Eddie Butler Rugby World Cup
The round-figure mathematics of fame. It is easy to call John Eales the best player of the Nineties because his career fits so neatly into this decade. He obviously has better icon value than, say, David Campese because Campo straddled the Eighties and the Nineties. So untidy.
Besides, Campo was always … difficult. To be enigmatic is fine as long as there’s a twinkle in the eye, but a wing with acid to his tongue is like a prop who reads poetry; somebody best left with a seat to himself on the team bus.
Anyway, this is not about the wonder- wacky wing who thinks that rugby is now bone-headed, but about a second row who began his international career in 1991 – who plays the United States this week after returning for the Wallabies World Cup campaign opener against Romania only two weeks ago – and who is universally held to be such a good egg and such a good player that he goes by the sobriquet “Nobody”. As in “Nobody’s Perfect”.
Second row, remarkably, has become a glamour position, but back in the days leading up to the second World Cup of 1991, it was still an esoteric delight. Wade Dooley and Paul Ackford were “magnificent” because the mass of which they were a part – the England pack – ate all before it magnificently. But, in truth, nobody really knew what they did, how they applied their long levers or why opponents kept sliding to the ground.
Second rows had their moments in the sun. Alastair McHarg of Scotland used to infuriate and delight in equal measures as he popped up in outrageous positions for Scotland. Alain Lorieux of France, who had never before hinted at stardom and who immediately afterwards went back into obscurity, was one of the stars of the 1987 World Cup.
And down more traditional lines had come Colin Meads, legend of the All Blacks, Willie John McBride who won the Lions series in New Zealand and South Africa, and Bill Beaumont, cuddly Grand Slam captain of England.
But they were still palpably bound to their second row; experts certainly but only at donkey work. Ian Jones of New Zealand began to reinvent the role when he first appeared for the All Blacks in 1990; a lock who was a little leaner and a touch more athletic, but he was then only a junior member then of the All Black pack.
Eales rewrote the manual. In 1991 he was 21 but immediately began to do things from the engine room that had never been done before. It was his tackle on Rob Andrew in the final that prevented England winning the World Cup.
He was everywhere. His hands were soft and safe, and yet even then it was clear that he was robust enough to survive the, er, levers of excess. He performed the basics at scrum and line-out, so that first-phase possession in that final was evenly split. England dominated in the loose; Eales provided a new tier of defence. Four years before the game went professional, it was a glimpse of what might one day be possible.
By some strange twist of fate – or at least of the rotator cuff in his shoulder – Eales has missed most of 1999, the year in which Scott Murray, Chris Wyatt, Craig Quinnell, Martin Johnson, Tim Rodber and then Danny Grewcock have successfully played catch-up with the standard set eight years ago.
But even the new breed can’t replicate the full portfolio. Just to keep himself ahead of the game, before he took his break through injury, Eales added goal-kicking to his array of talents. If Wales meet Australia in the Millennium Stadium it will not be the younger Quinnell brother who calmly slots a penalty from 40m to take his team through to the semi-finals. Eales may well.
In fact, while he’s been away he’s probably been rehearsing the next phase of his one-donkey revolution. Something like a drop-goal technique. Not of the Zinzan Brooke type, but something novel; possibly from the middle of the scrum, or from the top of his boosted jump at the line-out.
But after eight months out, will he still be the same player? Rugby has discovered progress with a vengeance. As Campese has noted, it’s an entirely hard- nosed, hard- centred, hard-boiled game out there now. Well, here’s to the rediscovery of a soft spot. Amid gnarled old throwbacks and hybrid young hard- hitters, timeless class will shine.
But when Eales misses with a drop kick from the top of his line-out jump, it will be because Nobody understands that nowhere’s perfect.
ENDS
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