Giorgi boy is setting a high bar for try scoring

GIORGI Melikidze did something in Paris a fortnight ago which barely caused as much as a ripple on this side of the Channel. One of a platoon of Georgian front row forwards in the Top 14, he became the first tighthead prop to score ten tries for the season in any of Europe’s three professional leagues.

Getting there before as deadly a close-range finisher as Thomas du Toit makes Giorgi boy’s achievement all the more commendable. As if aware of his opposite number’s high frequency for Stade Francais, Bath‘s South African duly delivered a hat-trick against Leicester last week which still left him needing another to overtake Melikidze.

He has been delivering his tries all season at the rate of one every three matches, a consistency which tightheads of yesteryear would view with grave suspicion. Graham Price, his supreme status reflected in 12 consecutive Test matches for the Lions, can at least rest easy safe in the knowledge that Melikidze, for all his flashy finishing, has yet to run one in from 70 yards in the last minute against France.

Price did that on debut for Wales at the Parc des Princes, just across the road from Melikidze’s stamping ground at the Jean Bouin. There ought to be a blue plaque to mark the spot.