Peter Jackson: Willie John’s Lions are dwarfed by Toulon titans

When the Lions secured their only series win against New Zealand in 1971, they did so with a pack averaging 15 stone-a-man.  Back then long before they began turning the sport into a subsidiary of Monsters Inc, the tourists had a comparative flyweight at fly-half who parted the All Black sea like a latter-day Moses.  Barry John weighed in at barely eleven stone soaking wet.
Fast forward some 40 years to the power game that has throttled the traditional concept of a rugby team designed for all shapes and sizes. Toulon retained their title as European champions on the strength of eight forwards who would have made Willie John McBride’s Lions seem almost puny and under-nourished.
Saracens had good reason for feeling as though they had been hit by a ton of bricks in Cardiff last weekend. At a combined 926 kilograms (145 stone), Toulon’s starting eight came ominously close to raising the brute force of their game towards a new level of one ton (160 stone).
Man for man they were three stone heavier than the ’71 Lions, averaging 116kg or 18 stone. McBride, the heaviest Lion four decades earlier at 16 ½ stone, would have been positively lightweight compared to Toulon’s global gladiators, a second row forward smaller in height and weight than the French club’s Kiwi prop, Carl Hayman.
Toulon’s mass in Cardiff  would have been greater still had exiled English loosehead Andrew Sheridan, not been struggling to recover from a neck injury.
Just before the IRB declared the sport open, England‘s pack tipped the scales at 850kg. They contained such gnarled operators as Dean Richards, Martin Johnson, Tim Rodber and Brian Moore, yet only one of the eight, the elongated Martin Bayfield, topped 18 stone (115kg).
South of the Equator the Springboks have grown even more. Nine years ago, the Ox-factor, as provided by Os du Randt and all 135kg (21st 3lb) of him, made John Smit’s pack bigger than Toulon’s.
It is a sobering thought that the two lightest players on the pitch at the Millennium Stadium last weekend – former Wallaby centre Matt Giteau and sometime England wing David Strettle – were still heavier at 13st 7lbs (86kg) than the late Rocky Marciano, the greatest slugger in heavyweight boxing history – 49 fights, 49 wins, 43 by knock-out.