Slipper deserves place at top table

Wallaby props? How we used to snigger at them over here in England as Jason Leonard, Phil Vickery and Andrew Sheridan chucked their weight around against green-and-gold packs who travelled backwards faster than an Olympic rowing eight.

Nick Stiles took god’s amount of stick from self-appointed scrummaging experts in the Twickenham stands in the early Noughties. So, more cruelly still, did the gruesome twosome of Matt Dunning and Al Baxter, devoutly re-Christened by the British press pack as “Matravers” and “Algernon” on the basis that only a pair of complete cravats could struggle so badly at the set-piece.

Mark Regan, that forthright England hooker of yore, tells a story of squaring up to Dunning, Stephen Moore and Guy Shepherdson after the first scrum of the World Cup quarter-final in Marseille in 2007, which had concluded with an Australian penalty. “Moore was yelling and punching the air,” recalls the Bristolian. “I said to him: ‘I’d calm down if I were you, Bab. There’s a lot of this game left.’ Which was true, sadly for them.”

A lot of this was unfair, but with certain exceptions – Richard Harry and Andrew Blades were central to the Wallabies’ global victory in 1999; Ben Darwin showed all the signs of being something extra-special before suffering a career-ending injury at the subsequent World Cup on home soil – the scrum has long been a problem Down Under.

So let us acknowledge, in deadly seriousness, the achievement of James Slipper as the loosehead specialist from the Gold Coast closes in on the wonderful scrum-half George Gregan’s record of 139 Wallaby caps. Propping is an unforgiving job at the best of times. Slipper knows too much about the worst of times, but by finding a way through them, he has earned the respect of us all. Yes, even the English.

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