The Times - UK (2020-11-14)

The Scrum

the times | Saturday November 14 2020 1GG 5

recommend players to French clubs.

A trickle became a steady flow.

“Jobs are hard to find in Georgia

and wages are very low, so it’s great if

the players can find a club in France

and send money back to their

families,” Haig said. “They’re like

many of the Pacific Islanders in that

sense. In most areas of France, any

player knows there will be some other

Georgians playing nearby.”

The greatest step forward for

Georgian rugby came at the 2015

World Cup when they finished third

in their pool, beating Tonga and

Namibia along the way, and giving a

gutsy display in a 43-10 defeat by

New Zealand. These performances

on the big stage gave the game an

enormous boost back home.

there needed to be more games

against Tier One teams in that

four-year cycle.”

Most of the players who will face

England benefit from good club rugby

in France, a promised land for

Georgian players. When Haig, a

New Zealander, arrived to coach the

national team, he was told there were

150 Georgians earning their living in

French club rugby, mostly props. By

the time he left last year, he estimated

that number had risen to 250.

This was a link started when

Claude Saurel, a former Béziers

flanker, coached the national team in

the early 2000s, taking them to their

first World Cup in 2003. Saurel saw

the natural talent and the growing

passion for the game and began to

The chances are that anyone
pursuing a career in rugby as a tight-
head prop will not be in it for the
glamour or the glory. However
valuable a role you are performing for
your side, the appreciation for your
work beyond your fellow forwards
will inevitably be limited, no matter
how many wings and centres rush up
to slap you on the backside after a
scrum penalty has gone your way,
pretending they understand why.
But that is certainly not the case in
Georgia, England’s opponents at
Twickenham today. In Georgia, the
props are the rock stars of the game.
The production line of front-row
behemoths in this corner of the
Caucasus, a nation of four million, is a
natural wonder of the rugby world.
“It’s in their genetics to produce
blokes who are 5ft 10in to 6ft, with no
necks and huge shoulders,” Milton
Haig, head coach of the national team
from 2011 to 2019, said. “You could be
up in the mountains and see a couple
of blokes walking down a village
street and at least one of them will
look like a tight-head. You could
equally be in downtown Tbilisi in a
swanky restaurant and see a couple of
blokes sitting at a table, sipping wine
and eating steak. At least one of them
will look like a prop.”
It is not merely the character and
strength of front-row forwards that
Georgia has produced that makes

Nation where props are the rock stars

them so beloved in their homeland.

Over the past 20 years Georgian

props have paved the way for the first

generation of their countrymen to

earn a living from the game, the vast

majority of them in France.

“Scrummaging suits Georgians

mentally as well as physically,” Haig

said. “They love a one-on-one battle,

a wrestling contest, and that extends

to the front row of the scrum. They

see scrummaging as an art. They

were the guys who started it all

in terms of being able to play

professionally. Everybody in the

rugby fraternity looks up to the

front row.”

The challenges facing Georgia as

they prepare for the Autumn Nations

Cup are to continue to build more

substantially on the foundation stones

laid by those pillars of the scrum, to

develop areas of their game away

from the set piece. They have made

considerable strides in producing

top-class back-row forwards, notably

Mamuka Gorgodze, the formidable

flanker who retired after the World

Cup last year. A younger generation

of playmakers is coming to the fore,

with half backs such as Vasil

Lobzhanidze, the scrum half, and the

fly half Tedo Abzhandadze, both of

whom play with Brive in the Top 14,

blessed with skill and awareness.

Georgia have been able to develop

their game only so much, though.

Although their world ranking of 12th

is two places higher than Italy, they

have been frustrated in their efforts to

gain more regular fixtures against

Tier One nations.

“We’d been talking about wanting

to be part of an expanded Six Nations

for some time,” Haig said. “We’d been

at our limits in terms of how we could

develop and if we were going to upset

some of the big guys at a World Cup,

“The game pretty much doubled its

playing numbers in the next two

years,” Haig said. “The players

became incredibly popular, Mamuka

became one of [the] two or three most

famous sportsmen in the country.

“Nowadays a lot of gifted young

athletes, who might previously

have gone to football, wrestling

or basketball, are wanting to be

rugby players. And that will help to

produce more of the ball-players

that we need.”

This is the age-old stumbling block

in the way of developing rugby

nations. Take Italy, whose lack of

progress has largely been due to the

failure to produce half backs of

international quality. Georgia sense

real progress in this regard.

Lobzhanidze turned 19 during the

2015 World Cup and already has 52

caps. Abzhandadze is only 21 and

considered a potential superstar in

the making.

While the 2015 World Cup showed

unmistakable signs of progress, the

World Cup in Japan last year was

more of a disappointment, with a

solitary victory over Uruguay and a

45-10 defeat by Fiji.

Despite big-name retirements in

recent years, there is no shortage of

candidates to come into the front row.

Beka Gigashvili, the formidable

Toulon prop, starts at No 3 today,

while Guram Gogichashvili, the

22-year-old from Racing 92, is the

latest world-class prop to emerge and

could become the best of the lot.

Two years ago Eddie Jones invited

Georgia’s forwards to train against

England, describing them as the

“biggest, ugliest, strongest scrum pack

in the world”. Such was the ferocity of

the sessions, the two teams almost

came to blows. This weekend, they

will do it all again for real.

French trailblazers and

natural body shape

have brought Georgia

prestige up front, writes

John Westerby

The traditional game that gave side their nickname

One reason that rugby

has developed such a

following in Georgia is

its resemblance to the

ancient sport of lelo

burti, which translates

as “field ball”. “Lelo” has

been adopted as the

Georgian word for “try”

and the national team

are known as the Lelos.

The sport was played

between teams of

unlimited numbers from

two villages, with a river

at either end of the

playing territory and

each team trying to

carry a ball over their

opponents’ river. A

version is still played

in some rural areas at

Easter. Before the game

a priest blesses the ball,

above, players drink

wine from it and then

stuff it with sand and

wood shavings until it

weighs between 16

and 18kg. No quarter

is given, injuries are

frequent and deaths

are not unknown.

TOM BOURDON

Th

FIVE

GEORGIANS

TO FEAR

MIKHEIL NARIASHVILI BEKA GIGASHVILI

SHALVA MAMUKASHVILI BEKA GORGADZE

BY GRAHAM ROWNTREE,

FORMER GEORGIA COACH

AND ENGLAND PROP

Hooker

Hard as nails. He plays

at Leicester Tigers and

looks after my lad, who is

in the academy. He is not

huge (compared to other

Georgian front rowers)

but he is agile, a good

scrummager, reliable in

the lineout and speaks

four languages. I can see

him settling in nicely

at Welford Road.

Loose-head prop

A real talisman and

cornerstone of the

Georgian pack,

Nariashvili is consistently

one of the best loose-

head props in the Top 14

and an important leader

in the team. A calm,

experienced head,

Georgia’s win record is

better when he is playing.

GRIGOR KERDIKOSHVILI

Lock

He is well travelled

having played in

Colorado and been part

of the Crusaders

academy, although I

never quite worked out

where his cockney

accent came from. I used

to call him “Geezer”.

Maybe he enjoys Guy

Ritchie movies. A diligent,

hard-working, no-frills

lock. He was unlucky not

to go to the World Cup.

Tight-head prop

He was in the Georgian

army three years ago and

is immensely strong.

I saw him in the gym

doing a plank with

another 130kg prop on

his back. He is explosive

and quick off the mark,

so will test Ellis Genge,

and effective over the

ball at the breakdown.

No 8

The rock star of the team.

He would not look out of

place in a World XV.

Gorgadze has everything:

pace, strength and good

hands that make him a

dynamic ball carrier. Plus

he is sickeningly good-

looking, so I expect he is

enjoying life in Bordeaux.