Wallaby props? How we used to snigger at them over here in England as Jason Leonard, Phil Vickery and Andrew Sheridan chucked their weight around against green-and-gold packs who travelled backwards faster than an Olympic rowing eight.
Nick Stiles took god’s amount of stick from self-appointed scrummaging experts in the Twickenham stands in the early Noughties. So, more cruelly still, did the gruesome twosome of Matt Dunning and Al Baxter, devoutly re-Christened by the British press pack as “Matravers” and “Algernon” on the basis that only a pair of complete cravats could struggle so badly at the set-piece.
Mark Regan, that forthright England hooker of yore, tells a story of squaring up to Dunning, Stephen Moore and Guy Shepherdson after the first scrum of the World Cup quarter-final in Marseille in 2007, which had concluded with an Australian penalty. “Moore was yelling and punching the air,” recalls the Bristolian. “I said to him: ‘I’d calm down if I were you, Bab. There’s a lot of this game left.’ Which was true, sadly for them.”
A lot of this was unfair, but with certain exceptions – Richard Harry and Andrew Blades were central to the Wallabies’ global victory in 1999; Ben Darwin showed all the signs of being something extra-special before suffering a career-ending injury at the subsequent World Cup on home soil – the scrum has long been a problem Down Under.
So let us acknowledge, in deadly seriousness, the achievement of James Slipper as the loosehead specialist from the Gold Coast closes in on the wonderful scrum-half George Gregan’s record of 139 Wallaby caps. Propping is an unforgiving job at the best of times. Slipper knows too much about the worst of times, but by finding a way through them, he has earned the respect of us all. Yes, even the English.
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