers at times.

At his best, he roams where he wants and injects himself into the game with a deadly thrust. Remember him at the World Cup in 2011? He was so clever in the way he roamed the backfield, looking for mismatches and then, boom, he’d hit the line and take o into space.

That led Steve Hansen to say of him during that tournament: “His instincts for rugby are brilliant and if he trusts those then he is always going to be a great player.

“But if he starts to question his own instincts then you will see him do things that aren’t normal for him and he will lose his form.”

As everyone knows, he stopped backing himself in 2015 and paid the price. But last year, against all predictions, he returned after a long injury lay o and looked once again to be the player he was in 2011.

Dagg was so good that he changed his future. He had been planning to head offshore at the end of this season, but by November last year, he was told he should stick around to see if he could be involved in the 2019 World Cup.

“Is it certain he will go to the next one?” Hansen said. “If he keeps playing like he is now, he had been told he will – because you would be foolish to leave him out on the form that he is in.”

STRIKE RATE To be fair to Dagg, looking at his strike rate is not strictly fair as most of his tests have been played at fullback. Last year, when he played eight tests on the wing, he scored eight tries.

He wouldn’t be viewed as an out and out finisher – that’s not his key strength.

‘His instincts for rugby are brilliant and if he trusts those then he is always going to be a great player.’ STEVE HANSEN