The five-eighth versus the flyhalf

SUPER RUGBY SPOTLIGHT: Richie Mo’unga and Elton Jantjies will both wear No.10 in the Final on Saturday. However, one is called a first five-eighth and the other a flyhalf.

Acclaimed rugby365 writer Paul Dobson explains the different descriptions and how we arrived at the different names for this position.

In the beginning – before rugby evolved into the game it is today – there were no set positions, just an ardent desire to get the object being used (later to become a ball) in play – forward to the designated place in your territory.

There were no structures to the play, just every man for himself. There were no limitations on equipment. Horses, staves and even swords were allowed. After all, if they had the “ball”, you had to get it from them and take it forward to your home. Getting it from them was not a gentle process.

It was Forward, Forward on to the leader’s village, on to village’s market square.

Then the game was taken from towns and meadows and used in schools as a means of curbing boys’ brutish inclinations. That was a big change.

At schools, the game was fitted to what space was available, and so each school worked out its own way of playing. There were different games, each of which with the generic name football, in schools such as Eton, Winchester, Marlborough, Charterhouse, Bradford and Rugby, the name of a school in a town of that name in the county of Warwickshire.

At Rugby School, under its rigorous headmaster, Thomas Arnold, the game became one of great enthusiasm and reckless activity. The field there was called the Close, an open, grassed ground.

There was no taking the ball back home now. The goal had shifted from your territory to the opposition’s and the important people were the tough, rugged men who hacked the ball forward. They came to be called forwards and their object was to kick the ball through the designated area which came to be called the goal. And the goal was packed with smaller boys from lower down the school, boys with the ambition to be forwards one day.

But what happened if the opposition broke away? To cope with this there was a player right at the back.

But what about the space between the forwards and the player fully back. Two players were placed halfway back.

And so the names came in – the player fully back became the fullback and the players halfway back became the halfbacks, sometimes referred to as donkey halfbacks for it was their dangerous task to fall a ball being hacked forward and so be at the mercy of flying feet, reinforced by heavy boots.

They both played the same sort of game as there was no separation of position. Whoever was nearer the ball, played the ball.

Next came a trio between the halfbacks and the fullback. They were a quarter way back. Three of them’ and so the three a quarter way back, three quarterbacks, three-quarters. The middle one was called a centre and the outer two were called wings.

https://youtu.be/8UcUSqeTb1A

In the 1880s, Frank Hancock of Somerset went to Cardiff to run the family brewery there. He was chosen at centre as a replacement for an injured player and did so well that he was retained when the injured player returned. Cardiff now had four players in the quarters – four three quarters.

Not long after this, Adrian Stoop, a famous Harlequin of Dutch descent, was playing at halfback but gradually he separated the way the halves played and were always the one on the outside – the outside half, the outhalf, the stand-off half or the flying half in a term introduced from Eton, the flyhalf. And he did this for Harlequins and England and has a field named after him.

Down in Dunedin, there was a shoemaker called Jimmy Duncan who was eager about his rugby. He liked this four threequarter system, but what to call it? He knew you could not have two centres to a line and so he looked for the fraction between a half and a three quarter and came up with the idea of a five-eighth. The one more remote from the scrumhalf was the first five-eighth, the one beyond him the second five-eighth.

And to behind the scrum New Zealand had, and still has, a half(back), a first five-eighth, a second five-eighth, a centre, two wings and a fullback – where most of the rugby world has a scrumhalf, a flyhalf, an inside centre, an outside centre, two wings and a fullback.

And for years and years, the centres played right and left, depending on which way the backline was to move. Now the New Zealand way obtains.

But far more important than the naming of the positions, is how they play. The backline players are more obvious than forwards and the Man of the Match awards go most often to them. And yet they know that their game would be severely curtailed if the forwards did not provide for them.

By Paul Dobson
@rugby365com