No.1 The Front Row
“You eat far too many chips you do!” Ah, those words still ring in my ears like it was only yesterday that my dear mother was berating me for merely perusing the neon-lit menu above the chip shop counter. Admittedly, I was already on my third bag of the evening, so maybe she had a point but she just never understood. You see, the way I chose to fuel my young appetite, unknown to my mother, was for a reason. My mother never was and has never been a rugby fan, little did she know that I was actually in training for a sporting future. She, like many other mothers across the world, didn’t realise that I was in training for the front row. And to be part of the front row is the greatest honour in the sporting world – for it is they that
run the show.
Now all grown up and still opting for ‘a large’ in that very same chip-shop – this time without my mother - I sometimes wonder if the game has lost its appreciation of the reliable prop and hooker? Okay, so they can only dream of getting that last-minute breakaway try and we will always see them at training attempting to remake that classic drop-goal moment in their bruised and confused heads. But surely the engine room of the scrum should be given the credit it is due. Is it too old school theory now that our not-so-chiselled-jawed chums can tire the opposition forwards and win a game by good ol’ scrummaging alone?
Similar to a potato – dirty, bruised and an odd shape, the front row may never have the glamorous appeal you would associate with duck a l’orange, nor would they look good with Lobster on a bed of honey-drizzled rocket leaves but, if hungry, the common potato will get the job done. You may never see numbers 1, 2 or 3 skip passed and run over that solo effort match-winning try. Nor will you see them having the looks suitable for the skintight jerseys that are now so popular but, by the beard of Zeus, they will get the job done that they were built for by the good grace of God.
So before you remark at the overhang of the front-row belly or slyly comment on the angular nose and lack of teeth, spend a moment to think about the work of the front row. And as that match-winning 50-yard sprint by the winger happens, remember, it had to come out of somewhere. And my money would be on the reliable greasy chip-eating hands of shirt number 1, 2 or 3.
Right, where did I put that Mars Bar?
Jonathan Stickler
