SECOND-ROW
4. John Eales (Australia) – His nickname was ‘Nobody’ – because nobody is perfect. He could do it all on the field, lineout, attack, defence and an outstanding goalkicker
5. Fabien Pelous (France) – “Another massive unit who looked like Ivan Drago from Rocky 4. I ran into him playing for Scotland at the Stade du France in 2001 and it felt like smashing into a brick wall.”
BACK-ROW
6. Jerry Collins (New Zealand) – “Another player to give my ribs a good whack, breaking one of them with his famous high knee ball carries when we toured New Zealand in 2000.”
7. Richie McCaw (New Zealand) – “I remember thinking in 2001 that New Zealand might be struggling at openside for their first time in decades as they had picked McCaw straight from the NPC tournament. I’d previously played against Michael Jones and Josh Kronfeld who are legends of the game so I thought this shouldn’t be as difficult an opponent. I got that badly wrong… “
8. Zinzan Brooke (New Zealand) – “I used to love watching him play, probably the most skilful forward to play the game – dropping goals from the halfway line in a World Cup semifinal and offloading out of the tackle on a regular basis. It was great to go up against him in 1996.”
