ronk wrote:Underage rugby is like that, if you have one overdeveloped athletic monster will ball skills, you put him at 8.
The best and fittest players are usually backrows. If they're fast they get converted to backs, if they're very strong, love contact and a little bit shorter they become looseheads or hookers.
Tightheads are more usually guys with less athletic body shapes who pick up good training habits later.
Natural props usually have to get in shape to become good. Converted props were always lean but have to add heft.
Natural props who start looking after themselves early can stand out at lower levels and either kick on or be caught up on. We're starting to see a little more of that.
Tracking progress of young prospects should factor the different arcs of different types of props.
I think hooker is as interesting a position there is to analyse, because there are a lot of different prototypes.
John Smit was physically a massive man, a guy bigger than most props at 188cm [6'2"] and 122-123kg [19st2-5lbs]. He was the best set-piece hooker I've ever seen ... a good enough scrummager to play tighthead in a Lions series, as reliable a thrower as I've seen [and part of the best lineout of the pro era] and a guy who had remarkable composure and leadership abilities.
Then you have Bismarck du Plessis, who in my opinion is the most physically impressive athlete to play the position in recent times ... and not just a physical freak, but a guy who was incredibly destructive on the pitch, especially at the breakdown. He was able to make other international forwards look like schoolboys pretty often when it came to taking the ball away from them or bossing collisions. He could play too. In boxing terms, he was like Roberto Duran ... a naturally aggressive brawler who could box. He was a really accomplished thrower off the touchline – who looked like he was throwing a size 4 ball, because his mitts were so big – but he could pretty much do it all [like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5dllIZt2nQ ]. He couldn't match Smit as a leader, but was an inspirational player in his own right.
Steve Thompson [IRB nominee in 2003] was a sort of hybrid of Smit and du Plessis – a physically massive man, very strong, not as good a set piece player as Smit or as destructive as Bismarck, but a guy who had a huge edge as a ball carrier, extremely quick off the mark for such a big man and an attitude that was happy for confrontation for 80 minutes+.
Dane Coles is a very different player to any of them, a much smaller guy, but a hooker cut from the same mould as Keith Wood – a guy who can handle the tight stuff at the highest level of test rugby, but who has made his mark as a superb footballer in open play and excels with the ball in hand. He can handle with the same ability as a competent test centre, he's got excellent pace off the mark, a big side step and understands how to use space. Agustin Creevy isn't as pacy as Coles, but combines some of his open game with the physical aggression and the ferocious breakdown abilities of Bismarck.
Keven Mealamu started his career a little like that, but became more and more nuggety and Rory Best-like as his career progressed. Best is not a massive man like Thompson or Smit, he's not a broken play superstar like Schalk Brits, he's not an aggressive, dominant physical specimen like Bismarck, but he's a guy who gets through a huge amount of work in really physical engagements, who can handle the ball well, and who is mentally indomitable and incredibly tough. I'd say the same thing about Raphael Ibanez.
Those guys [and Ledesma] are the best hookers of the last decade – in my opinion – and there's a lot of variance there. Mealamu was a New Zealand Schools flanker before switching to hooker, Thompson was a No8 before McGeechan convinced him to switch to the front row, Creevy played test rugby as an openside and Smit was a prop at U21 level. So converting guys to play at hooker isn't a new thing, and it doesn't mean that guys who convert from other positions aren't good enough because they didn't make it in their 'chosen' position ... you could easily make the argument that they were playing the wrong position in the first place.