Grizzly discovery: The four men vying to be Eddie's 'boss bear' at the World Cup

Coaches throw out so many metaphors that some are intercepted.

An eighthman I was, more than any other role in rugby, and the coach I loved and loathed the most gave me two big pictures in one season about that key position.

“Be a bear,” he growled, pipe clenched in teeth on the velvet green pitch on a dewy Saturday morning as the parents filed into the grandstand for the hundredth playing of the oldest derby in the Cape. “Be our bear,” he reiterated.

He always said things twice but with a twist. Then he walked away, trailing that sweet smell of sadistic smoke. And a bear I was from the base and the back that day, going for the honey, the bees, the comb and all the larvae, keeping the referee busy with admonitions.

A decade later I was in an interview. “If you were an animal, what would you be?” inquired the lawyer devoid of irony. When I picked a bear, he put on a thoughtful face and asked me why. I did not say the Russians, who know about bears, call the beast a ‘medved’ meaning master of honey. Instead: “They live in the most beautiful places, nobody messes with them, and they eat a healthy diet.”

He wrote my answer down. I never heard back from them. Presumably they worried about my tendency to hibernate and emerge from slumber ready to kill.

I do love being a bear. It is the mammal I am most compared with by friend and foe: bulky with small round ears, stocky legs, sticky paws, heavy build, a hairy torso, awkward gait, deceptively quick, a massive skull with a big and warped brain, and a bit of an affectionate outlaw.

Recently, we have learned grizzly and black bears can outrun Usain Bolt (topping out at 56 kmh), take selfies, use tools, have cognition equal to the great apes and curiosity equal to an elephant, can outsmell a bloodhound, open screw top jars, manipulate door latches, operate touchscreen computers better than gorillas, distinguishing colour images, and polar bears can count up to about 20. All of this defies earlier theories about solitary animals being duller than social ones.

But I believe my late coach was referring more to playing big and winning space.

Which brings us to his other metaphor about playing number eight: “See the map.” Puff, puff, on the pipe, looking into me. Wait for the second verse: “Be the map.”

Harry Wilson of the Reds celebrates scoring a try during the round 1 Super Rugby AU match between the Queensland Reds and the New South Wales Waratahs at Suncorp Stadium on July 03, 2020 in Brisbane, Australia. (Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)

This one made me think harder. Seeing the game accurately as you play it, from above, as if you are in the box whilst down in the trenches, is a trick indeed. Two minds.

In the scrum, the archetype which grows rarer as the game evolves into a more suburban sport but still defines our position numbers, the eight is an isthmus. At the back of the lineout, a peninsula. On the restart, a cartographer. In general play: a robust all-terrain jeep with an infallible compass.

The best eights did and do seem to see the globe, the whole, the direction, true North.

In Dublin last year, the Irish having been shut down on the right half of the field, with a solitary half-break all match and only the Springboks’ lack of a goalkicker tipping the balance, it was the clever bear Caelan Doris, scooping the ball into his hand like a honeycomb, as he fell through and out of the ruck, who won enough space to finally score.

Kieran Read’s offloads in the tram for a decade of the best version of the All Blacks broke hearts and scoreboards; he always looked like he could find and hide the ball, keep the perfect level of beard growth, fool you into thinking he was nice and maybe he was, and always, always win the coin toss.

In 2011, see old Radike Samo sensing a seam right up the middle of the All Black defence, sitting Adam Thomson down, and weaving through wing and fullback on a hirsute pursuit in vain. In the dying moments of a quarterfinal against Wales, burly Duane Vermeulen picked up a ball from the scrum, rumbled, pawed a littler loosie, and flipped the ball behind him to a scooting nine for the win; in contrast to the time he lifted a nine with one hand and piledrove him into the turf.

Think of rugby legends and quickly we see in our minds big athletic number eights: the Roman statues Sergio Parisse and Lawrence Dallaglio, immortal Buck Shelford, fierce Zinzan Brooke, rugged Toutai Kefu, irrepressible Wycliff Palu, tough David Lyons, lanky visionary Morne du Plessis, Hall of Famer Hennie Muller, smooth Taulupe Faletau, freaks Imanol Harinordoquy and Pierre Spies, and Home Nations forces of nature Dean Richards, Scott Quinnell and Mervyn Davies.

The list could go on: Jamie Heaslip, Brian Lochore, Louis Picamole, Pat Lam, Juan Martin Fernandez Lobbe, or Gary Teichmann. The common element? All could play all over the pitch.

If you had to build a team of fifteen from one position, you would go with eight.

Remarkably, the size of elite eights has not shifted as much over the decades as other forwards. Most have been 1.88 to 1.94 metres tall (Samo and CJ Stander being the long and short outliers); most weighed 108 to 120 kg (Doris to Vermeulen the current bookends; Ardie Savea the anomaly) and they usually stay on the pitch.

We have covered the rest of the pack: monks, Neanderthals, monosyllabic singers, mastiffs, towers, bouncers, and bank robbers. Now we will speak of a big bear who can see and be the map; smart vengeance-minded carnivora who hunt rugby honey.

These big marauders switch from attack or defence instantaneously, must be able to tackle anyone (wing or big lock) in space or mud, have vision and make quick decisions with the ball, often as they play soccer with it, in the fragmenting scrum. Also, does anyone look more like a rugby player than an eight?

The number eight position evolved in South Africa in the 1920s. Before World War I, a number of scrum patterns were tried: 3-3-2 or 3-2-3 packs. New Zealand stuck with a ‘diamond’ scrum (2-3-2) with a detachable wing forward who doubled as a kind of second scrum-half.

A three-man front-row was only mandated in 1931. In early days, forwards did not have fixed positions; the first forwards up for a scrum were the first to pack down, although there was usually a designated hooker.

The Aussies and French experimented with fixed places in a 3-2-3 formation; and in 1923, England did so, too. England won the Grand Slam that year, and from then on, the Home Unions had fixed positions. The middle man of the three-man back row was called a ‘lock’.

Down in South Africa, the bitter rivalry between the University of Stellenbosch and the University of Cape Town led to the advent of a number eight.

UCT’s fly-half, Bennie Osler, was hurting Stellenbosch with his tactical kicking. Stellenbosch developed a 3-4-1 pack, so that the wing-forwards flanking the second row could get to Osler faster. Serendipitously, this formation also improved scrum power.

By 1928 the Springboks used the 3-4-1 against the All Blacks. New Zealand, beaten 17-0 in the first Test, and demolished in the scrum, adapted quickly.

The Springboks demonstrated the new scrum formation and back-row tactics to the Home Unions in 1932-33, and in 1933 to Australia (successes for the Boks).

Finding a name for the position took some time. The Home Unions called him a ‘lock’. Australians referred to the position as ‘anchor-man’ or ‘solo-lock’. To the French he was ‘le troisième ligne centre’. South Africans called him the eighthman.

In the South Island of New Zealand, a fashion developed to abbreviate that to number eight, and the All Blacks’ back-row man wore number eight in Tests in Dunedin in 1936 and Christchurch in 1937. When post-war Tests resumed in 1946, New Zealand regularly numbered their back-row man in the eight jersey.

Who are the alpha eights in world rugby?

France’s Greg Alldritt, Ireland’s Doris, South Africa’s blunt force trauma bear Jasper Wiese and New Zealand’s leg drive grizzly Ardie Savea crash into each other in a quarterfinal doubleheader for the ages.

(Photo By Seb Daly/Sportsfile via Getty Images)

All have a claim to be the boss bear.

Savea was unlucky not to be World Player of the Year in 2022, carrying the All Blacks on his back for stretches of a rocky season. Not a classic eight, as he struggles to get over 100 kg, but his dynamism is off the charts. He has scored 20 tries for the All Blacks in 70 Tests and owns a key trait for an eight: he stays alive in the tackle.

Wiese has been the best number eight in the Premiership for a few seasons, but this year may his best for its balance. He has eradicated the cards and unnecessary penalties. He is the third busiest carrier (just behind fellow eights Ruan Ackermann at 243 carries and big Billy Vunipola with 215), but has beaten 46 defenders (basically, he bumps off one in four would-be tacklers), scored some of the best tries of the season, and is the No. 8 in the official Team of the League.

If each of these Southern bears stay healthy, they will tussle with either Doris and Alldritt, the fates willing.

Doris is rising in leaps and bounds. Doris and the great Faletau played the same number of minutes (331) in the last Six Nations. Both in heavy traffic against the same characters, Doris averaged 5.1 metres on 54 carries; Faletau 4.2 metres. Doris broke 7 tackles; Faletau 4. As tacklers, Doris was the best: 88 percent and ten tackles a match. On all important turnovers, Doris had a 5:2 ratio (gained to conceded), the best eight in the competition. He also won 7 lineouts, stole one, and was only pinged twice and made just one knock on in 71 touches.

Unfair it may be to focus on one player in a struggling team, a No. 8 is part of the proverbial ‘spine’ of a team and England’s Alex Dombrandt did not use his 1.91 m, 120 kg frame nearly as well in 330 minutes of play. He touched the ball 22 times less than Faletau, made seven fewer offloads, knocked on six times, was a poor 3:8 on turnovers won and lost, won one lineout ball, and was fended easily by a wing en route to a try in the Calcutta Cup, unacceptable for a number eight, but okay for a Panda.

Alldritt did not have the minutes of the other eights due to injury, but in his 285 minutes, passed the most, broke the most tackles, tackled the best, and was invisible to referees. He is calm in a match, seldom has a bad involvement, and is a large part of why France is no longer neurotic. When he is out, the French struggle.

Whether it is blunt bear Wiese versus leg drive Savea or Arctic cool Alldritt facing predator Doris or some other matchup, these contests will be crucial come mid-October.

What of the kids’ side of the draw? Canny card players Eddie Jones, Michael Cheika, Steve Borthwick, and Warren Gatland may not have had as much time with their teams as the Big Four, but are daydreaming of the semifinals, as well.

Wales is set with the great, even if declining Faletau, and Argentina have three or four Pumas who can play number eight at a very high level (Pablo Matera is one of the very best loose forwards of this era). But England and Australia are finding their bears.

Who might be Eddie’s grizzly?

Harry ‘Big Boy Pants’ Wilson is a workhorse. The highest volume carrier in Super Rugby Pacific for two consecutive years, he may not combine or connect as well as he locks his locks and carries to exhaustion.

Rob Valetini is the most misspelled Wallaby and plays blindside for the Brumbies more than at eight but showed in 2022 how much of a Test mammal he is, bustling through rough Rugby Championship tacklers and using his 1.93 m, 113 kg frame to free the ball in contact.

Both can be a primary ball carrier, which is what Jones tends to want from his eights (Billy Vunipola was first on his team sheet for years, almost solely for abrasive carries). Langi Gleeson might be the most Vunipola-like of the lot. If Jones wants a number eight to hang back in open play to field punts and stay within one or two passes of the ball as if magnetically drawn, Samu or Uru might be the ticket, but whoever it is, they must look to get his hands on the ball more than any other forward. A Test 8 cannot fade or rest; they own a vital role supporting their teammates in the heat of battle, full of lively support play, tackling and carrying and relishing big contact.

He may not be on the Test radar, but Tim Anstee strikes me as a No 8 type, along with Richard Hardwick of the Rebels (and Namibia). Neither can leapfrog the big bears.

Wilson, Valetini, Samu and Gleeson: which bear is on Eddie’s map?