Two hundred years ago no one thought Charles Darwin would amount to much. “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs and rat-catching and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family,” his father told his 16-year-old son, who went on to achieve global fame for his contribution to evolutionary biology. Which just goes to show how wrong even the most up-close predictions can be.
Maybe we should remember that as we assess the next stage in the evolution of rugby union. Because the temptation over the weekend was to gaze down from the press box at Twickenham and conclude that rugby is increasingly the survival of the biggest. If you want to beat a big man, pick a bigger one. On Friday night, as seven Springbok forward replacements simultaneously rumbled on to grind down a depleted New Zealand, the sport officially entered a new Godzilla phase.
