Players / High Five / David Sole

He wasn’t called The Bear without good reason - he hardly ever went into the weights room. Unlike Andrew Sheridan, who has spent a lot of time developing his strength pumping iron, he used raw strength and was a huge physical presence.

 

Technically he was a very good scrummager, who would always stay within the letter of the law. He was a very fair player, and as a lot of French players discovered, if you punched The Bear, he didn’t punch you back, he just growled and exerted more pressure. Technically he was very correct and was very difficult to get the better of.

 

The very first time I played against him, I was this young whippersnapper at Exeter University, playing for the Anglo-Scots at Richmond in the old District Championship. The Calder brothers and the Brewster brothers had said to him, ‘they’ve got this young pup, who thinks he’s a bit of a player and fancies himself a bit’ - they wound him up so much in the dressing room that by the time he came out onto the pitch, there was steam blowing out of his ears.

 

I remember the first scrum - I felt an incredible power on the back of my neck. I got up from the scrum and literally all the blood had gone from my head and my legs felt so heavy. Physically I found it incredibly difficult to put one foot in front of the other and run.

 

I also learned never to go drinking with Ian because he had an immense capacity for alcohol.

He was a fantastic technician - just like every good prop - I won my first cap against him and he was such a lovely fella.

 

I remember one particular Scotland vs. France match when Jean-Pierre had a big cut on his lip from the previous week’s league match. Scotland received the ball from kick-off and his head popped through the back of the ruck, so I gave him my best shot - he just looked up at me and smiled with his blood seeping through where his stitches had split.

 

From that moment on I knew I was going to be in for a difficult afternoon and he spent the rest of the afternoon returning the favour by using his power and strength of scrummaging to grind me into the dirt.

He’s a cracking bloke, Jason. As a player hepitomised all what was great about prop forwards, but the thing that stood out above all his obvious attributes was his incredible resilience.

 

He struggled throughout most of his career with a serious neck complaint, so to have had that sort of injury to your neck and win 118 caps is just incredible for a front-row forward.

 

He was also highly adaptable. To be able to scrummage effectively on either side of the scrum and look no weaker is just a fantastic achievement.

 

He played in four World Cups and to go out with a World Cup winners medal in 2003 was a perfect testimonial for a brilliant career.

‘Cooch’ was a bit of a mental man. He was one one of the reasons I moved clubs from Exeter to Bath after an indiscretion in a John Player Cup match.

 

I was watching Bath play Exeter on a Wednesday night, and ‘Cooch’ smacked some bloke and got himself sent off, which meant they were short of props.

 

He played on both sides of the scrum equally as well, and was a bit of a hard boy - he dished it out, but wasn’t scared of taking it. You’d mess with ‘Cooch’ at your peril, whether it was in training or during a game and if you had a dig at him, he would give you one back.

 

So the Bath selectors phoned me up and invited me to sit on the bench and get involved with the John Player Cup squad. 

He was the prototype for the sort of open, running prop of the modern era. He had a pair of hands that weren’t used for fighting - he had great ball-handling abilities, pace, power, and was a good technical scrummager.

 

Steve was an integral part of New Zealand’s unprecedented success, he was great with ball in hands, a good tackler, powerful scrummager, and a decent guy to boot.

 

I remember when we played in New Zealand after the Cavaliers tour of 1986. They went through an incredible period between 1986 and 1990 unbeaten in international rugby - just an incredible record.

 

Steve picked up a World Cup medal along the way. He was just a fantastic prop - the full package.