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Now, the thirteen. Baryshnikov with a Kalashnikov.
But first, a Russian tale.
We were in a bar on Long Street in the early Eighties. Our left centre, Patrick, was just as hesitant to talk to girls as he was to tackle a boy in a game. He looked like a half size of black-haired blue-eyed Donncha O’Callaghan: as Irish as a pint of the black stuff. He could grow a beard in less than eight hours, but he turned into a blushing baby around girls.
Nobody was funnier in our team; he swore like sweet music until confronted by the fairer sex on the dance floor. Then he was as shy as a wren in the hedgerow.
Strategically located, politically isolated, and deep ported Cape Town in 1980 played a small part in the Cold War with the Soviets. We had drills in school to simulate a Russian invasion from the Seychelles. They never came.
That night I tired of Patrick being marooned in the Tavern of the Seas.
“Paddy! Who in this bar is the one you want the most?”
He looked around the packed place and pointed out a woman who could have launched ten thousand ships.
I walked over to her and her friend. We established their names. Then I made my move on behalf of the timid expatriate from Kilkenny.
“Do you see that guy over there? He’s Russian! He’s a ballet dancer. He defected!” I bellowed over the music. “Tonight is his last night in Cape Town! They taking him to Washington tomorrow, hey!”
They seemed impressed and credulous so I pressed home. Sheenagh looked so interested I almost changed my plan, but I had launched my attack for my friend. I continued my Russian offensive.
“He told me he has never in his life seen a woman as beautiful as you. He told me he has never danced the rock and roll music. Only that classical stuff, hey? He told me he will die happy if he can dance one time with you to the next song.”
They conferred. “What’s his name?”
“Boris” I shouted in her ear as I cleared a path back to my boys.
I had just enough time to tell Paddy his name was Boris and that he was Russian before Sheenagh asked him what his name was. In a stroke of genius, Paddy did not speak it. He wrote it on a bar serviette with a backwards R. I pushed all three of them on to the dance floor as Mick Jagger started us up and before we began to gyrate, I whispered in Paddy’s ear: “You a ballet dancer, son. Be bloody Baryshnikov, bru!”
The next few minutes of my life will always be one of the funniest sights to recall: all any of us has to do on WhatsApp is say the code words “Boris” or “Baryshnikov” and we are back in that magical moment with Patrick’s mad interpretation of a Bolshoi rock dance, spiced with little leaps and hands aloft, head banging tipsy pirouettes and a proto-plié, daftly smiling at a girl far out of his league, and Sheenagh smiling back at him and telling her friend how cute the Russian boy was, with none of us knowing where to go next in the charade. But for one song and maybe the next, he looked Russian.
He was the Baryshnikov of Long Street; a silent, smiling defector.
Mikhail Baryshnikov was the preeminent male classical dancer of that era, defecting to Canada in 1974 because all the innovation in dance was happening in the West: he went on to be the best known and most celebrated male ballet star in the world, taking the mantle of fellow Rudolf Nureyev, whose defection to France in 1961 had shocked Moscow to the core.
If Baryshnikov was seen as the perfect technician who fused Russian folk dance with modern movements into the old classics, massive-thighed Nureyev had been seen as the pure natural beast of ballet “a 21 out of 20” and “a TGV” (or high speed train).
If Baryshnikov was the Brian O’Driscoll of ballet, perhaps Gael Fickou and Lukhanyo Am are due’lling to be the Nureyev.
Irish star Garry Ringrose dances through the midfield like he is the Blackrock Beastie Boy on the craic.
There is no Test position more difficult to fill than a proper thirteen: just as finding a principal ballerino, the danseur of the troupe, is notoriously hard in most countries.
To understand the ballet metaphor better, I spoke with my friend Naomi, who danced at the highest levels in Israel and also toted a gun for the IDF.
She told me how cold it is on the stage, how you talk to your male partner all the time through clenched smiles, how you have to flex to be easier for him to lift, because to lift a moving body above your head whilst dancing yourself, and make it look easy, is no joke. “If you dance, you will get hurt,” she promised, and it was an Achilles en pointe which blew out her elite career in ballet.
Dancers suffer a mean of 6.8 injuries per year with male ballet dancers injuring their shoulders, patellas and Achilles injuries from the lifts and jumps.
Who would don these tights?
Ballet has a beloved role in Russian life: it is not difficult to recruit strong and graceful boys to join the tens of thousands who compete for the hundred or so spots in the top companies. Just as the great game of chess has a place in the deep heart of Mother Russia, with a glut of grandmasters from the Arals to Siberia, they love the explosively technical sporting art of ballet.
As I pondered the role of the thirteen, the outside man, the whalebone of the umbrella defence, the wait in the rush, the fold of the sheet, it came to me: this edgy centre is a a full metal jacket chess playing son of a gun.
He must glide (glissade) in the trams with eyes in the back of his head (epaulement), when he is wrong he must escape (echappe), strike a match on attack (frappe), never drop his partners on either side, melt (fondu) into space by not committing till suddenly he shoots (coupe) or cuts and absolutely folds a bloke. His gambits sacrifice space for time until he can take the piece.
Naomi told me there are moments in a performance when the male lead simply has to nail a leap and nobody can help him and it will only be remembered if he fails or falls.
We can all remember a line break against our team and how our desolate thirteen lay sprawled on the grass, helpless, watching his foe sprint away into bitter glory.
Or, those brilliant times when a cutback was cracked back into oblivion, their ball spilled into our grateful hands.
Those rare but brutal impacts are the Kalashnikov of this rugby chess dance. The AK or ‘Kalash’ was invented by another Mikhail, and there are 72 million in use because they are simple, easy to operate, and can take a beating whilst dishing it out.
It is no overstatement to say a thirteen’s mistakes more often lead directly to tries than any other’s on the pitch. At least the chatty wings are close to a touchie and the fans; a thirteen is on an island, cold under the lights, incommunicado from the pack, and conscious of how much space surrounds him on the rugby steppes.
We are fully into the strongest Australian positions. Len Ikitau is a superb back, who covers the ballet, chess, projectile and durability skill sets with understated ease.
In an era where New Zealand seems to have a better man in every bloody Bledisloe matchup, Ikitau is a more polished thirteen than Rieko Ioane, who overcomes technical deficits with power and speed.
Len Ikitau of Australia runs at Ignacio Brex of Italy during the Autumn International match between Italy and Australia at Stadio Artemio Franchi on November 12, 2022 in Florence, Italy. (Photo by Timothy Rogers/Getty Images)
The top thirteens, and Ikitau is in that company with Am and Fickou, with Ringrose and Ioane knocking at the door, after checking on Manu Tuilagi to see if he is healthy again, would definitely be hard to beat in a dance contest. The languid Am is never flustered, even famously in a World Cup final, Fickou creates scores from thin air and looks like he is ready for the red carpet, Ringrose is like a tap dancer who never taps, and Ioane tracks down opponents like he is working a frozen tree line in some lost borderland with an AK.
Deceptively strong Puma Matias Moroni and just plain strong dragon George North are no slouches either: Ikitau will have his hands full with them, as well as man mountain from Fiji by way of Toulon, Waisea Nayacalevu, or any of the Fijian boys who roll on like a tank on fire.
But many of the best thirteens have not been big men. O’Driscoll and Frank Bunce played low, as did Conrad Smith, who simply did not miss many tackles. Intelligence is a hallmark of the thirteen, and not just rugby IQ. Australia’s great Jason Little, Wales’ John Dawes and Jon Davies, England’s Will Carling, South Africa’s John Gainsford, and New Zealand’s Bruce Robertson multiplied their modest physical gifts with streetsmart awareness.
And then there were big fast boys like Stirling Mortlock and Danie Gerber who broke all arm tackles, as Tuilagi just did in the ominous Premiership final; oh how Eddie Jones loved that thirteen in England.
If the fates allow, we will see Manu or Matias dance with Len in France for a date in a gunfight against one of the best thirteens in a semifinal and then all bets are off and who knows what may happen.
The Wallabies are set at lucky number thirteen. So are others.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.