Half Full ?

Thoughts on Meeting Dai Duckham

One of the Greats - known as "Dai" when he played at the Arms Park because he, alone amongst his red rose colleagues, would have been difficult to leave out of that dominant Welsh side of the early 1970's. Who could forget the high stepping, jagging side stepper from Coventry ? Take a longer look at THAT game between the Barbarians and the All Blacks in 1973 - beyond that luminous start ("What a score!") - Duckham was one of a handful of players NOT to figure in the move that started with Bennett's waltz and ended in the signature Gareth Edwards plunge, but a look at the whole game shows that he did as much as anyone to run the All Blacks ragged that day. Talking to him, he bemoaned the modern accent on defence, and the gym culture that has left our game in the grip of the big boys.

                      Backsides to Basics

The stereotypical image of the French playing with flair and the rest of us trying to squeeze them to death whenever we can was sent to the recycling bin with sundry other misleading rugby cliches over the weekend. The Biarritz and Toulouse forwards did a mighty job on the Irish challengers, splintering their front rows with a combination of canny technique and pure, undiluted brute force. Decent props - international players - such as CJ Van De Linde, Cian Healy and Jon Hayes were popping out of scrums, casting desperate looks at the refs in the hope that they would take a sympathetic view of things. All in vain, my brave boys. They'll return home to Dublin and Limerick and plot their revenge. Outfits as clever and determined as Munster and Leinster will learn their lessons.