A drop of magic is just what we need
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STRANGE as it may sound to generations of rugby lovers raised on a fizzy-drink, dopamine-heavy diet of high-scoring matches, there was a time when tries were rare enough to be memorable. The most revered team of them all, the 1971 Lions, were blessed with a stellar back-line bookended by JPR Williams and Gareth Edwards, yet they managed only six touchdowns in four meetings with New Zealand. One of which was a chargedown. By a loose-head prop.
If we spool back to the pre-war years, when the England‘s hyphenated elite slept easy in their four-posters in the knowledge that the following day’s lineout moves would be called in Latin, scoring rates made the ‘71ers look like the Harlem Globetrotters. In 1939, just before the outbreak of hostilities and with France still ostracised for various crimes and misdemeanours, the Four Nations Championship yielded 10 tries in total. Compare and contrast with the thoroughly modern 2021 tournament, when Italy leaked 34 on their own.
So where do we turn when we tire of the try in all its common or garden ordinariness and crave something a little more singular? To the drop goal, of course – not quite a forgotten art, because smart players make it their business to keep it in mind, but one that seldom receives the respect it deserves, despite its climactic quality. The latest exponent? Step forward Ciaran Frawley, the demon dropper of Durban.
All drop goals look the same, superficially speaking, but they serve different ends and have different effects. There are those that keep the scoreboard ticking along like a well-maintained Rolex while others are precious beyond the dreams of avarice, like a Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime (20-odd million quid at a shop not near you, unless you happen to live in a castle on Lake Geneva).
We saw a prime example of the first variety in the early stages of last autumn’s World Cup, when England eased past Argentina on the back of a DG hat-trick from George Ford, whose superior rugby intelligence told him that this was the most likely way – perhaps the only way – of holding things together in circumstances fraught with peril. Each successful shot was celebrated like a try from the end of the earth.
Not that England have had it all their own way down the years. Remember Jannie de Beer and his “boot of God” as he drop-goaled South Africa to quarter-final victory in 1999? There were five of them in total – yes, five – and from memory, no England player could be seen in the same postcode as the outside-half took his shots at the sticks. Something similar happened at Twickenham seven years later when Andre Pretorius dropped four to square a two-Test series and leave Andy Robinson, the Red Rose coach, awaiting his P45.
As for the one-off match-winning goals – those do-or-die efforts delivered, appropriately enough, at the deathwe think of Stuart Barnes in the 1992 John Player Cup final; Rob Andrew in the 1995 World Cup quarter-final; Joel Stransky in the final of the same tournament; Jeremy Guscott’s glory shot for the Lions in 1997; Stephen Larkham’s extraordinary long-range shot in the 1999 semi-final – the Wallaby maestro was suffering from poor eyesight, was carrying a leg injury and did not consider the drop goal to be a part of his armoury, yet he creamed one from halfway to swing the tightest of contests in extra time; and, it goes without saying, Jonny Thingummyjig in Sydney in 2003.
Is it ridiculous to suggest that it is in moments such as these, rather than the epic five-pointers of a Jonah Lomu or an Antoine Dupont (still less tries of the dime a dozen sort), that we experience the union code’s dramatic quintessence? The way your columnist sees it, having had the privilege to witness so many of the quoted examples at first hand, the argument holds.
Wilkinson, off his “wrong foot” at the last knockings of a global final on foreign soil – and Australian soil at that? Or an obstruction-aided try from a five-metre lineout, with the ball buried beneath a ton of gym-inflated muscle and bucatini-bulked buttocks? Only one ticks the “pure theatre” box, and it isn’t the second. Frawley’s efforts for Ireland on the shores of the Indian Ocean last weekend were absolutely in the grand tradition, even though it was not a knock-out occasion.
Indeed, the second of his drops was as indelible an act of individual brilliance, burnished by the collective precision of those around him, as anything delivered by his more celebrated forerunners. The set-up, the positioning, the timing, the execution – all the moving parts were synchronised pretty much to perfection. Not even Rassie Erasmus, the defeated Springbok coach, could find a way of crying “foul”.
Every now and again, some killjoy suggests the downgrading of the drop goal to single-point status, a la rugby league. One measly, miserable point? Seriously? Puhleeese. For those of us who crave edge-of-the-seat rugby even when we’re standing on the terraces, the painstaking build-up to one last, all-or-nothing shot in extremis brings a blissful agony all of its own. What’s not to love?
