Throughout the first century of international rugby, the idea of one player lasting long enough to score 50 Test tries would have sounded slightly more preposterous than sending someone to the moon.

An annual fixture list of three matches among the Home Unions, raised to four with the admission of the French and once in a blue moon to five after the advent of the pioneering All Blacks, offered no scope for tries on an industrial scale.
The first to do so had never played rugby until Oxford University introduced him to an alternative form of football at the age of 18.
Ian Smith turned out to b...