Rugby and the rise of the “hybrid player”

Eddie Jones resembles his fellow-Australian, the late Clive James; gabby, provocative, not over-burdened by modesty, always interesting and with ideas sparkling like a Catherine Wheel. He has been attracting attention recently with remarks about “hybrid players” – that is, chaps capable of playing as either a forward or a back – and by suggesting that he might depart from the regular practice of fielding eight forwards and seven backs. This, as intended, attracted a good deal of media attention, some writers finding it interesting new thinking.

Of course, none of it was actually new. Back in the 1930s, Danie Craven, who would later become the Capo of Springbok rugby, played both scrumhalf and number 8 for South Africa. Ten or eleven years ago Italy’s South African coach Nick Mallett, faced with a list of injured scrum-halves, played his outstanding flanker Mauro Bergamasco in that position. It wasn’t a success, and the experiment was abandoned at half-time, but I don’t recall it being condemned as crazy when the team was announced.

Back in the 1950s the hefty Wasps and England wing J E Woodward got so fed up hanging about on the touchline and waiting for a pass that never came that he switched to playing his club rugby at number 8. More recently, Richie Vernon has played for Scotland as a backrow forward and centre three-quarter. I would guess that almost every long-established amateur club could boast of members who spent part of their career in the scrum, part in the back division, while innumerable people must have started their schoolboy career in one department, then found themselves, in adult life, in another.

The conventional line-up with seven backs and eight forwards has been with us since at least the 1890s, but there have been exceptions. The first All Blacks of 1905-6 scrummed with only seven forwards, the eighth, their captain Dave Gallagher, nominally a wing-forward, being used to put the ball in. This allowed his team to have a numerical advantage in the back division, alternatively, as northern critics complained, enabled Gallagher to obstruct the opposing scrumhalf.

More recently, but still a long time ago, John Gwilliam, captain of the Welsh side that won the Triple Crown in 1950, was a schoolmaster at Glenalmond and master-in-charge of rugby. One season’s team had a powerful pack, and so Mr Gwilliam chose to play with only seven forwards, employing his captain who was, I think, the school’s champion sprinter, as a roving back, able to come into the three-quarter line where and when he chose. It was fairly successful. The school’s first XV had its best season for some years, better than the next few too.

Innovations can be small, yet effective and change the way the game is played. Until well into the 1960s it was normal practice for the wing-three-quarter to throw the ball into the line-out. The right wing threw on the right touchline, the left on the left, and that was that. Then somebody asked, “do we really need all eight forwards in the line-out? Mightn’t it be possible to make effective use of the blind-side wing if he was freed from this responsibility?” Now, throwing at the line-out is almost always the hooker’s job, and no hooker has a chance of playing international rugby if he isn’t a skilled and reliable thrower. At the same time, the name-hooker – for the player wearing the number 2 jersey – has become a misnomer, because modern scrum techniques have rendered the old hooking strike obsolete.

Rugby, as Eddie Jones’s reflections make clear, has moved beyond specialisation, which itself was something developed in the first two or three decades of the game. Forwards are now expected to be able to run and pass like backs, while backs must, if early on the scene, go in to try to win the ball at the breakdown. Players have to be multi-skilled. Even thirty or forty years ago the great commentator Bill McLaren would chortle with a mixture of surprise and amusement when a prop forward found himself in space with the ball in his hands and sometimes looked as if he had no idea what to do next.

One has seen the same development, which may be called “beyond specialization” in football. If you watch a group of small boys who have never been coached playing football, they will often all be as close to the ball as they can get, rather than getting into space. That’s what early football and indeed early rugby were like. Then, distinct positions were devised, each with its peculiar role. Full-backs and centre-halves rarely ventured across the half-way line, and wings and centre-forwards rarely fell back in defence. The number on a shirt told you what players were supposed to do and where on the field they were expected to be. Everything is now less structured, more fluid. The number on the shirt tells you nothing; it’s a club number with no relation to the player’s position on the field.

Rugby hasn’t reached this point and probably won’t because laws ensure that it is a more structured game than football. Nevertheless, it has moved in that direction. One of the greatest fly-half’s I’ve ever watched was Barry John, star of the great 1971 Lions. He blithely told his team’s back-row forwards, “I don’t tackle; that’s your job.” No doubt he wasn’t entirely serious, but he certainly did very little tackling, except perhaps in cover defence. It’s different now. Nobody can expect to wear the prized number 10 jersey in top-level rugby if he can’t tackle well. Jonny Wilkinson set a new standard for fly-halves in this area of the game.

So, to an extent when Eddie Jones speaks of hybrids, he’s actually describing how things already are. A player needs the skills that a player in his position has needed for a very long time, but he needs more than those skills. I’m old enough to remember the criticism directed by traditionalists in the 1970s at forwards like England’s Andy Ripley and Scotland’s Alastair McHarg, who regularly popped up out on the wing or between a centre and the ring. “What’s the fellow doing there? Getting in the way – can’t be doing his fair share of work in the scrum.” In fact, Ripley and McHarg were early hybrids, intelligent readers of the game’s flow.

All the same, a moment in the France-Ireland match a fortnight ago was a reminder that there’s a limit to hybridity. France moved the ball left to Gael Fickou wearing the left wing’s number 11 jersey. His immediate opponent was the Irish number 3, a prop. With a jink and a surge of acceleration Fickou left him tackling thin air and was away to create a try for scrum-half Antoine Dupont. A moment of triumph for old-fashioned specialization.