It's time to get back to shifting the piano

NOT long after helping the All Blacks to victory over the Lions in 1993, the formidable wing John Kirwan found himself on the wrong side of the New Zealand selectors, who omitted him from a Europe-bound tour party on the grounds of a declining strike rate. “I’d score more often,” Kirwan is said to have muttered, sardonically, “if it wasn’t for that fat hooker pinching my tries.”

- CHRIS HEWETT

The hooker in question? He was referring to Sean Fitzpatrick, by most reckonings the finest No.2 ever to play the game and, many would argue, the best referee into the bargain. And yes, he was unusually prolific on the touchdown front, single-handedly ripping up the rulebook of the “Front Row Union” by appearing to spend as much time playing the piano as he did shifting it.

Then as now, appearances were deceptive: Fitzpatrick was no one’s idea of a showboating glory hunter. But he was certainly an outlier when it came to try accumulation. In 92 Tests over a 12-year career boasting more highlights than a celebrity hair-do, he put his name to a dozen of them.

One a year? If that tally doesn’t make the rugby earth move for you, it is nevertheless a matter of record that he left the very best of his fellow amateur-era hookers for dead. The unusually substantial Tom Lawton of Australia – heaven alone knows how Kirwan would have described him – was his nearest challenger, with a grand total of four. Colin Deans of Scotland and Uli Schmidt of South Africa, two ultra-mobile footballers with an eye for the main chance? Two apiece. Philippe Dintrans, the brilliant Frenchman? Three in 50 matches.