Ireland must face up to prop problem

On Rugby: This is, traditionally, a time for crystal ball gazing, but it wouldn't require a soothsayer to forecast that one day, perhaps not before long, the Irish team may have a distinct problem in fielding a Test front row to help supply quality possession for one of the best back lines on the planet. As has been known for some years, the cupboard is bare.

In the autumnal wins over the Springboks and the Pumas, it was striking to note John Hayes (30) had joined Reggie Corrigan (34) and Shane Byrne (33) in the thirty-something club. As they proved, the old warhorses still have a good few big games left in them but looking ahead to, say, the 2007 World Cup when Ireland will have group games against Argentina and France, one has to wonder if, realistically, all three will still be around.

Years of Heineken European Cup rugby, as well as sporadic Test outings, have proved a fruitful investment for Marcus Horan, a relatively small prop by modern-day standards, and Emmet Byrne might rescale his previous heights after a couple of injury-stunted years but he is now 31.

Simon Best's development appears to have stagnated since his difficult day in the World Cup warm-up game against Wales 16 months ago. There are high hopes for the Lansdowne and Leinster loosehead John Lyne and there is the hope Niall Treston can yet fulfil his potential once he recovers from his knee reconstructions.

Beyond that, there doesn't appear to be an awful lot coming through, however, and heaven help Eddie O'Sullivan and Team Ireland if an injury or two compounds the reduced pickings.

There is a particular dearth of tightheads about, as evidenced by the recruitment policy of the four provinces. In addition to the likes of Leopoldo de Chaval and Joeli Vetayaki at Ulster, Gerailt Evans and Simon Kerr at Munster, Dan McFarland at Connacht, in the last couple of years Robbie Kempson and Rod Moore (both Ulster), Gordon McIlwham and Mike Storey (Munster), Stephen Knoop (Connacht) and Ricky Nebbett (Leinster) have been signed to plug the gaps.

Below them, with fewer resources, the scouring of the globe for props reached near desperate proportions at club level, where the dearth of props has probably done more to spark the cancellation of junior games and the consequent reduction in teams below senior level.

This has been a global trend, albeit more pronounced in Ireland, England and Scotland, than, say, Wales whose production line is up and running again, and France, where the culture of full-on scrummaging has been maintained at club level more than anywhere else in Europe. And yet their clubs are at the forefront of the global recruitment driv

In 1994 the need to reduce the risk of spinal injuries prompted the International Rugby Board to change the laws at under-20 level to prevent sides from pushing more than one-and-a-half metres at put-ins. Some countries, including Ireland, extended this law to the adult game below junior one level. Anyone who watches an underage game can now see uncontested scrums, so coaches can happily pick two glorified flankers in the front row. The bigger boys who previously could only have been accommodated by rugby, are now surplus to requirements, so to speak. In addition, in recent times the IRB have brought in further scrummaging restrictions, which led to New Zealand referee Paul Honiss emasculating the French front row in Twickenham two seasons ago and Andre Watson blowing the English front row off the park in the World Cup final.

To an old scrummaging traditionalist like Roly Meates, these changes have had inevitable consequences. "Obviously the scrummaging at school levels is a) not correct and, b) not a good idea from a scrummaging point of view, because basically a low scrum is good. Hence, young players are coming out of school and there has not been the same emphasis on it (the scrum).

Meates added: "Secondly, the law restricted the binding arms and angles of tighthead props basically in line with a lot of law changes in recent years, so as to make things more definitive for referees rather than to aid the production of the classic game that we all seek. And as a result there are gross variations in referees' attitude toward the use of the right arm by the tighthead prop, the angles, the height of the scrum, their attitude to resetting scrums and so on."

The option of playing at prop has probably never been less attractive for young players, and Meates believes tighthead prop is now the most difficult position to play. Meates also has a theory that, in keeping with the modern development of a fast-flowing, attractive, professional game, "we are worshipping the gods of physical confrontation and physical fitness possibly to the detriment of some of the precision and detail that is required. As a result the scrum, which has become possibly the attacking platform in the game albeit on a reduced number, has become one of the most difficult to manage."

Meates does not believe the problem has yet reached critical proportions and maintains the solution lies in identifying and giving expert coaching and guidance to indigenous young talent, which he maintains is still out there.

However, a good friend of mine has perhaps a more ready-made, shorter-term solution. Send a recruitment team to South Africa and Argentina, and import young props under three-year contracts so they become eligible by residency.

Aside from the brazen exploitation of this rule in many other positions, most notably in the Southern Hemisphere recruitment of Polynesian talent, the Australians have been known to import the Argentinian props Topo Rodriguez and Fabricio Noriega, while even the French make no bones about playing South African Pieter de Villiers. So why not Ireland? Alas, it wouldn't be in time for 2007. Between now and then, O'Sullivan just has to keep his fingers crossed.