Ten years on and a handful still stand

PETER JACKSON

THE MAN TRULY IN THE KNOW

Veteran: George Ford playing against Australia in November 2014

PICTURE: Getty Images

NOVEMBER 8, 2014 and some 400 of the world’s elite elbow their way on to the starting grid for the autumn Tests. Very few of those from way back then will be revving up for the 2024 series kicking off in six weeks time.

George Ford is one of those still standing from way back then, England‘s enduring stand-off having served immediate notice last weekend of his readiness to fill the gaping hole left by Owen Farrell‘s exit to join the foreign legion in the green fields of France.

Against the All Blacks at Twickenham in 2014 when England began plotting a path that would result in an embarrassingly early exit from hosting the following year’s World Cup, Ford spent most of the match on the bench watching Farrell at work. His fellow northerner having removed himself from the equation, a very different landscape leaves Sale’s astute fly-half competing with the younger Smiths, Marcus and Fin.

At least Ford is still there, an achievement in itself given that survival seems to become more hazardous with the advent of every new season. Staying strong in body and mind is one thing; falling foul of political decisions a different matter entirely, what with the RFU declaring their Top 14 platoon persona non grata and the WRU excluding those daring to leave Wales too soon.

Of the England team beaten by Richie McCaw’s All Blacks a year before they retained their global crown, Ford is one of nine still in action. Four (Danny Care, Ben Youngs, Courtney Lawes, Jonny May) have retired from Test rugby, Billy Vunipola (Montpellier) is marooned in the same boat as Farrell on the far side of the Channel and the evergreen Mike Brown is in his 40th year.

All of which leaves Joe Marler, still fit and firing and ready to give it one final blast throughout a season offering the magnetic prospect of a Lions tour. He, like Ford, is one of a tiny number from the opening round of ten years ago still standing.

That they represent perhaps fewer than five per cent of the 400-odd from the 2014 series says everything about the severity of the toughest test of all, time itself. Of the few lining up this November, fewer still will be doing so in the same colours as ten years ago.

“Survival seems to become more hazardous with each new season”

Back then, at the Prince Chichibu Memorial Stadium in Tokyo, the Maori All Blacks snatched a late try to squeeze past Japan 20-18. Their team included a pair of likely lads busting the proverbial gut to wear the silver fern, one stationed on the left wing, the other at scrum half.

Three years later, James Lowe and Jamison Gibson-Park were en route to Dublin and Grand Slam glory in green, among the last to exploit the laughably short three-year residential qualification, their success incontrovertible proof of an Irish recruiting agency smarter than the rest.

On the weekend when Lowe and Gibson-Park remained tone deaf to Ireland‘s Call or any faraway noise which didn’t sound like The Haka, the Irish demonstrated their rising

status as a world power by outplaying South Africa in Dublin, 29-15. Three of that team, Robbie Henshaw, Conor Murray and Peter O’Mahony, are on track to reappear this time around.

The Springboks can go one better in the shape of Willie Le Roux, Handre Pollard, Cobus Reinach and the mighty Eben Etzebeth, still young enough to climb into the rarefied vicinity of the mountainous all-time cap record set by Alun-Wyn Jones at 170.

A few more about to bridge the ten-year November chasm are to be found on both sides of the Equator, among them a pair of New Zealanders from McCaw’s All Blacks; Beauden Barrett and TJ Perenara. Codie Taylor, on Maori duty at that time alongside Lowe and his fellow greenhorn Gibson-Park, had still to make the quantum leap from the Maori All Blacks.

Others are readily identifiable from that opening round of matches from ten years ago: when the Wallabies recorded their tenth straight win over Wales, the Gray brothers, Richie and Jonny, scored tries for Scotland against Argentina and France stretched the size of the tighthead prop to monstrous heights with the introduction of a nomadic New Zealander, Uini Atonio.