Forget protein, players need shrinking pills!
When it comes to progress, rugby stands on the brink of herd immunity. The only sector not in a state of arrested development is strength and conditioning – something of a growth industry, if you’ll pardon the pun – and that brings problems that may prove insurmountable.
Are the players now too big for the game they are meant to be playing? It’s a serious question. And if they are, what can be done about it, short of replacing protein shakes with hourly shots of Alice’s magical shrinking potion? (Don’t mention the idea to World Rugby, who spend quite enough time in ‘Wonderland’ as it is.)
The 15-man code is hardly the first major sport to worry about becoming a victim of its own advancement: cricket, golf and tennis have all been here at one time or another. The batteries of great West Indian fast bowlers prompted discussions about lengthening the pitch; mega-hitters off the tee generated a debate about scrapping par-5 holes; modern racquet technology led some to argue for the eradication of the second serve.
But rugby is in a more precarious place, with the power-to-weight ratio of the average professional having obvious implications for health and safety while leaving the core principle of a “game for all shapes and sizes” on life support.
Back in the early 2000s, your columnist travelled to Swansea to talk with the Australian coach John “Knuckles” Connolly, who had just taken charge at St Helen’s. The conversation turned to Arwel Thomas, the elfin No.10 blessed with all the God-given gifts except one. Size.
“I’ve had the good fortune to work with some fabulous players – Michael Lynagh, the Ella brothers, you name ‘em,” Knuckles said. “I’m not kidding when I tell you that I’ve never encountered a more talented footballer than Arwel. I thought I’d seen it all when I arrived here, but every day in training he makes my jaw hit the floor by doing something completely new. So it breaks my heart when I don’t pick him. But I can’t. He’s so small, he’s a liability.”
For those not created in the image of Goliath, things are even more souldestroying now. The Lions who drew the final match of their series with the All Blacks at Eden Park in 2017 were more than 15kgs a man heavier than the players who had blazed the trail at the same stadium in 1971. That’s 230kgs across the team. Or, if you prefer, virtually two whole Maro Itojes.
Jonathan Davies, quite brilliant at outside centre on the last tour, was heavier than every member of the ’71 starting side with the single exception of the Scottish lock Gordon Brown.
The Welshman’s namesake Mervyn, a No.8, was two stones lighter. We can double the deficit in the case of John Dawes, his forerunner at No.13.
Yet the 2017 Lions back division was small by current standards. When Tommy Bowe, Jamie Roberts, George North and Mike Phillips helped Davies reduce the Wallabies to their component parts in Sydney four years earlier, the combined weight of the seven-man unit was close to that of the eight-man 1971 pack, Willie John McBride and all.
Everywhere you look, coaches are subscribing to the “big is beautiful” philosophy, for the simple reason that big usually wins. The early World Cup finals in 1987 and 1991 went the way of the lighter of the contestants, but that didn’t happen again until 2019 when England, marginally heavier than the Springboks both up front and behind thanks to the multiplying factor of their South Seas contingent, contrived to buck the trend.
What about Japan, you say? Didn’t they fly directly in the face of orthodoxy last autumn?
Not really. When they put the cat among the pool-stage pigeons by beating Ireland, their forward pack was very nearly as generous in scale as the green-shirted lot on the far side of halfway.
Just possibly, this had something to do with a lock from Brisbane, another from Christchurch, a flanker from Pretoria and a No.8 from Tonga, not to mention an 18-stoner from South Korea.
Before rugby entered the Age of Lomu in 1995, no 100kg back had started a global final. Since then, according to the tournament’s own weights and measures statistics, we have seen Joe Roff, Mike Tindall, Ben Cohen, Wendell Sailor, Lote Tuqiri, Stirling Mortlock, J P Pietersen, Frans Steyn, Ma’a Nonu, Aurelien Rougerie, Israel Folau, Tevita Kuridrani, Julian Savea, Damien de Allende and the Human Bowling Ball, aka Manu Tuilagi.
The direction of travel is clear, despite England’s outlier effort in Yokohama. In fact, it is a one-way street.
As there is no means of forcing players to become less dynamic, short of feeding them full-fat doughnuts intravenously or, conversely, not feeding them at all, it is down to the lawmakers to find a way of preventing rugby turning into a pursuit reserved exclusively for mammoths. Good luck with that.
“The Lions who drew with the All Blacks in 2017 were more than 15kgs a man heavier than in 1971”