Allan Massie: In an era when size matters so much, we are craving more skill

Published on Friday 1 October 2010 18:01

Rugby: a game for players of all shapes and sizes. This has always been the boast. Some 40 years ago there was a Springbok scrum-half who didn't quite measure 5 foot even in long-studded boots. Recently fears have been expressed that this was no longer true, and that rugby was moving towards a situation where almost everyone was more than 6 foot high and weighted at least 15st.

Happily this hasn't quite proved to be the case. There is still room, even at the highest level, for lightly-built players like Chris Paterson and others, like Glasgow's admirable Colin Gregor, who are anything but mastadons. Nor have portly props quite disappeared, even if beer bellies, at least at the top level, are a rarer sight than they used to be.

Of course strength and power matter. In the professional game many centre-three-quarters have figures and physical statistics which would have had them in the back-row, or even second-row, of the scrum a couple of generations ago. Some wings are built on a scale to deter any but the most resolute of tacklers. All the same one shouldn't exaggerate. Fifteen-stone centres aren't new, Scotland for instance having fielded the Edinburgh Wanderer Brian Henderson, who weighed in a few pounds over 15st, as far back as the early 1960s. But they are certainly more common. Even so, there are still players like Max Evans who may be described as of more traditional build and who prove effective at international level. A player of that build may be considered fortunate these days if he wins and retains his coach's confidence. Others don't, as England's richly-talented Matthew Tait might sadly observe. We may be sure however that not even Scotland, with our sparse resources, will ever again field such a lightweight three-quarter line as we did sometimes in the early Eighties, Keith Robertson, David Johnston, Jim Renwick, Roger Baird, a delight to watch though they all were.

Robertson indeed made this point to me a few years back, when I congratulated him on the performance of his son Mark in one of Mark's first games for the Border Reivers. "Yes," said Keith, "he did okay. He's four inches taller and four stones heavier than I was." I suppose that, in weight, that Scotland line of four was equivalent to a pair of centres and one wing in many international teams today. That said, the French coach Marc Lievremont is quite happy to field lightweight wings like Alexis Palisson and Marc Andreu, the latter also requiring to stand on tip-toe to measure 5ft 6in.

There is a theory that the adjustment of the interpretation of the tackle law may be making mobility and traditional skills such as the mastery of the swerve and sidestep once again at least as important as size and strength in the back division.If the ball is now indeed regularly moved more quickly from the tackle area then - again in theory - there is more space on the field and consequently there are more opportunities for elusive runners. Let us hope experience proves this theory to be correct.

Likewise we may see more demand for creative back-row forwards like Edinburgh's Ross Rennie rather than for those whose talents are chiefly destructive, or indeed obstructive. If rugby is developing into a game of almost ceaseless movement, then pace, imagination and ball-skills may be once again more important than size and strength. This doesn't alter the fact that pick-and-go and charging head-down into the tackler in order to secure quick ball from an advancing platform are still central to success.

Bulk and strength will of course continue to matter because, lacking them, any team will find itself on the back foot for long periods of any match. This has been our experience at Selkirk this season. In game after game we have simply been overpowered up front, and so have conceded tries after lengthy passages of defence when at last either a gap appeared or cumulative pressure near the goal-line told. Moreover, shortage of good ball won on an advancing platform often means that a team will find itself trying to run bad ball - and therefore running into trouble - or compelled to kick and so return the ball to the opposition which, on account of its superiority in bulk and muscle, is able to keep it for long periods. It is all very well to say that "defence wins matches", as indeed it often does, but only a very talented back division can score tries when the opposition has the ball most of the time and opportunities are rare.

It can be done and has been done in the past. Reports of Scotland's famous Triple Crown triumph at Twickenham in 1938 - Wilson Shaw's match - offer a good example. England "heeled the ball with monotonous regularity" - opinions vary as to whether they won three or four times as much ball as Scotland - but the Scottish back row tackled and spoiled tirelessly, the centres cut through at will, and Shaw himself "ran as if he had been shot from a gun". Scotland scored five tries, all from the backs, and England only one. Pace, ball-skill and imagination had beaten bulk and power. How good it would be if Andy Robinson's team could reproduce that style of play - and meet with that sort of success.