In our new Top 20 feature, Brendan Gallagher ranks the players who, for one reason or another, didn’t quite hit their peak.
Here, our countdown to No.1 continues with 10 to 6.
6 Bert Solomon – Redruth and Cornwall
The man who invented and perfected the dummy and who scored two tries in Cornwall’s famous 1908 County Championship win over Durham. The centre who scored one try and made the other on debut in a famous England win over Wales but never played Test rugby again. It’s said he was wayward, that he preferred the company of his racing pigeons to his colleagues, that he fell foul with the famously snooty England captain Adrian Stoop – but the truth is we just don’t know. And it’s still frustrating over a century later.
7 Zac Guildford – New Zealand
Superbly talented wing with the rugby world at his feet but has battled serious alcohol problems most of his senior career and dropped out of contention for the All Blacks in 2012 after six tries in ten Tests. Had starred at the 2009 Junior World Cup, a tournament that was tinted with tragedy with his father dying in the stands after the final, and claimed a Commonwealth Games gold medal with the New Zealand Sevens in New Delhi in 2010. He won his first All Blacks cap in 2011 but soon after that his issues with alcohol started derailing his career.
8 James ‘Darkie’ Peters – Plymouth and England
Wrong person, wrong place, wrong time, wrong colour. James ‘Darkie’ Peters was the orphan son of a Jamaican Lion tamer, a natural athlete who quickly made his mark as a rugby player. He shone brightly in his first two games for England and then starred in defeat for Devon against the touring South Africans. He was a shoo-in for the England Test against the Boks in 1906 but the tourists raised objections to his inclusion on racial grounds. Peters was dropped and was never quite the same man again, let alone player, winning only three more caps and was later suspended for receiving payment from Devon for County Championship appearances.
9 K G MacLeod – Scotland
One of the most brilliant all-round sportsmen of any generation. A precocious schoolboy fly-half at Fettes College, he was capped at 17 against the 1905 All Blacks and blazed a trail in nine matches over the next three years before he retired from rugby at the request of his father who’d seen his two other sons suffer serious life-changing injuries. However he continued to play cricket for Cambridge University and Lancashire and soccer for Manchester City. In latter years, after moving to South Africa, he won the Durban Senior Golf Championship.
10 Andrew Harriman – Harlequins and England
The Prince – as he was universally known – had serious wheels and once clocked 20.9sec for the 200m. He possessed an incredible loping stride that ate up ground but although a fierce competitor for 80 minutes, life away from sport was for living and enjoying. So perhaps he wasn’t the most dedicated but he was excellent in his one Test match appearance for England against Australia in 1988 and the player of the tournament when England won the World Sevens Championship in 1993.
