Props
Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2023 9:41 am
Nice piece from Will Kelleher in The TimesL
Patience, prop camps and ‘ugly’ idols – how England are fixing scrum
The development of front-row forwards is being overhauled to prevent a repeat of World Cup failures
In two consecutive Rugby World Cups, South Africa have beaten England thanks to the superiority of their scrum. Many in the game have decided enough is enough.
Joe Marler, 33, and Dan Cole, 36, remain two of the best English exponents of the art of scrummaging but their careers are coming to a close. Some people, such as the 2003 World Cup-winning forwards coach Phil Keith-Roach, wonder whether the more recent generations of English props really live for scrums any more. There has been some soul-searching.
The questions is: how do England reinstate themselves as a world-class scrumming nation? And there is good news. Former front-row forwards are rallying to address the issue; so, too, is the RFU. Here, The Times analyses how the next generation of front-row forwards are being shaped.
Inside project prop
Marler joked in The Times last week that he and Cole had concocted a plan to divide the country in half and train props in the north and south before meeting at an M1 services to discuss their crop. His gag was not far from the reality. In November, the RFU appointed Nathan Catt as its first scrum pathway coach. The 35-year-old played 170 times for Bath over 12 years before retiring through injury in 2020 to become a scrum coach for their youth section.
He now does this for the whole country. Catt will work specifically with under-16 to under-20 male front-row forwards, support the women’s game, too, and help with talent identification. He will try to establish a coaching and technical standard that stretches all the way to Steve Borthwick’s England team. Underpinning this is one fairly simple goal: build England props.
The first positive step towards repairing the potholed pathway came in September, when the RFU found 26 of the biggest, strongest players between the ages of 16 and 19 and gathered them at Bisham Abbey for a two-day “front-five” camp.
It was run by the under-20s coaches Jonathan Pendlebury and Andy Titterrell and guests included: England’s Mako Vunipola; Joe Gray, the former Saracens and Harlequins hooker and now London Scottish coach, who focused on lineouts; Catt himself; executives from the RFU and Premiership Rugby, in Conor O’Shea and Nigel Melville; and nutritionists and psychologists.
One who went was Tye Raymont, an 18-year-old tight-head from Leeds, who was snapped up by Sale Sharks from the Yorkshire academy. He idolises Manu Tuilagi in his club team, but wants to be a dominant tight-head prop.
“I learnt a lot about technique,” he says. “Gym is a massive thing for props. The core and neck work, getting strong. Keep sticking at it and over time it’ll come. I want to be the best I can, so that in five years’ time if I’m called into the England camp, or the team, I’m confident I’m going to dominate.”
Plenty of raw talent is around. At Gloucester, there is Afolabi Fasogbon, a 19-year-old, 6ft 3in, 20st 11lb tight-head prop; and at Sale, there is Asher Opoku-Fordjour, also 19, 5ft 11in and 17st 6lb, who is already enjoying Gallagher Premiership and Champions Cup cameos.
Catt focuses on “body awareness”, emphasising what a strong pushing position looks and feels like through exercises that help groove good habits early. The basic shape is simple. “But it’s about the details of how we get there,” Catt says.
He borrows some of the scrum exercises devised by Petrus du Plessis — the South African who played for Saracens and most recently coached Australia’s forwards — and formulates his own. He hooks props to a series of resistance bands that replicate scrum dynamics. For example, for a loose-head, he uses a band pulling down the outside arm or lifting up through the chest, both of which an opposing tight-head would try to do.
The pivotal element is maintaining a neutral spine, or as Catt terms it, a “spirit-level spine”. In one exercise, he gets a prop into their scrummaging position and then measures the angle of their back with a spirit-level app. He then asks whether they think their back is flat, or pointing upwards or downwards, and compares their perception against the reality. Gradually, they learn what the best position feels like during the set-up, the bind phase, the engage and the shove.
Catt will also send his youngsters clips of every scrum from the World Cup semi-finals and final. Pick a prop you like, he says, and try to replicate their “best practices”. The hope is that a new generation of players choose Cole’s spine as the object of their admiration.
No scrum, no win
Technique is one thing, but at some point these young props have to learn to love the scrum. Over the past 20 years, since the days of Keith-Roach, there has been a desire for the English prop to offer everything: carrying, tackling, lifting, passing, open running and scrummaging class. They are not always compatible.
Ellis Genge and Kyle Sinckler — the props on the field when England lost the crucial scrum in the semi-final against South Africa — are “transition” props, having switched from No 8 and centre and worked endlessly on set-piece technique. They are two of the best examples of the dynamic all-court prop English rugby has sought, a category in which the Ireland forward Tadhg Furlong is the exemplar.
“I question whether they actually want to scrummage — if that’s what they adore, if that’s what they see as their lifeblood,” Keith-Roach told The Times last month. It certainly is for Marler, Cole and Frans Malherbe. The outstanding South African tight-head made one carry for zero metres in the 2019 World Cup final, and three carries for one metre in the 2023 edition, and yet no one questions that he is one of the most valuable Springboks.
In England, the attitude has shifted and the search has begun for those who will scrum first. The rest can be added. “We have to make props as competent as possible at scrummaging,” Catt says. “And then try and make them good around the park.”
Dorian West — the replacement hooker in the 2003 World Cup-winning England team — is now the forwards coach at Sale Sharks and thinks this change is overdue. “I’ve been frustrated over the past ten years watching England not having a focus on the maul or scrum,” he says.
Adam Jones — the great tight-head who won 95 Wales caps and five for the 2009 and 2013 British & Irish Lions — is now searching for successors as the Harlequins forwards coach. “There’s nothing wrong with seeing a big kid who isn’t the fittest, but has that competitive streak in his eyes, getting hold of him, giving him a bit of training and nutrition, and making him a really effective player,” he explains.
“He doesn’t have to be some Adonis through the age grades. People used to say you have to be tough and nasty, but you don’t any more. You just have to be competitive, willing to put your body in a bad place. It’s as simple as: there’s a line on the floor, if I get over it, I’ve done my job and I’ve got one up on him.”
Simon McIntyre, 32, has played more than 200 Premiership matches at loose-head for Wasps and Sale, and still analyses scrums under his duvet into the early hours. “The front-rowers are a special type of people,” he says. “Deep, probably over-thinkers. It takes a lot of hours to perfect. I’m in my fifteenth year and am still learning. Any kind of overconfidence and the scrum will humble you.”
If Catt wants to find players who have the proper spirit for the toughest job on the field, at Sale they know they have one in Opoku-Fordjour. “You look at his power: he’s a tight-head prop with fast twitch,” Alex Sanderson, his director of rugby, says. “You just don’t get them. Rare as teddy bear shit.”
Opoku-Fordjour, 19, has already made waves in his debut season. Marler was overpowered by him at The Stoop two Fridays ago. He was so impressed, he extolled his virtues in a TV interview that night. Then, he dominated against Stade Français on his Champions Cup bow.
Born in Coventry, he began as a footballer. He was “a very quick boy” and so started rugby on the wing at Broadstreet RFC, then moved to rivals Kenilworth, gradually shifting forwards, before joining the Worcester developing player programme. He was cut at under-16 level, so went to Wasps until they folded last year.
Sale are delighted to have him on their books. “You have to enjoy the feeling of being dominant,” Opoku-Fordjour says. “The feeling of going forward is so good. It makes you feel on top of the world. You have to keep that feeling in your head and keep doing the stuff people aren’t seeing.”
He plays loose or tight, but wants to be a No 3, knowing those are valued like diamonds. “You see how much scrums mean in games — like the World Cup semi-final,” he says. “The scrum won South Africa the game, so people are understanding you need the props.”
No scrum, no win, as the French say.
Nurturing new Roses
Opoku-Fordjour was too advanced for the RFU’s front-five camp, but is now benefiting from a more sustainable development system. In the past, young props had to learn on the job, acquiring the reductively termed “dark arts” to survive.
Jones knows now that as a coach you cannot chuck a weights programme at young players and tell them to “get big”, as in days gone by. “I went from playing at my local club, Abercrave, to Neath and then Wales in about three years,” he says.
There is an understanding that it is a long process to refine techniques, build power, grow into their bodies and gain match experience at the right level. “They’re not going to learn by getting battered in the Premiership,” West says.
Jones uses Fin Baxter, his 21-year-old loose-head, as an example. His debut came at tight-head in a 2020 Champions Cup match against Racing 92. He was not ready. Since then, he has trained against Will Collier, Wilco Louw, Simon Kerrod, Dillon Lewis and Lovejoy Chawatama, but crucially found games at London Scottish in the Championship last year. “As a scrum coach you can help as much as you can,” Jones says. “But as a young player, let’s say you play Ealing one week and the tight-head absolutely drills you. How do you fix it in 12 weeks’ time when you play them again?”
Harlequins benefit from their strategic partnership with London Scottish. Exeter Chiefs use the University of Exeter, who have teams in National 2 West and the British Universities and Colleges Super League, Sale have the National 1 side Sale FC next door, and Leicester Tigers loan players to Nottingham regularly.
Not all clubs have these links. It is understood that the relationship between Premiership and Championship clubs is so fraught that Ealing Trailfinders and Coventry are refusing to take top-flight players on loan. Young Premiership props are not playing down the league pyramid nearly enough. Some spend seasons holding tackle bags at senior training, or play a handful of England Under-18 or Under-20 fixtures, which is a long way from the physicality of men’s rugby. The demise of the Premiership A-League has closed off another pathway.
In March, the RFU chief executive Bill Sweeney watched England Under-20 lose to France 42-7 at home in the Six Nations. He noted the English team had eight Premiership starts between them, while the French had 102 in the Top 14. “It takes a long time to learn to scrummage,” Catt says. “There’s a reason why you don’t have many 21-year-old Test props.”
Make scrums sexy again
Since the inauguration of the World Rugby player-of-the-year award in 2001, no prop has made the shortlist. It is an under-appreciated role. Front-row forwards across the game are sick of calls to minimise the significance of the scrum and worry that it is deterring applicants for a job that is fundamental to the sport.
“I worry that props, or the beauty of being a prop, is dying,” Marler says. “It’s not a glamorous position. Most people go, ‘I want to be Owen Farrell,’ or, ‘I want to be Marcus Smith,’ or Jonny May, Henry Arundell or Cadan Murley — the scorers. Look at Frans Malherbe. [He’s] central to South Africa’s world domination over the past eight years. You look at him and go, ‘Is he an athlete?’ ”
Marler has a marketing strategy he calls “Make scrums sexy again”. He understands that people are bored of endless scrum resets, but also the importance of a strong scrum. Not only does it provide space on the field by fixing 16 people in one spot, it provides space for different body types, the rugby cliche of “all shapes and sizes”.
He explains: “The amount of parents that come up to me and say, ‘My son loves you and Coley, he’s a big lad, struggles sometimes at school as people pick on him, but he gets to rugby and he’s found his place as a big unit in the front row.’ ”
Often the problem is that people find scrums too difficult to understand. Props want better explanations on TV, more meaningful statistics and graphics, and more respect from pundits.
David Flatman, the former England prop, understands that he has to demystify and communicate clearly while entertaining. He can be more detailed on TNT Sports when, as he says, “the educated minority” are watching, but has to use simpler terms on ITV during the Six Nations when nine million people tune in. “I never understand when professional pundits almost wear as a badge of honour how little they know about scrums,” he says.
So, how do we get posters of Cole on children’s walls? Flatman notes that most prop coverage focuses on their character, not their skill. “We love it when Gengey comes along,” he says. “He comes from one of the roughest parts of Bristol, is mixed race, super handsome, aggressive, his hero is a prize fighter. He’s manna from heaven — but people don’t necessarily celebrate what he does.
“With Marler, hardly anyone talks about his technical ability, which is off the charts. He’s the No 1 loose-head in the whole world. I wouldn’t pick anyone ahead of him.”
So the message is this: if you want props, start celebrating them. Luckily, so many fine front-rowers are trying to do that. Marler concludes: “It’s about us old, horrible, ugly, fat props who are leaving the game pulling our fingers out and caring about wanting more young, horrible, probably ugly — [but] a lot less fat these days — props to come through and enjoy what we enjoyed.”
Patience, prop camps and ‘ugly’ idols – how England are fixing scrum
The development of front-row forwards is being overhauled to prevent a repeat of World Cup failures
In two consecutive Rugby World Cups, South Africa have beaten England thanks to the superiority of their scrum. Many in the game have decided enough is enough.
Joe Marler, 33, and Dan Cole, 36, remain two of the best English exponents of the art of scrummaging but their careers are coming to a close. Some people, such as the 2003 World Cup-winning forwards coach Phil Keith-Roach, wonder whether the more recent generations of English props really live for scrums any more. There has been some soul-searching.
The questions is: how do England reinstate themselves as a world-class scrumming nation? And there is good news. Former front-row forwards are rallying to address the issue; so, too, is the RFU. Here, The Times analyses how the next generation of front-row forwards are being shaped.
Inside project prop
Marler joked in The Times last week that he and Cole had concocted a plan to divide the country in half and train props in the north and south before meeting at an M1 services to discuss their crop. His gag was not far from the reality. In November, the RFU appointed Nathan Catt as its first scrum pathway coach. The 35-year-old played 170 times for Bath over 12 years before retiring through injury in 2020 to become a scrum coach for their youth section.
He now does this for the whole country. Catt will work specifically with under-16 to under-20 male front-row forwards, support the women’s game, too, and help with talent identification. He will try to establish a coaching and technical standard that stretches all the way to Steve Borthwick’s England team. Underpinning this is one fairly simple goal: build England props.
The first positive step towards repairing the potholed pathway came in September, when the RFU found 26 of the biggest, strongest players between the ages of 16 and 19 and gathered them at Bisham Abbey for a two-day “front-five” camp.
It was run by the under-20s coaches Jonathan Pendlebury and Andy Titterrell and guests included: England’s Mako Vunipola; Joe Gray, the former Saracens and Harlequins hooker and now London Scottish coach, who focused on lineouts; Catt himself; executives from the RFU and Premiership Rugby, in Conor O’Shea and Nigel Melville; and nutritionists and psychologists.
One who went was Tye Raymont, an 18-year-old tight-head from Leeds, who was snapped up by Sale Sharks from the Yorkshire academy. He idolises Manu Tuilagi in his club team, but wants to be a dominant tight-head prop.
“I learnt a lot about technique,” he says. “Gym is a massive thing for props. The core and neck work, getting strong. Keep sticking at it and over time it’ll come. I want to be the best I can, so that in five years’ time if I’m called into the England camp, or the team, I’m confident I’m going to dominate.”
Plenty of raw talent is around. At Gloucester, there is Afolabi Fasogbon, a 19-year-old, 6ft 3in, 20st 11lb tight-head prop; and at Sale, there is Asher Opoku-Fordjour, also 19, 5ft 11in and 17st 6lb, who is already enjoying Gallagher Premiership and Champions Cup cameos.
Catt focuses on “body awareness”, emphasising what a strong pushing position looks and feels like through exercises that help groove good habits early. The basic shape is simple. “But it’s about the details of how we get there,” Catt says.
He borrows some of the scrum exercises devised by Petrus du Plessis — the South African who played for Saracens and most recently coached Australia’s forwards — and formulates his own. He hooks props to a series of resistance bands that replicate scrum dynamics. For example, for a loose-head, he uses a band pulling down the outside arm or lifting up through the chest, both of which an opposing tight-head would try to do.
The pivotal element is maintaining a neutral spine, or as Catt terms it, a “spirit-level spine”. In one exercise, he gets a prop into their scrummaging position and then measures the angle of their back with a spirit-level app. He then asks whether they think their back is flat, or pointing upwards or downwards, and compares their perception against the reality. Gradually, they learn what the best position feels like during the set-up, the bind phase, the engage and the shove.
Catt will also send his youngsters clips of every scrum from the World Cup semi-finals and final. Pick a prop you like, he says, and try to replicate their “best practices”. The hope is that a new generation of players choose Cole’s spine as the object of their admiration.
No scrum, no win
Technique is one thing, but at some point these young props have to learn to love the scrum. Over the past 20 years, since the days of Keith-Roach, there has been a desire for the English prop to offer everything: carrying, tackling, lifting, passing, open running and scrummaging class. They are not always compatible.
Ellis Genge and Kyle Sinckler — the props on the field when England lost the crucial scrum in the semi-final against South Africa — are “transition” props, having switched from No 8 and centre and worked endlessly on set-piece technique. They are two of the best examples of the dynamic all-court prop English rugby has sought, a category in which the Ireland forward Tadhg Furlong is the exemplar.
“I question whether they actually want to scrummage — if that’s what they adore, if that’s what they see as their lifeblood,” Keith-Roach told The Times last month. It certainly is for Marler, Cole and Frans Malherbe. The outstanding South African tight-head made one carry for zero metres in the 2019 World Cup final, and three carries for one metre in the 2023 edition, and yet no one questions that he is one of the most valuable Springboks.
In England, the attitude has shifted and the search has begun for those who will scrum first. The rest can be added. “We have to make props as competent as possible at scrummaging,” Catt says. “And then try and make them good around the park.”
Dorian West — the replacement hooker in the 2003 World Cup-winning England team — is now the forwards coach at Sale Sharks and thinks this change is overdue. “I’ve been frustrated over the past ten years watching England not having a focus on the maul or scrum,” he says.
Adam Jones — the great tight-head who won 95 Wales caps and five for the 2009 and 2013 British & Irish Lions — is now searching for successors as the Harlequins forwards coach. “There’s nothing wrong with seeing a big kid who isn’t the fittest, but has that competitive streak in his eyes, getting hold of him, giving him a bit of training and nutrition, and making him a really effective player,” he explains.
“He doesn’t have to be some Adonis through the age grades. People used to say you have to be tough and nasty, but you don’t any more. You just have to be competitive, willing to put your body in a bad place. It’s as simple as: there’s a line on the floor, if I get over it, I’ve done my job and I’ve got one up on him.”
Simon McIntyre, 32, has played more than 200 Premiership matches at loose-head for Wasps and Sale, and still analyses scrums under his duvet into the early hours. “The front-rowers are a special type of people,” he says. “Deep, probably over-thinkers. It takes a lot of hours to perfect. I’m in my fifteenth year and am still learning. Any kind of overconfidence and the scrum will humble you.”
If Catt wants to find players who have the proper spirit for the toughest job on the field, at Sale they know they have one in Opoku-Fordjour. “You look at his power: he’s a tight-head prop with fast twitch,” Alex Sanderson, his director of rugby, says. “You just don’t get them. Rare as teddy bear shit.”
Opoku-Fordjour, 19, has already made waves in his debut season. Marler was overpowered by him at The Stoop two Fridays ago. He was so impressed, he extolled his virtues in a TV interview that night. Then, he dominated against Stade Français on his Champions Cup bow.
Born in Coventry, he began as a footballer. He was “a very quick boy” and so started rugby on the wing at Broadstreet RFC, then moved to rivals Kenilworth, gradually shifting forwards, before joining the Worcester developing player programme. He was cut at under-16 level, so went to Wasps until they folded last year.
Sale are delighted to have him on their books. “You have to enjoy the feeling of being dominant,” Opoku-Fordjour says. “The feeling of going forward is so good. It makes you feel on top of the world. You have to keep that feeling in your head and keep doing the stuff people aren’t seeing.”
He plays loose or tight, but wants to be a No 3, knowing those are valued like diamonds. “You see how much scrums mean in games — like the World Cup semi-final,” he says. “The scrum won South Africa the game, so people are understanding you need the props.”
No scrum, no win, as the French say.
Nurturing new Roses
Opoku-Fordjour was too advanced for the RFU’s front-five camp, but is now benefiting from a more sustainable development system. In the past, young props had to learn on the job, acquiring the reductively termed “dark arts” to survive.
Jones knows now that as a coach you cannot chuck a weights programme at young players and tell them to “get big”, as in days gone by. “I went from playing at my local club, Abercrave, to Neath and then Wales in about three years,” he says.
There is an understanding that it is a long process to refine techniques, build power, grow into their bodies and gain match experience at the right level. “They’re not going to learn by getting battered in the Premiership,” West says.
Jones uses Fin Baxter, his 21-year-old loose-head, as an example. His debut came at tight-head in a 2020 Champions Cup match against Racing 92. He was not ready. Since then, he has trained against Will Collier, Wilco Louw, Simon Kerrod, Dillon Lewis and Lovejoy Chawatama, but crucially found games at London Scottish in the Championship last year. “As a scrum coach you can help as much as you can,” Jones says. “But as a young player, let’s say you play Ealing one week and the tight-head absolutely drills you. How do you fix it in 12 weeks’ time when you play them again?”
Harlequins benefit from their strategic partnership with London Scottish. Exeter Chiefs use the University of Exeter, who have teams in National 2 West and the British Universities and Colleges Super League, Sale have the National 1 side Sale FC next door, and Leicester Tigers loan players to Nottingham regularly.
Not all clubs have these links. It is understood that the relationship between Premiership and Championship clubs is so fraught that Ealing Trailfinders and Coventry are refusing to take top-flight players on loan. Young Premiership props are not playing down the league pyramid nearly enough. Some spend seasons holding tackle bags at senior training, or play a handful of England Under-18 or Under-20 fixtures, which is a long way from the physicality of men’s rugby. The demise of the Premiership A-League has closed off another pathway.
In March, the RFU chief executive Bill Sweeney watched England Under-20 lose to France 42-7 at home in the Six Nations. He noted the English team had eight Premiership starts between them, while the French had 102 in the Top 14. “It takes a long time to learn to scrummage,” Catt says. “There’s a reason why you don’t have many 21-year-old Test props.”
Make scrums sexy again
Since the inauguration of the World Rugby player-of-the-year award in 2001, no prop has made the shortlist. It is an under-appreciated role. Front-row forwards across the game are sick of calls to minimise the significance of the scrum and worry that it is deterring applicants for a job that is fundamental to the sport.
“I worry that props, or the beauty of being a prop, is dying,” Marler says. “It’s not a glamorous position. Most people go, ‘I want to be Owen Farrell,’ or, ‘I want to be Marcus Smith,’ or Jonny May, Henry Arundell or Cadan Murley — the scorers. Look at Frans Malherbe. [He’s] central to South Africa’s world domination over the past eight years. You look at him and go, ‘Is he an athlete?’ ”
Marler has a marketing strategy he calls “Make scrums sexy again”. He understands that people are bored of endless scrum resets, but also the importance of a strong scrum. Not only does it provide space on the field by fixing 16 people in one spot, it provides space for different body types, the rugby cliche of “all shapes and sizes”.
He explains: “The amount of parents that come up to me and say, ‘My son loves you and Coley, he’s a big lad, struggles sometimes at school as people pick on him, but he gets to rugby and he’s found his place as a big unit in the front row.’ ”
Often the problem is that people find scrums too difficult to understand. Props want better explanations on TV, more meaningful statistics and graphics, and more respect from pundits.
David Flatman, the former England prop, understands that he has to demystify and communicate clearly while entertaining. He can be more detailed on TNT Sports when, as he says, “the educated minority” are watching, but has to use simpler terms on ITV during the Six Nations when nine million people tune in. “I never understand when professional pundits almost wear as a badge of honour how little they know about scrums,” he says.
So, how do we get posters of Cole on children’s walls? Flatman notes that most prop coverage focuses on their character, not their skill. “We love it when Gengey comes along,” he says. “He comes from one of the roughest parts of Bristol, is mixed race, super handsome, aggressive, his hero is a prize fighter. He’s manna from heaven — but people don’t necessarily celebrate what he does.
“With Marler, hardly anyone talks about his technical ability, which is off the charts. He’s the No 1 loose-head in the whole world. I wouldn’t pick anyone ahead of him.”
So the message is this: if you want props, start celebrating them. Luckily, so many fine front-rowers are trying to do that. Marler concludes: “It’s about us old, horrible, ugly, fat props who are leaving the game pulling our fingers out and caring about wanting more young, horrible, probably ugly — [but] a lot less fat these days — props to come through and enjoy what we enjoyed.”
