Disconnect yourself from Google, here’s a quick pop quiz without notice. Who is the leading try-scorer in Super Rugby this season?
For those unaware, I’m banking that the initial candidates that spring to mind are the orthodox try-line dominators. The men who in recent times have commonly nestled in the habitat of the opposition in-goal. The men with double digits on their backs.
Is it Stormer speedster Bryan Habana, the man who has always dotted down like shelling peas? What about Hurricanes retainee Cory Jane, or the rejected Ma’a Nonu? Surely his anger at being shown the door at Wellington has been translated into some five-pointers for the Blues in 2012?
One-eyed Aussie rugby fans would probably have the dynamic Digby Ioane or his fellow Red Dom Shipperley in their thought bubbles, or for the bigger dreamers, would you toss up new Waratah whippet Tom Kingston or baby Brumby Joseph Tomane?
Are any of these contenders at the crest of the try tree?
If you guessed one of the predictable from above, then you have hooked your kick wide. You need to move your sights from the outer thirds of the paddock and start looking further infield.
Leading the list so far in 2012 is the Chiefs’ hulking loosehead prop Arizona Taumalolo, with six eye-pleasing touchdowns.
You better believe it; a barrel-legged scrum brute with a low centre of gravity and a chest the size of a small utility is leading a chasing horde of whippy speedsters and line-running centres to the land beyond the posts.
I know it’s only round six, but pack monsters around the globe are dedicating their seventh helping of mash at dinner tonight to their newest poster boy.
Taumalolo is the latest introduction to the front row brotherhood’s try-scoring hall of fame.
It’s rather bare inside, so it was easy to find him a place on the mantle right next to legendary prop scoreboard-cookers like Kiwi World Cup final hero Tony Woodcock, prolific ACT Brumbies ball-planting merchant Ben Alexander, and one-time runaway Wallaby Greg Holmes.
And he’s got priors for harassing the scoring attendants; he scored Tonga’s only try in their 41-10 loss to the All Blacks at last year’s world championships.
And what’s the big unit’s key to success when it comes to burning a vapor trail across the stripe?
The answer is simple: he’s impossible to stop from half a yard out.
Forget Sonny Bill Williams, Richard Kahui and Lelia Masaga. The Chiefs want the greasy seed in the hands of the prop at the back of a stationary pile of oversized humans 80 centimetres from the promised land.
We may see a revolution in rugby back-line play thanks to this fleeting statistical abnormality.
Picture this: the ball being spun through the hands out wide to a charging winger who snubs the try line in order to hit the turf and create a ruck so the point-scoring whiz from the front row can finalise the pick, drive and plant for points.
Not likely. But at least for this week, the scrum pigs are finally getting their names up in lights.
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