By Chris Hewett – Thinking Allowed
It was the rugby version of Easy Street, the 1917 silent movie in which Charlie Chaplin, playing a policeman, smashes a giant bully over the head with a truncheon, but fails to make him blink.
Poor little Tomos Williams, a scrum-half constructed on the same scale as Chaplin, made precisely the same impact on Josua Tuisova, a centre the size of a continent, before being treated to the mother of all hand-offs and becoming the first Welshman to visit the International Space Station.
Williams was not remotely equipped for the contest: for one thing, he was the lighter man by six stones; for another, he wasn’t armed with anything more threatening than an unusually deft kicking game, which wasn’t a fat lot of use under the circumstances.
He could have smuggled a cudgel onto the field, but the way Tuisova was playing in the Fijian backline, an elephant gun wouldn’t have been enough. And besides, the TMO would have spotted it. Or maybe not.
Another man of Wales, the long-time captain turned quality television pundit Sam Warburton, told his audience that Fiji should unearth as many Tuisovas as they possibly can and pick the lot of them.
Which made sense of a sort, on the basis that good big ‘uns are generally more successful than good little ‘uns.
Size Matters
But as the union code still claims to be a game for all shapes and sizes, can we really afford a fresh outbreak of mammoth mania?
Casting a quick eye over the tale of the tape – or, more accurately in this case, the story of the scales – we find that at 113kgs (17st 11lbs in old money), the man from the islands is heavier than almost all of the Springboks who started last weekend’s match with Scotland at Murrayfield.
By way of reinforcing the point, the green-shirted exceptions did not include Ox “no salad for me” Nche, Franco Mostert or any of the run-on loose trio.
So much for the Boks being bigger and more physically intimidating than everyone else.
It turns out that one of what might be called the South African Tuisovans was – yep, you guessed it – an inside centre.
Step forward Andre Esterhuizen, who, until recently, was the ball-carrying, gainline-winning, opposition-decimating kingpin of the Harlequins midfield.
Remember when Will Carling was being lionised as a No .2 of unusual power and propulsion? Seems a bit daft now.
Different strokes for different folks
Hefty inside centres are nothing new, but when Jamie Roberts of Wales and the Lions was scattering tacklers like good seed on the land, other theories of midfieldism were available.
While the Red Dragons coach Warren Gatland was picking Roberts for World Cup duty in 2015, Michael Cheika of Australia was running the diminutive Matt Giteau in the same position, if not exactly – or even remotely – in the same role.
France? They liked Wesley Fofana, all 14st 9lbs of him. Argentina? They went for supremely gifted Juan Martin Hernandez, who was lighter still.
The Scots? They played, and very nearly won, a quarter-final with Peter Horne and Mark Bennett in midfield.
Between them, those two You might reasonably argue that the game has been heading into freak-show territory ever since Jolly Jonah ran over the world, rather than round it, almost three decades ago.
But Lomu was a wing and as such, he wasn’t expected to be a tactical kicker or an inch-perfect passer or, let’s be honest here, an advanced rugby thinker.
He was there to finish moves in ways no one else could finish them, and if he finished a few careers in the process, so much the better.
Manu Tuilagi
The inside centre position is meant to be a little more complex, which was why England’s attempts to run Manu Tuilagi at 12 were so muddle-headed.
The human bowling ball produced his best international performances, including the two gut-busters against the All Blacks, while playing in his best position – there’s a shock – and the desire of successive England coaches to turn him into something he could never be may well have acted as a drag on the development of the team’s attacking game.
But now we have Tuisova and what looks like a successful shift from wing to midfield, which has the potential to convince Test-level strategists the world over that an outsized inside back is the only way forward and that they should leave no stone unturned in the search for, or manufacture of, Brobdingnagians in rugby boots.
Seen through certain eyes – that is to say, those of a sporting romantic – this is not a beguiling prospect.
Between 1987 and 2011, every World Cup was won by a team with a multi-faceted footballing No.12: Warwick Taylor, Tim Horan (twice), Hennie le Roux, Will Greenwood, Frans Steyn.
Then came Ma’a Nonu, who looked like a one-trick pony but turned out to have the skill set of a rugby thoroughbred, and the game shifted on its axis.
It may shift again, because Tuisova makes Nonu look like a stick insect. A game for all shapes and sizes? Hmmm.
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