Tightheads

The tighthead prop can command one of the biggest salaries in the pro game because of their importance in anchoring the scrum. As a No 3, you are generally bigger, stronger and more technical than a loosehead, because you are seeking to stay square and immovable whilst hemmed in by two opponents. Anyone accomplished at both roles is a pretty special player, but don’t expect the adoration of spectators – this is not a glamorous role! Rather, its made for those who relish a highly physical, one-to-one confrontation within the wider confines of a team game.

Graham Price, Pontypool v Australia 1984

  • March 17, 2020

When it comes to scrummaging, no one did it better than the rock of Pontypool. Graham Price is one of the greats

Carl Hayman of New Zealand

  • September 15, 2016

Major teams: Otago, Highlanders, Newcastle, Toulon 

Country: New Zealand 

Test span: 2001-07 
Test caps: 45 (37 starts)

 Test points: 10 (2T) Carl Hayman made his Test debut from the bench…

  • September 1, 2016

Rated alongside Graham Price as “undoubtedly the greatest tighthead prop of the modern era” by another legend of the front row, Fran Cotton, Robert Paparemborde anchored a French pack which…

  • August 18, 2016

Adam Jones was christened ‘Bomb’ in a fond reference to 1990s American wrestler Adam Bomb, who sported similarly curly locks and an identical Christian name. However, the moniker took on…

  • August 18, 2016

The foundation stone on which New Zealand’s great pack of the 1990s was built, Olo Brown was one of the finest props world rugby has seen, but also one of…

  • August 18, 2016

Patricio Noriega cut his teeth in the toughest of propping breeding grounds – the Pumas’ front row. Born in Buenos Aires, the tighthead played for his local club, Hindu, before…

  • August 18, 2016

In 2011, at a gala dinner in Paris, a formidable foe from bygone years was inducted into the French Hall of Fame. Iain Milne, the famous Bear of Scotland, was…

  • August 17, 2016

Obstinate. It’s the only way to describe tighthead Jean-Pierre Garuet’s approach to the scrummage. France is a nation that adores the flat-backed, hairy brutes who relish tight exchanges and in…

  • August 17, 2016

Sandy Carmichael was the personification of stern-faced resistance to the established southern hemisphere stronghold of world rugby in the early 1970s, when British and Irish forward play reached its high-water…