[su_dropcap style=”flat” size=”4″]T[/su_dropcap]he hooker is one of the most important players in your pack and, as a result, your team and your aims as a squad. Yet, when you try to think of an archetype hooker – an ideal for the position – no one player stands out. For every William Servat, there is a Keith Wood. For every Dane Coles, there is a Malcolm Marx or Camille Chat. I can show you hookers who are 6’3″ and 114KG and I can show you guys that are 5’10” at most and closer to 100KG with hundreds of others in and around those dimensions. The cool thing is this – they all have a place in the game in one form or another.

I’ve spent a lot of time talking about front five power over the last couple of weeks and the hooker position plays a large part in that. Traditionally, hooker has been a position with a lot of role variety outside of the core skills of the position.

The non-negotiables of the position haven’t really changed, in theory.

• You must be a decent scrummager on both sides of the shove and you have to be able to strike for the ball effectively.
• You have to be a good, consistent accurate thrower who’s comfortable hitting flat and lobbed throws all through the line as required by your team’s lineout schemes.

If you don’t have those your path to the elite level will be a bit more tricky, but it’s by no means impossible. If you’ve got the athletic output and frame to be a heavy power forward and a hooker that will buy you a lot of time to nail the basics of the position. I would almost go as far as to say that being an elite scrummager and/or thrower is a “nice to have” if the core player in question is that heavy power forward build.

The key to understanding the modern hooker is to understand the value and importance of role sets and their use over the course of a full 80-minute contest. A hooker doesn’t have to be a heavy power forward to have an important role in your squad but these days it’s preferable to have at least one in your category one rotation to make your overall role division that bit easier.

If we start classifying hooker roles, we can begin to piece together the different components of a starting pack and go from there.

First up – the Heavy Power Hooker; this build is probably the most desired roleset in the position game-wide right now. Notable exponents of this role set would be Ronan Kelleher, Asafo Aumua, Camille Chat and Malcolm Marx. These players can range in physical stature but the one thing they all have in common is that they are extremely powerful ball carriers all through the line. Where they specialise in carrying the ball will vary depending on the individual – Asafo Aumua, for example, is most dangerous carrying the ball in the wider channels.

Guys like Chat, Kelleher and Marx are comfortable in the wider channels but they are mainly impactful hitters off #9 or in the middle block of carriers off a link player. They will be primary or secondary players in their team’s ball carrying rotation. Players who fill this role are all impact defenders who may or may not have a poaching speciality.

Next up – the Heavy Support Hooker; this build of hooker is perfect in a two-man combination with a Heavy Power Hooker as either a starting or finishing component but is usually preferred as a starter to maximise the physical output of the Heavy Power Hooker off the bench.

A Heavy Support Hooker will be player with a stronger focus on the basics of the position and usually take a less prominent position in the ball carrying rotation. These players will usually be heavily involved as defensive hitters, offensive ruck winners, and as secondary collision point winners; that is to say as tip on passers, latchers and aggressive second impact players. The vast majority of their offensive output happens in the middle of the field around the collision point so they need a good bit of weight on them to be effective. You don’t need these players to be any more than 60-minute players and their effectiveness off the bench only works when tailored with a specific plan for a specific challenge.

The players who best fit this build, for me, are Bongi Mbonambi, Ken Owens, Codie Taylor, Jamie George, Rob Herring and Luca Bigi. In a Munster context, Niall Scannell would be the closest fit we have to this build when he’s playing at his best.

A lot of coaches use the combo of the Heavy Support Hooker with the Heavy Power Hooker as their usual starting combo at the highest level of the game, or they want to. There are a few outliers to this roleset combination – Exeter, notably, and England to a certain extent – but most teams use this combination because it’s the perfect blend to deal with most physical challenges you face at the highest level over the course of 80 minutes.

The Heavy Support Hooker helps soften the opposition up, the Heavy Power Hooker helps put them away OR the Heavy Power Hooker helps to balance the physical exchanges in your favour early on while the Heavy Support Hooker helps close out the game.

These might be the most desired combinations at the moment but they are not the only hooker builds out there.

One rare enough build that Munster have in their ranks is the Ball Playing Hooker. This is something of a throwback roleset but players like Kevin O’Byrne, Rhys Marshall, Luke Cowan-Dickie and, to a certain extent, Dane Coles fit into this description. They are excellent, constant handlers of the ball who are comfortable passing the ball 7/8+ times as a tip on passer, offloader, screen passer or even as a first receiver when called for.

They can be effective ball carriers – Coles, in particular, would be a good example of this – but they are most effective as players who take responsibility for extending the width on a given play through their handling. Luke Cowan-Dickie is particularly good at this at Exeter, where you’ll often see him as a pivot player on their forward carries off #9.

The Ball Playing Hooker can be smaller and lighter than average – O’Byrne would be below average from a KG perspective – but the demands of the modern game have set a soft weight ceiling at test level. Cowan-Dickie, for example, was listed at 109KG back in 2019 but is listed at 112KG today and while we can’t get too wrapped up in listed weights (because so many of them are flat out false) it would be naive to suggest that carrying a drastically “lighter” profile forward doesn’t have to be compensated elsewhere.

Luke Cowan-Dickie, even if we’re to believe he’s playing at 112KG, often plays in an Exeter pack alongside four lock builds in the starting lineup. That is how Rob Baxter fits in Cowan-Dickie’s roleset with Sam Simmonds, who’s closer to a heavy midfielder when it comes to how he plays outside of the set-piece.

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What do these roles mean?

They are, ultimately, a means of putting a team together that can effectively execute your chosen game plan. Hooker has, traditionally, been an easy position to stack some role variety in your matchday squad but the demands of the modern game have increased the need for Power Forwards all through the lines of the pack.

A pack can’t be made out of eight power forwards. Well – it can – but finding eight elite power forwards like this with another seven or eight players to replace them is incredibly difficult. If you’re lucky, you’ll have five (ideally six) power forwards in your starting pack with carrying specialities all across the pitch.

From a Munster perspective over the next few weeks, that could well be a middle-six roster of Gavin Coombes, RG Snyman, Dave Kilcoyne, Keynan Knox, CJ Stander and Jean Kleyn with support forwards like Tadhg Beirne, Stephen Archer, Niall Scannell, Kevin O’Byrne, Peter O’Mahony and Jack O’Donoghue taking different roles in the wider channels or off the bench as required.

The key is to find those six power forwards and, ideally, front load in your front five three or four of them into your front five. What are the benefits of this? It allows you to play simpler rugby, especially in the phases directly following a set piece.

Essentially, if four of your starting front five fit that Power Forward roleset – while also being naturally heavier because of their positional specialities – you have the kind of physical bailout coming around the corner on phase one or two off a lineout to bail out on any scheme that hasn’t quite got the purchase desired.

When a lot of your front five fit that support forward roleset – not the guys winning the collisions – it creates a need for more size to be deployed elsewhere to compensate. In my opinion, Munster’s lack of role versatility at hooker has been a real issue in our attempts to manage our power output over the course of a full 80-minute spell.

Most sides, even the best test squads, will run with the combination that we spoke about earlier – a Heavy Power Hooker starting with a Heavy Support Hooker finishing, or vice versa. At the moment, Munster have to run with two support forward builds in Niall Scannell – a Heavy Support Hooker who sometimes tries to play like a Heavy Power Hooker to below average results – and Kevin O’Byrne/Rhys Marshall, who fit into the Ball Playing Hooker roleset for me.

This wouldn’t be an issue if we typically didn’t have three support forwards alongside them in the starting XV or off the bench in James Cronin, Stephen Archer and John Ryan alongside them over the last few seasons. The hopeful ascension of Keynan Knox, Roman Salanoa and Josh Wycherley will hopefully increase the power of our ball-carrying rotation in the front row but I still feel that we need to find a Heavy Power Hooker to round out our depth chart at hooker.

I think that Scott Buckley (Academy Y1) has the potential to fill that role in the medium to long term but we have to wait and see how he recovers from the knee injury he picked up a few weeks ago. Diarmuid Barron doesn’t strike me as someone with the frame to fill that role based on what I’ve seen from him in his sporadic appearances for Munster and Munster A over the last year or two – heavy support hooker or ball playing hooker seems to fit better there. I do think Munster will likely add a hooker to the academy this year but with the best will in the world, it’s unlikely this player will be ready to get regular PRO14 minutes in the next season or two.

So that leaves an obvious space for a signing. The only question is who?

The “obvious” Irish Qualified signing to cover the position in the long term would be to make a big play for Leinster’s Dan Sheehan when his contract expires at the end of next season. At 6’3″ and already in the ballpark of 110KG with clear Heavy Power Hooker role tendencies, it would seem like a move that would appeal to Munster and the IRFU.

Does the move appeal to Dan Sheehan? Hard to know. The obvious selling point would be – you get to be the #1 guy in the depth chart almost immediately because of his unique role qualities relative to the other players in the position, which would then increase his chances of representing Ireland sooner. Leinster could equally tell Sheehan that staying at home and alternating behind Kelleher is a good spot for him right now even if they both fill a similar role build because if Leinster keep winning and Sheehan is heavily involved as part of a regular match day combination what’s Andy Farrell going to do? Not pick him?

Sure, you could make the play that guys like Lee Barron are coming up behind him on the track and that Sheehan could soon be competing with Barron for a bench spot rather than competing with Kelleher for a starting jersey but that’s a tough sell to make.

Personally speaking, I’m over bringing lads down to Limerick with tears in their eyes on the promise that they can get back up to Carton House if they play their cards right. I want guys who want to play for Munster first and then, through those performances, earn the green jersey. If Sheehan wants the move and buys in like Felix Jones and Andrew Conway, great. If not, he’d be better off staying in Dublin as opposed to straddling the M7 because lads who can’t buy in fully never, ever look the same as they did in blue. All the other provinces can give you examples of that phenomenon over the last five or six years.

I’d look to back Buckley in the medium term with possibly another IQ signing in the meantime if one can be found. The little I’ve seen of him with Munster A showed the potential for this roleset, in my opinion, and while the knee injury he suffered is a setback, I’d be happy enough to see where he’s at after that in combination with another year one signing.

At the end of next season, I’d look to hit the market for a two-year option in the Heavy Power Hooker roleset. I think Akker Van Der Merwe would be a good option here if the price is right. He’ll be coming off a three year deal in Sale at that point and fits the roleset we’re looking for.

Van Der Merwe is a good scrummager, a decent lineout thrower even if he is prone to the odd wobble, but you’d live with that because of the pop and power he’s got on both sides of the collision.

This could be a pricy contract to take on but there could be space in a post-De Allende contract landscape but a lot will depend on how any attempts to retain Snyman and Jenkins go.

A possible good value option in this role set could be the Lions’ hooker Jan-Henning Campher. At 6’2″ and 110KG, Campher is a good fit for that power hooker roleset and he’s shown up consistently well for the Lions since his move from the Bulls a few years ago.

Campher is actually available this summer but it remains to be seen where (and for how long) his future lies. I think he’d be a good roleset match for Munster right now in an environment where young homegrown options are at least a year or two away. He’s got the size, the power and a decent all-around set-piece game to offer Munster real role variety in a depth chart that badly needs it.