Looks like Tarzan, plays like Jane...

The saying looks like Tarzan, plays like Jane, has great application in rugby. The sad reality (or at least my reality) is that looking good on the posing stage or in your younger brothers t-shirt or playing jersey has no correlation with success on the field in rugby.

Tell that to the rugby players. More importantly, tell that to the physical preparation coaches. For many of them, the ability to create hypertrophy in their charges is their high point, the exhaustion of the skill set.

It's a tragic trend. One that started a few decades ago in America, accentuated when bodybuildling magazine published adds with the bodybuilders wearing the clothing of a variety of athletes.

American athletes have had the disease of training to look like Tarzan (a bodybuilder) and performing (on the real world stage, not the domestic 'World Championship' series) like Jane.

In the 1980s and 1990s I gave very little rein to players wanting to buff their guns or their chest. There is plenty of time after retirement from competition rugby. Oh, and a minor point - there are more important things to do to enhance performance.

Now for the last few years in Australia you couldn't board a Qantas jet without seeing a picture of a rugby players bulging biceps, and by now every kid in Australia who plays or wants to play rugby (and with the way the game has been managed in this country thats an endangered speicies) would now know the keys to success in rugby - look like Tarzan.

In the 1970s and early 80's no-one did strength training in rugby. By the late 1980s only the most self-absorbed chose to build Adonis like physiques for their emotional needs.  As the 1990s progressed I held back the flood gates. But as 2000 rolled around, the bodybuilding methods become the standard fare.

So from being the best trialthletes in the 1990s, the Australian rugby players are now the best bodybuilders in World Rugby.

Pity about the rugby scoreboard....