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For the first time in over twelve years, there is a vacancy in the middle of the Australian front row.
Veteran starter and former Wallaby captain Stephen Moore has finally waved goodbye and disappeared over the horizon, with a remarkable haul of 129 Test caps streaming in his wake. Moore has been one of the finest adverts for Australian rugby, both on and off the field, since he began playing for the Wallabies back in 2005.
Meanwhile, his replacement, 85-cap Tatafu Polota-Nau, has moved to the Leicester Tigers in the UK in the twilight of his playing career. Polota-Nau’s services were apparently not required by any of the remaining Super Rugby franchises after the Western Force were wound up.
Although he still aspires to continue playing until 2019, and will be eligible under the current rules for World Cup selection, there must now be considerable doubt whether ‘Taf’ will ever get there.
“I guess you’ve got to take it year by year, because the body’s not agreeing with me,” he commented ruefully.
Both Moore and Polota-Nau began their Test careers back in the same year (2005) and between them have locked up the Wallaby hooking spot for as long as anyone can remember.
The only other Australian hookers with any significant Test experience – James ‘Chibba’ Hanson and Saia Fainga’a – have also emigrated to the English Premiership (to Gloucester and London Irish respectively), so all of a sudden the cupboard is bare.
(Photo by Dan Mullan/Getty Images)
Historically, Australia’s golden periods of success on the rugby field have tended to coincide with the selection of big, physically dominant hookers.
The first was Tom Lawton junior, back in 1984. The junior qualification is important, because Tom’s grandfather was an outstanding Wallaby of a previous era.
Tom senior excelled at a whole spectrum of sports, ranging from rowing to tennis, at Brisbane Grammar School from 1913-1917. He caught the tail end of World War I as an artillery gunner in France in 1918, before earning a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford University and representing the varsity at five different sports.
He was a Wallaby for twelve years from 1920-1932 and enjoyed the distinction of captaining the only Wallaby team to have inflicted a series whitewash on the touring All Blacks, by 3-0 back in 1929. Tom senior was inducted into the Australian Rugby Union Hall of Fame in 2007.
He also came back to live with the family in his final years. As Lawton recalls,
“For about three years until he passed away, he’d tell great stories about the ‘adventure’ of rugby. Not so much the game, but the camaraderie and the places he saw and the people he met. He painted a great picture of the culture of the game.”
Although Tom junior came from playing nowhere, catapulting from the Souths ‘Magpies’ first XV into Alan Jones’ Wallaby Grand Slam-winning side of 1984, he did not suddenly appear from a cultural outback. Rugby’s spirit was already in the family, and it was in the family at the highest level.
Lawton was a massive 5’11, 118-kilo block of power who dwarfed his props, ‘Topo’ Rodriguez and Andrew MacIntyre. But with the benefit of the technical input from Rodriguez and scrum guru Phil Keith-Roach, and an impromptu coaching session from Ireland’s Phil Orr in the Lansdowne club lounge – “we ended up packing scrums in the bar… Phil showed us tips in terms of binding and the like, it was incredibly valuable” – the Wallaby scrum achieved the unthinkable, pushing the Wales pack back over its own line in front of its own people:
When Bob Dwyer replaced Alan Jones as coach of the national side in 1988, he made it clear that Tom Lawton’s services were no longer required. In his search for the new Australian rake, he hit upon a reserve grader at the Randwick club, Phil Kearns.
Kearns was backing up the first team hooker at the time, one Eddie Jones. Kearns had Test-match size and physicality and his rival didn’t – Kearns was 110 kilos, Jones only weighed 80. Along with unknown loose-head prop Tony Daly, he was projected straight into a series against the All Blacks and Sean Fitzpatrick.
‘Fitzy’ duly gave it to Kearns with both barrels: ”What are you doing here? You’re a reserve grader, go home to Mummy!”
But at a lineout close the New Zealand goal-line, a Fitzpatrick throw went astray and Kearns reacted first, falling on the ball to score. Kearns reinforced his point by giving Fitzy the two-fingered salute – or respectfully requesting “two sausages at tonight’s barbecue, please”, as he said afterwards:
Australia won the game in Wellington by 21 points to 9, and Kearns went on to participate in three successive World Cups, becoming a dual World Cup winner in 1991 and 1999.
Big hookers with a broad skill set have become marquee players in the modern game. They have to be as big as a prop and just as proficient in the scrums, and they have to be able to throw in at the lineout. Frequently they are expected to be big defenders over the tackle ball (like Malcolm Marx, Bismarck du Plessis and Agustin Creevy), effective ball-carriers (Marx and Creevy), and in New Zealand attacking patterns, good passers and off-loaders, able to play with the backs in the wide channels (Dane Coles).
(AP Photo/SNPA, Ross Setford)
So who is ‘the next big thing’ in Australian rugby? On the limited evidence available during the 2017 Rugby Championship, it just may be the Rebels’ Jordan Uelese.
Uelese is big – at 122 kilos, bigger than Lawton, bigger than Kearns, bigger than Moore and Polota-Nau, and bigger than many props in international rugby. Like Lawton and Kearns, in 2017 he ‘sprang from nowhere’ in professional terms to play the rough equivalent of a half of rugby off the bench in the Rugby Championship. With no worthwhile Super Rugby experience under his belt, he transitioned straight from the Australian under-20s to the full national team.
What we can say with certainty is that he has the physical and athletic tools for the job.
Let’s take a look at Jordan Uelese in the scrums:
South Africa, with two of their strongest scrummagers, Steven Kitshoff and Marx, in the front rank, are attacking with their favourite manoeuvre, shifting their tighthead (Trevor Nyakane) inside while Marx and Kitshoff slide out on to and around Australian number three Allan Alaalatoa.
One of the keys to resisting this kind of pressure is for the defending hooker to be able to neutralise the tighthead who is moving across the gap on to him. In this instance, Uelese is holding the Wallaby front row together by successfully opposing Nyakane. The scrum wavers, then consolidates, and that is down to Uelese’s strength.
Of the two set-pieces, it appears that the lineout may present more of an issue in Uelese’s development:
This was Uelese’s first throw in international rugby, so allowances for the pressure have to be made! However, there are some technical issues which will need to be addressed by the Wallaby coaches. The ball is thrown out of the palm and the fingers do not remain in contact with the ball for as long as possible at the end. There is no relaxed long finish to the delivery and the arms are pulled down immediately, resulting in a ‘hook’ instead of a ‘draw’ or a straight hit.
There is little doubt on the other hand that Uelese will be a huge asset on both sides of the breakdown:
In the first instance, Uelese has to drop in behind Michael Hooper from a restart to clean out opponents who have all the momentum in contact – big units like Lood de Jager and Eben Etzebeth among them. Although the cards are stacked in the Springboks’ favour, Uelese is able to stand firm, resist the pressure and present a solid ball for his scrum-half.
In the second, he cleans out Agustin Creevy one-on-one with minimal fuss, at a moment when Creevy has decent position over the tackle ball on the ground. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Creevy looks properly stung by the force of the impact!
In the same game, Uelese also flashed a glimpse of his ability on the other side of the tackle ball:
According to my own stats, all of Uelese’s eight carries against South Africa and Argentina were positive, resulting in go-forward yardage. This one against the Pumas penetrated the crease between two forward tacklers and set up an easy exit for the Wallabies:
Summary
Periods of Wallaby success in the international game have often coincided with the presence of an outstanding (and more often than not outstandingly large) hooker pinning the tight five together.
At the elite level of the modern game, there are very few hookers who can get away with a playing weight below 108 kilos – even a footballer as good as Dane Coles was required to bulk up by New Zealand scrum guru Mike Cron to deliver the right amount of impact at the set-piece.
The bigger, the better – and they do not come much bigger than the Rebels’ Jordan Uelese. Uelese will have a shot at a breakout season in 2018, following in the footsteps of Tom Lawton and Phil Kearns and shooting from club/provincial level to Test rugby like a bolt from the blue.
The Reds’ Andrew Ready and the Waratahs’ Tolu Latu will have something to say about that, as indeed may Tatafu Polota-Nau if he can persuade his body to endure the rigours of top-flight rugby for one more year. It is a scenario full of historical portent, even if the landscape has changed.