David Hands, The Times rugby correspondent, has drawn up three lists of 20 most skilful, fastest and most powerful players who have appeared in the five/six nations since the Second World War.
Click here to access the list and see what you think about his choices.
Steve Borthwick isn’t on the list…who else is missing?
Keith Wood makes it in the fastest players list at number 12, Lawrence Dallaglio is at number 2 in the most powerful players list (ahead of Johnno at number 3) whilst Jason Robinson is third on the most skilful list.
I’m not sure I agree with all the selections, but I am sure I haven’t heard of all of these players. What do you think?
I can’t access the lists (from work !!) from memory though as I’ve seen them Gerald Davies was the no. 1 in the fastest but he wasn’t as fast for example as Nigel Walker who ran in the Olympic hurdles final . I don’t think Nigel would pretend to be the rugby player that Gerald was but if your going to use speed as a definition it seems daft to exclude him.
Gareth Edwards top of the skills chart I believe , well no arguments there from me ! Is Jason Robinson more skillful than Barry John ? Different eras but John had the lot including winning a Lions tour in New Zealand by frightening the natives half to death with his skills , still talked about today by rugby men of a certain age from that country.Not bad nearly 40 years after the event.
Top Strength was a French player who I can’t recall, the strongest Welsh player I can remember seeing was Geoff Wheel in the late 70′s early 80′s who could hit a rolling maul containing about a dozen players and shift it about 3 foot on his own combined with a frightening nervous facial tic Geoff was a fearsome sight indeed though I was in schoolboy shorts when I saw him of course . Graham Price is in there somewhere fair enough , I wouldn’t put Dallagio ahead of Johnson on this score .
It’s all good fun of course but as with all these things beauty is in the eye of the be-holder.