John Plumtree would be the perfect person to ask about scrumming hookers and the impact they can bring. By scrumming hookers, we mean those hookers who are more valuable than others when it comes to their impact in the set-scrums. The Natal scrum, with future Springboks Guy Kebble and the late Lood Muller in it, was good before that, but when Lawton was introduced all comers were destroyed by the Banana Boys, as they were known then, en route to their historic win over Northern Transvaal in the Pretoria final.
Plumtree was part of a ruse on the part of the late Natal coach Ian McIntosh that day. Plumtree did come on later in the game and was part of the winning effort in the final, and also in all the buildup games, and also played his club rugby in those years with Lawton at DHL Old Boys. Which broaches the subject of Bongi Mbonambi. Mbonambi played in neither of the two Vodacom United Rugby Championship derbies against the Stormers, first because of a family bereavement and then because of the hand injury sustained in the first Investec Champions Cup game against Exeter Chiefs in Durban at the start of December.
He was also of course absent when the Sharks were upstaged by Leicester Tigers in the second Champions Cup game a week later, and also in the Durban URC derby against the Vodacom Bulls, where the scrums were also a problem for the Durbanites and it became a case of them hanging in. The Sharks had Dylan Richardson, who has played a lot of his rugby on the flank, at hooker for those games, and while Plumtree rates the Scottish international highly, he is understandably not in the same league as Mbonambi when it comes to the set scrums.
Dylan is a good player and he will develop into a very good hooker but there are aspects of playing hooker that he is still learning. Of course Bongi has the experience and he is a big influence for us at scrum time. Nche reckons that adaptability is something the Sharks will need to have in the scrums against a Toulouse unit he rates highly. From playing against France and most of the Toulouse front row, I remember how adaptable they are.
They are not shy to try new tricks. They work together. You might think you have them in one scrum and then they come back with something different. They can play in a number of ways and change things up. Few teams in the world can play like Toulouse and the way they suddenly do something unexpected catches defences out. Much of that revolves around Antoine Dupont, who walked away with the World Rugby Player of the Year Award in and then followed that up by winning the World Rugby Sevens Player of the Year last year after starring for the French team that won Olympic gold.
