Ian Robertson put it most colourfully. “I work with backs,” said the celebrated BBC radio commentator on being asked to coach the Cambridge students into shape ahead of their Varsity Match date in 1972. “I really don’t understand the other creatures.”
Dear old Robbo has never retreated an inch from his view that when it comes to the parts of rugby requiring a level of brainpower – analysis, game understanding and all the rest of it – the little grey cells have always been located between Nos 9 and 15. Some of the great All Black captains of the modern era, from Graham Mourie and Sean Fitzpa...