By Bruce Ross -
November 8th 2009 @ 2:28am
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Rugby’s age of the low skinfold giants
In 1991 England’s international rugby forwards and backs weighed, on average, 100 kg and 83 kg respectively. Their counterparts in 2003 weighed 109 kg and 90 kg, according to the England Rugby Injury and Training Audit 2002-04.
By comparison in this year’s Test against the Wallabies the England squad’s average weight had further risen to 113.4 [...]
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(26)
Matt said | November 8th 2009 @ 5:58am | Report comment
..and the bigger boys won? No, it was the nippy Genia who had the last laugh!
Rabbitz said | November 8th 2009 @ 6:10am | Report comment
It seems to me that wrt the Wallabies the search for fitness has been at the expense of skills. Could the “scientific” approach to selection and training has miss an intangible- Rugby ability?
Or, just maybe the piggies are supposed to be carrying a few % more fat? It seems the old fashioned way was more effective…
Lee said | November 8th 2009 @ 6:34am | Report comment
You would hope that players are selected on skill first as it is more possible to bulk a player up than it is to teach someone certain skills properly – look at the Canterbury backline from last who won the Air NZ cup, none of them were huge but all very skillfull.
Unfortunately I don’t think this happens to often, especially amongst the forwards.
Pippinu said | November 8th 2009 @ 7:42am | Report comment
This seems a very natural development – coaches and recruitment staff will seek to have their cake and eat it too (in terms of hte trade off between size/strength/athleticism and skill) – because clearly, if modern players have both sets covered, then they are way ahead of players from just one generation ago.
Spiro Zavos said | November 8th 2009 @ 8:32am | Report comment
I think that the bigger players in rugby union get on average, the more room there is for the smaller, tough, skilful player. Will
Genia was man of the match for the Australia-England Test and he was one of the smallest players on the field. The same applies to Jonny Wilkinson who was magnificent and if England had won would surely have been the man of the match.
The thing about rugby is that it is still a game for all the bodies types. You need the taller timber, the squat props, the aerobicly strong and big flankers and so on.
In this regard the relatively tubby Benn Robinson was one of the Wallabies best, not only in the scrums but in the loose where he made breaks and won more turnover ball than George Smith.
CraigB said | November 8th 2009 @ 8:41am | Report comment
there was no way the english front row had low skin folds, soft pie eaters all of them.
pothale said | November 8th 2009 @ 10:05am | Report comment
Talking of big and small, looks like KO picked the right match to go and watch an Englishman.
England’s David Haye beat the Russian Goliath giant, Valuev, in Germany this evening, to take the WBA World Heavyweight title.
Robbo said | November 8th 2009 @ 11:39am | Report comment
and the man of the match was – Will Genia. At 174cm and 84kg he was the smallest player on the field. Go figure. Meanwhile Matt Banahan (the winger who at 201cm and 115kg looked a lot more like a lock forward) seemed to be one of England’s worst.
Knives Out said | November 9th 2009 @ 5:36am | Report comment
He was a lock forward until a few seasons ago, Robbo.
Bruce Ross said | November 9th 2009 @ 5:52am | Report comment
And the man who carried three Poms at least 10 metres to score the Wallabies’ second try was the 98 kg Adam Ashley-Cooper, demonstrating that the combination of size, strength and speed can provide an advantage.
Knives Out said | November 9th 2009 @ 6:15am | Report comment
A fantastically dynamic athlete. Genia is another powerhouse. I can only conclude that it comes down to the shorter SH season.
pothale said | November 9th 2009 @ 6:56am | Report comment
No, no, no. It’s the ELVs and the sanctions free kicks.
It must be.
Parisien said | November 9th 2009 @ 7:02am | Report comment
Or the beer they drink? Just kidding!!!!!!!
Robbo said | November 9th 2009 @ 1:56pm | Report comment
Bruce – I’m not saying that size isn’t important. But, all other things being equal, picking a big player for the sole reason that he is big (which is what England seemed to do with Banahan) is plain stupidity.
I hope Banahan is still playing come the Six Nations – the 5′6 Shane Williams will run rings around him.
Bruce Ross said | November 9th 2009 @ 3:03pm | Report comment
We are in total agreement, Robbo.
Bruce Ross said | November 8th 2009 @ 11:48am | Report comment
Actually, Spiro, Genia’s published body weight was 85 kg and Wilkinson’s 88 kg. The smallest man to start was England’s halfback, Danny Clare at 84 kg. Their replacement half, Paul Hodgson, was 78 kg while James O’Connor, who didn’t get on, was 80 kg.
A decade or so ago an 85 kg halfback would certainly not have been regarded as small.
You correctly state that rugby “is still a game for all the bodies types.’ I have often heard your fellow journo, Peter Fitzsimons, express the same sentiments as “rugby is a sport that caters for all shapes and sizes.” Easy to say when you are 195 cm with a playing weight around 120 kg.
Craig, I agree with you that “there was no way the english front row had low skin folds.” But I would bet that 18 years they would have weighed at least 10 kg less but would have required over-size calipers to measure their skinfolds.
Danny said | November 8th 2009 @ 12:13pm | Report comment
Interesting facts Bruce,
No doubt we have seen the professional era allow players to train to be bigger. I thought the English front row had been on the Beer and Kebab diet. They were huge men and did not have the same involvements of the aust front row in general play. Basic physics will tell you that the bigger-faster stronger guy will always win the contact. There is a place for the smaller agile guys, but power to weight and ability to survive the contact component of the game is something i see as the key element still moving forward. You will find Johnny Wilkonson defines my thoughts. Yes he is smaller at 88kg. But is one of the most gifted athletes in world rugby i am led to believe.
adam said | November 8th 2009 @ 7:51pm | Report comment
whats a low skinfold ?
Tifosi FC said | November 8th 2009 @ 9:38pm | Report comment
adam. A skinfold test is used to determine ones bodyfat percentage. Low skinfold = low bodyfat.
The problem is though its the bigger stick theory. As one team gets larger the others feel they must get larger and the cycle goes on until one day everyone playing is 150 kg !! Maybe they should have a body weight cap?
I remember campo in his biography mentioning that between one world cup to the next he had put on 10kg because the trainers told him to, but he felt that it slowed him down. So sometimes size isnt everything !!
Bruce Ross said | November 8th 2009 @ 9:41pm | Report comment
It is an indicator of the proportion of fat in a person’s body mass, Adam.
The tester pinches the skin at a site such as the side of the abdomen and pulls the fold of skin away from the underlying muscle so only the skin and fat tissue is being held. Calipers are then used to measure the skinfold thickness. Typically measurements are taken at a number of positions on the body and these are then entered into an equation which gives a skinfold number or ranking.
It is a useful and convenient form of measurement, particularly for athletes who may have a large density of muscle in their body composition. Simply comparing their body weight to their height may suggest that they are unfit, as in the case of the English front rowers who I would suggest would be much fitter and have a lower proportion of body fat than their predecessors from the amateur era.
Parisien said | November 9th 2009 @ 7:09am | Report comment
I think that Simon Shaw was recently in the UK press warning English rugby not to get obsessed with “qym bunnies” at the expense of skill, speed, explosiveness etc. I was somewhat surprised by the comments coming from him as he had been part of the 2003 squad and those players were all very big and muscular. Robinson and JW excepted. Shaw had both size and skill.
Andrew Sutherland said | November 9th 2009 @ 1:35pm | Report comment
The professional era of all football codes has produced faster, stronger, heavier players who make the replays of the 1980’s look like schoolboy carnivals. However I don’t think the increase in weight has been all planned. Between games they pump weights because they’ve got NOTHING TO DO.
During the NRL Grand Final week both teams were doing weight sessions! They could have been light, recovery-based, or to maintain regularity in training but I can’t imagine a player getting anything from lifting heavy weights 5 days before the last and most important game of the season – except soreness, fatigue and lactic acid build up.
And let us not forget mental weight. Cadel Evans said he knew he didn’t have the strongest team but he did know that he could suffer more pain for longer periods than his opponents.
However as you mentioned Bruce, a light weight body, however tough its owner, will struggle to survive brutal impacts over an extended period.
Rah Rah Rasputin said | November 9th 2009 @ 3:14pm | Report comment
The strength of some of these young players is just amazing to. I’ve read that Pocock can bench 170 kg and Digby Ione 160 kg, and I think I’ve read that Will Genia is has fantastic power to weight ratio. On Saturday he never looked out of his depth in contact, whether cleaning out at the ruck or running with the ball.
The increase in weight/ size of the players is just part in parcel of the game going professional.
Rah Rah Rasputin said | November 9th 2009 @ 3:15pm | Report comment
The strength of some of these young players is just amazing to. I’ve read that Pocock can bench 170 kg and Digby Ione 160 kg, and I think I’ve read that Will Genia is has fantastic power to weight ratio. On Saturday he never looked out of his depth in contact, whether cleaning out at the ruck or running with the ball.
The increase in weight/ size of the players is just part in parcel of the game going professional. I doubt we will see similar increases over the next ten years.
Vented Relief said | November 9th 2009 @ 7:22pm | Report comment
Of interest Bruce, in 1892, the QLD forward pack had an average weight of 80kg/person. You’d barely get an u15s team having a forward pack that light!
Bruce Ross said | November 9th 2009 @ 9:26pm | Report comment
That’s an extraordinary stat, Vented. An increase of about 40% in around 120 years! Some of that could be attributed to better nutrition; some more to changes in the gene pool from the migration of the post-WW2 years; and the remainder to modern training methods.
Looking at the height of soldiers from WW1, there would have also been very substantial gains in players’ heights, with better nutrition and the effects of migration perhaps the causal factors.