Quote ="Ferocious Aardvark"Kinda my point, the old style forwards needed to be very heavy and fookin hard as nails. Like William Perry "The Fridge", they had no need of speed or endurance. The job they used to do has almost entirely disappeared, that's why you can't really make a fair comparison of forwards especially props.
Mind you, the excellent Ian van Bellen on occasion did show a surprising turn of foot, even if they did have to train him by putting hot pies on a table at the top of the infamous steps.'"
I think that's true enough, though it should be remembered that most props, maybe especially 'back in the day', started life in the second row where they did need a little bit of speed, so maybe a little residual pace was left.
There was the story, true or not I don't know, but I suspect it may have been, of the coach who told his props that, if they got their name in the paper for anything in open play, they would be dropped next week as he, the coach, expected ALL their effort to be spent winning the ball in the scrum. Different game, different planet!
