Weir has a way to go if he’s to be rated alongside rugby’s fast men
So Warren Weir, an Olympic bronze medallist in the 200m in 2012 and a 4x100m relay winner with Usain Bolt, is going to give rugby a crack with the emerging Jamaican Sevens squad which will reignite the debate on who is rugby’s fastest player – now and in history.
It will be interesting to see how Weir gets on although his lightfooted, agile running style looks better suited to Sevens to me than some of the stronger, more powerful beasts and there is also a good degree of endurance in his make up. I would be cautiously hopeful.
Weir’s 200m PB of 19.79 is seriously quick by any standards and if he reproduces that kind of gas I’m afraid Carlin Isles’ reign as the world’s fastest rugby player is well and truly over .... but Weir hasn’t been in that kind of nick for a few years, hence perhaps him looking around for another sporting outlet.
And how do you compare the speed merchants over the decades? Track times are a guide but not the be-all and end-all, especially those from yesteryear who ran on slow wet cinder tracks with rudimentary blocks, primitive footwear and hand held timing.
We also need to consider if the speedster in question was, or is, able to transfer all that gas onto grass, and occasionally muddy, rugby pitches while wearing heavy boots and with a ball tucked under one arm, perhaps a few minutes after taking a heavy tackle and being winded.
And can they produce that world class speed at will with a dynamic short burst to see off a would-be tackler or do they need time and space to literally get up to speed? Jason Robinson can’t compare with the game’s quicks over the long haul but was there ever anybody quicker from a standing start or over 20-30 metres? All this needs to be factored in.
The first real gas merchant was probably the oft-forgotten Morris Kirksey who remains among the contenders for fastest rugby player of all time. Kirksey was a beast of an athlete, an all-American boy who, judging from all the available pictures, was ripped even by modern standards. At the 1920 Antwerp Olympics he took the silver medal in the 100m behind Charlie Paddock and anchored the USA 4x100m team to gold in a world record time before he turned his attention to the rugby.
The rugby tournament was taking place a fortnight later and the American squad was full of fellow Californian students – Kirksey was
“Liddell had already been dubbed the Flying Scotsman before Paris Games”
a philosophy graduate from Stanford – so the invitation to play was fairly natural although it’s not clear if Kirksey had played in inter-collegiate games prior to 1920.
Whatever the case, he contributed to their gold medal-winning 8-0 victory over France and then embarked on a four-match tour of France with the Eagles team. In 1921, just before retiring to become the lead psychiatrist at St Quentin and Fulsom jails, he equalled Paddock’s then world 100 yards record of 9.6secs.
At the Paris Olympics in 1924 Eric Liddell burst onto the athletics world with an Olympic record 47.6 seconds to win the 400m after opting out of the 100m because it had been scheduled for a Sunday which was contrary to Liddell’s religious beliefs.
It is often forgotten that until a couple of months before the Olympics – before the schedule was published – Liddell’s main focus was the 100m, his favourite event which he had been concentrating on for two or three years. His initial intention was to race and beat his old British rival Harold Abrahams, the eventual winner.
Liddell had already been dubbed the Flying Scotsman before the legendary events of Paris. Prior to the Olympics the sporting world knew him better as the speedster in a brilliant Scots back division scoring four tries in the Five Nations in 1922 and 1923.
Had he not quit sport altogether after the Olympics to become a missionary in China it is likely Liddell would have become one of the 1925 immortals who won Scotland’s first Grand Slam with an exhilarating style of running rugby. The tries he might have scored in that backline!
The 1948 Olympics saw two rugby speedsters to the fore. Welshman Ken Jones was one of the great wings – 17 tries in 44 Tests – and had recorded 10.6 for the 100m in 1948 to win a place in the GB 4x100m squad. Slow cinder tracks remember, none of the ultra-quick Mondo surfaces. In modern terms that’s worth 10.2 or 10.3 secs.
Joining him in that squad was Bristol and England wing Jack Gregory and with the help of Jack Archer and Alastair McCorquodale they took the Olympic silver medal. In fact, for an hour or two it was gold until USA successfully appealed a disqualification for a faulty change, the first occasion TV footage was used for this purpose.
Jones was also part of the GB squad that took a silver in the 1954 European championships and, on an individual level, he took bronze in the 200m in the 1954 Empire Games in Vancouver. JJ Williams was another 10.6 merchant who competed for Wales at the 1970 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh and was the Welsh sprint champion the following year. JJ clocked up 12 tries in 30 Wales Test but the true glory of his pace was probably seen to best effect in South Africa with the Lions with those glorious chip-and-chase tries. Williams was unusual in looking even quicker on a rugby pitch than an athletics track. Another Welshman – Nigel Walker – was very quick on turf and track. As an athlete he was a 10.38 100m man and in his specialist event recorded a 13.51 for the 110m hur2 dles. Walker logged up 12 tries in 17
games for Wales during a non-vintage period for the national team and might have fared even better in another era. He possessed both explosive speed and that long range speed needed to get home from a distance. Alas, Wales never really knew how to fully utilise his talent.
There are some at Bath who insist David Trick – two caps in the midEighties – was the quickest thing on two legs. He was certainly an England Schools 100m champion when at Bryanston and had a 10.4sec PB to his name but as he admitted himself training was never his forte and in those amateur days he wasn’t
“Walker logged up 12 tries in 17 games for Wales in a non-vintage period”
always fully focused.
He made a big breakthrough on the England tour of Argentina in 1981 but then took a year off to travel and work in America. Different times.
Another who treated training as an optional was Andrew Harriman who had the languid gait of a 200400m runner but still covered the ground at a phenomenal rate.
Just for a couple of seasons Dick Best cracked the whip at Quins and got the ‘Prince’ really fit and the results were often spectacular but again England had no real idea how to profit from his virtuosity. Sevens was a different matter, however, and nobody contributed more to England’s World Cup win 1993 than the flying Harriman.
Another always credited with a 10.4secs to his name is Bryan Habana. The recently retired Bok was rapid, no question, but when he was smoked by USA Eagle wing Takudzwa Ngwenya in a 2007 World Cup game the suggestion was that that PB might have been a one-off.
What Habana had though – that many other speedsters didn’t – is a rugby brain and natural try-scoring instincts. Combine that with serious wheels and the result is the second highest try-scorer in Test history.
Which brings us to Isles, a remarkable athlete blessed not just with blazing speed but with a onelegged vertical jump of 42 inches which puts most of the NBA superstars in the shade.
To my eyes he, like JJ Williams, is even quicker on a rugby pitch than in spikes. I rather fancy that’s why he took time out to return briefly to athletics to try to qualify for Rio 2016 as a sprinter.
There was no disgrace in being eliminated in the semi-finals of the USA trials, he would have garnered a spot in most other squads around the world but it was a reminder of the difference between athletics speed and rugby speed.