‘It felt alien … there’s a reason tightheads are specialists’
Newcastle’s Sam Lockwood explains to Charlie Morgan why move from loosehead is for emergencies only
Sam Lockwood is modest enough, but he knows that the way he answered Newcastle’s propping crisis a fortnight ago for their Champions Cup match against Edinburgh was pretty impressive. He slid across from his favoured loosehead position when a farcical flurry of tighthead injuries hit his team. “I imagine if you are not a front-rower you might think it is just left or right… it’s not,” he says.
While joking that director of rugby Dean Richards probably owes him a Christmas beer, Lockwood, 30, says all his colleagues would have stepped up, pointing out that Sami Mavinga volunteered to make the same switch and provided cover on the bench.
When Lockwood describes the “difficult and eye-opening” experience more fully, that suggestion seems like an exaggeration out of modesty.
“You are almost using opposing muscle groups,” he explains. “As a tighthead, you are trying to squeeze and hold everything down, as a loosehead you are trying to pretty much lift everything up.
“It felt alien to me when I went in there. The first scrum went down, and I almost wanted that so I could get a feel for it. There is a reason why the tightheads are who they are. They are specialists. It’s rare that you get props who can play both sides. If they can, they are pretty talented people.
“My official record for scrums at tighthead was that I’d hit one live scrum in that position in a game in my whole career. That was down at Jersey, and it collapsed.”
Edinburgh’s scrum, spearheaded by powerful South African Pierre Schoeman, dismantled Newcastle’s makeshift operation at Murrayfield in a 31-13 victory. When Mavinga arrived in the 57th minute, referee Marius Mitrea had just penalised Lockwood for the sixth time and awarded the hosts a pushover try.
Such an outcome was grimly predictable, an indictment of rigid tournament rules and the refusal of organisers European Professional Club Rugby to cater for Newcastle’s predicament. Earlier in the week, three tightheads had picked up injuries within 24 hours. As if to epitomise the carnage, recent signing Rodney Ah You was ruled out with a torn calf.
Richards’ attempts to negotiate a hurried registration for 24-yearold Jack Payne were rebuffed, forcing him to field a 22-man squad with three looseheads. Lockwood was told he would wear the No3 shirt at a meeting five hours before kick-off.
His account of the chaos is amusing – “I’d been told I had the weekend off. Dropped, rested, whatever you like to call it” – but there is a serious point. The episode was all the more unsavoury given the posturing from governing bodies over player welfare.
“It’s not like we were trying to cheat,” Lockwood says. “And it seemed ridiculous that they wouldn’t let us register someone when he was ready to go and part of the squad. In my head, even on the coach up on Thursday, it was definitely going to be sorted. For player welfare, for player safety and for the good of the game, I thought it would have been sorted.
“Obviously if they’d have to bend for us then they’d have had to bend for other people and then the rules might have been abused – I imagine that was their thought process. But I felt with a bit of foresight it could have been passed on this occasion once they realised the situation we were in.”
Lockwood’s attitude reflects his on-field demeanour. He is an industrious player who carries hard, racks up impressive tackle counts and scraps tenaciously at the breakdown.
A former team-mate of England’s Harry Williams, he is also a graduate of the prolific production line of props coming out of Jersey, whom he joined from Leeds Carnegie in 2014, and into the top flight.
Lockwood name-checks Cornish Pirate Alan Paver, Doncaster’s Colin Quigley and former Bristol tighthead Jason Hobson as veteran opponents that handed him a tough set-piece education in the Championship. Now he is precisely the sort of individual Newcastle need as they aim to fight up from the bottom of a congested Premiership table.
After hosting Gloucester today, Falcons travel to Bristol, before a home match against Harlequins. Their Premiership outlook could change completely by the time of the latter fixture Jan 5, especially given they have won their past two domestic meetings. Lockwood senses an opportunity to start climbing.
“Over these three games we want to move off the bottom and up the table to where we feel we should be.”