It’s time to get back to shifting the piano
NOT long after helping the All Blacks to victory over the Lions in 1993, the formidable wing John Kirwan found himself on the wrong side of the New Zealand selectors, who omitted him from a Europe-bound tour party on the grounds of a declining strike rate. “I’d score more often,” Kirwan is said to have muttered, sardonically, “if it wasn’t for that fat hooker pinching my tries.”
The hooker in question? He was referring to Sean Fitzpatrick, by most reckonings the finest No.2 ever to play the game and, many would argue, the best referee into the bargain. And yes, he was unusually prolific on the touchdown front, single-handedly ripping up the rulebook of the “Front Row Union” by appearing to spend as much time playing the piano as he did shifting it.
Then as now, appearances were deceptive: Fitzpatrick was no one’s idea of a showboating glory hunter. But he was certainly an outlier when it came to try accumulation. In 92 Tests over a 12-year career boasting more highlights than a celebrity hair-do, he put his name to a dozen of them.
One a year? If that tally doesn’t make the rugby earth move for you, it is nevertheless a matter of record that he left the very best of his fellow amateur-era hookers for dead. The unusually substantial Tom Lawton of Australia – heaven alone knows how Kirwan would have described him – was his nearest challenger, with a grand total of four. Colin Deans of Scotland and Uli Schmidt of South Africa, two ultra-mobile footballers with an eye for the main chance? Two apiece. Philippe Dintrans, the brilliant Frenchman? Three in 50 matches.
Spool back to the pre-Fitzy era and we find ourselves in a try-scoring desert. Alain Paco, the least celebrated but far from the least important member of the scary French pack of the 1970s, scored one try only. As did Bobby Windsor of Wales and John
“Modern hookers scoring so many tries tells a story that not everyone will enjoy hearing”
of England. Meanwhile, hookers as respected as Peter Wheeler and Tane Norton never managed any at all in the near 70 Tests they played between them.
Fitzpatrick even lorded it over the vast majority of “next generation” hookers – those who played the bulk of their tier one internationals in the first two decades of the professional era. Steve Thompson, John Smit, Mario Ledesma, Guilhem Guirado, William Servat and Stephen Moore all finished their careers in single figures, often at the lower end of the digit scale. Only Jeremy Paul of Australia and that
Irish arch-bandit Keith Wood, perhaps the nearest thing we have seen to the great All Black in his modus operandi, came out ahead.
Today, we find ourselves in a different world entirely. Dane Coles, the most eye-catching of Fitzpatrick’s successors in the silver-ferned jersey, crosses the line twice as often, broadly speaking. Malcolm Marx, the Springbok jackal supreme, is just one short of the dozen and has almost 50 Tests to make up the shortfall. Jamie George? Thirteen in 69. Samisoni Taukei’aho, the new talk of New Zealand rugby? He has 10 in 21, which is borderline offensive.
It’s largely down to the short-range lineout, of course – or, to be more specific, the driving mauls that inevitably follow. And we are not using “inevitably” in a positive way here. Quite the opposite. Barely a game goes by without a hooker touching down for a try the opposition were powerless to prevent, a powerlessness rooted not in their own shortcomPullin ings, but in rugby law.
Take a look at the current Premiership try-scoring chart and you will get the picture. Harry Thacker of Bristol, Julian Montoya of Leicester and Tom Dunn of Bath are all up there in the top echelon. So too are Jamie Blamire of Newcastle and two of Gloucester’s senior hookers, Santi Socino and George McGuigan. The troglodytes in the Kingsholm Shed may appreciate up-the-jumper rugby more than most, having drunk it in with their mothers’ milk, but even so…
Half a dozen No.2s in the top 20 tells a story about the modern game and not everyone will enjoy hearing it. Agreed, the rest of the list consists largely of wings (or players like Joe Marchant of Harlequins, who spend at least some of their time in that position), but as there are two of those in a team and only one hooker, you can sense the oval world shifting on its axis.
Interceptions aside, there is generally a whole lot of moving parts in a classically-proportioned wing try and, therefore, lots of things waiting to go wrong. There are moving parts in mauls too, but they move grass-growingly slowly and have a risk-reward balance horribly skewed towards the second of those r-words.
When this year’s World Cup reaches its business end – and in the pool featuring South Africa, Ireland and Scotland, that moment will arrive far sooner than usual – we will see Handre Pollard, Johnny Sexton and Finn Russell (yes, even Finn Russell!) peppering the five-metre line with penalty punts in pursuit of guaranteed points.
And before the All Blacks mount their high horses, they’ll be doing it too. Why wouldn’t they, with Samisoni Taukei’aho in the shirt Sean Fitzpatrick used to wear?