It isn’t the case that Tom Botha wants to go head to head in a pushing and shoving contest with his postman or with the Amazon delivery driver who brings parcels to all and sundry in his street.
But, still, the South African does enjoy a bit of set-piece work.
Last year, his Ospreys team-mate Elvis Taione said of him: “He lives, breathes and tastes scrums. It excites everyone around the group, the way he’s excited about scrummaging. He loves it.”
That could potentially be good news for Wales.
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Take Tomas Francis out of the equation and it is questionable how they don’t have a strong-scrummaging tight-head at their disposal, albeit Dillon Lewis is excellent around the field and has improved his set-piece work. Samson Lee seems forever troubled by injuries, while Leon Brown is still a work in progress as a scrummager and WillGriff John still has work to do to prove himself a reliable Test option.
What of Botha? The man from Bellville in Cape Town made his Ospreys debut on August 31, 2018. He was eligible for Wales after serving out a three-year residency period thereafter.
Wales could have capped him between August 31 and December 31 in 2021, after which a new five-year residency period kicked in. But he wasn’t capped during that window, meaning he was then off limits until the summer of this year.
Without Francis, Wales have been patchy as a scrummaging force. Is Botha the man to add ballast with his Ospreys team-mate at the World Cup in France later this year?
He can certainly scrummage. Last weekend against Leinster, he featured off the bench to help maintain the Ospreys set-piece dominance over the Irishmen. One observer described some of Botha’s scrummaging as "punishing". The previous week as a starter, he had helped the Swansea.com Stadium region do a number on Cardiff’s admittedly weakened scrum, with both Lewis and Dmitri Arhip missing.
If sightings of him with ball in hand are not exactly commonplace, he is a very solid defender. But it’s his power work in the tight which might interest Warren Gatland.
Asked how he assessed Botha’s progress and whether he saw him as an option for Gatland later this year, Ospreys head coach Toby Booth responded positively.
“You’ve seen in recent performances how important scrums are," he said. "Tommy is without doubt a specialist scrummager, so it depends on what you are looking for from the No. 3 shirt. Against certain opposition you require more of that, or less of that.
“His progress can be seen from the fact that we have a legitimate rotation policy around props. That’s not because we think it’s a nice thing to do or to keep everyone happy. You have to be good enough to be in that rotation.
“Tommy Botha is starting games where he’s always been seen as the back-up guy. That says enough to me that if called upon he’ll give it his best and be ready, because, ultimately, he’s delivering on his part of the jigsaw. From that point of view, why not?”
Booth, who played in the front row himself back in the day, knows Botha as well as most in Welsh rugby and is completely up to speed on his strengths and weaknesses. His view is one Gatland may take heed of heading towards the summer months. It could pay dividends if he did so.
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