Lack of Hard Men Makes England a Soft Touch

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Don’t get me wrong, I don’t advocate dirty play, but I do like a dirty player. OK dirty is the wrong word, I like a nasty player. Every good team has one (Fancy messing with Bakkies Botha?). Every team needs one. The enforcer as journos call them, the one you can thump as hard as you like and they just laugh, the one you want on your side and look to when the fists fly. England used to have the ultimate example in Martin Johnson, a man so hard you would fancy his chances if you locked him in a room with a rhino.

Now, all rugby players by definition are tough (well, ok, Charlie Hodgson might be an exception), but not all are hard. For me, your hard man needs to play either blindside flanker or Lock (although the hardest of all, Peter Winterbottom, played 7). Against England, Scotland had both. Nathan Hines and Alistair Strokosch were nasty. They took a limited team by the scruff of the neck and beat them up. Andrew Sheridan is a fearsome man and no coward, but he let Hines get the better of him. Where was the fury, where was the “dog” from England? What has happened to the white orcs on steroids? They are now more like hobbits.

Looking at the current England team, I just don’t see the hard man. Shaw for me has always been overrated at International level. For a man his size he just does not dominate or bully the opposition (the Derek Pringle of rugby?), Borthwick is a fine player but he lacks the cussed psychotic edge of his Bath team mate Danny Grewcock. In the back row the young tyros Croft and Haskell are our best prospects for decades, but they don’t look the type for fisticuffs. Lewis Moody is the nearest we have, but he spends too much time on the physio’s bench.

Looking around the Premiership, there don’t seem to be any obvious candidates. Maybe the likes of Richard Blaze or Jordan Crane will show they have a nasty side to spice up their ability. But until England find another hard man they will always come off second best when a fired-up opposition pack gets nasty.

The top ten best English hard men:

Martin Johnson

Peter Winterbottom

Lawrence Dallaglio

Danny Grewcock

Wade Dooley

Fran Cotton

Dean Richards

Richard Hill (the god-like flanker, not the Bristol coach!)

Graham Dawe

Gareth Chilcott.

  

Some not-so-hard:

Jonathon Webb

Ian Balshaw

Steve Ojomoh

Simon Hodgkinson

Charlie Hodgson

Andy Titteral

Alex Brown

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Tags: england, fight, martin johnson, rugby