'There's no one at South Africa's level... that's been their brand'

Rugby was stripped down to its raw, savage bones on Thursday night at the stroke of half-time in the Gallagher PREM season opener between Sale Sharks and Gloucester.

Scrum on halfway, Sale put-in, England loosehead against England hopeful. Penalty to Gloucester, and their 21-year-old tighthead Afolabi Fasogbon could not contain his euphoria.

It must require a lot of mental fortitude to pack down against nearly a ton of human flesh, so it is understandable that it may be hard to conceal the adrenaline rush that comes with winning a scrum, so much so that the Sharks’ lock and captain Ernst van Rhyn – who was face-to-face with the 128kg tighthead after his side’s scrum crumpled – took umbrage with his behaviour.

Bevan Rodd was the loosehead on the receiving-end of the scrum, an established international and superb scrummager himself. Iron sharpens iron, so these were positive signs for the future of England’s front-row.

We've missed this 😅

Pure PASSION from @gloucesterrugby 's Afo Fasogbun 🔥

Watch live on TNT Sports | @rugbyontnt pic.twitter.com/bU1ezxK7D1

— PREM Rugby (@premrugby) September 25, 2025

Former England loosehead David Flatman certainly shared that positivity when assessing England’s front-row options with RugbyPass recently now that the new season is upon us.

“I think we’re good,” he said. “[Ellis] Genge, Will Stuart, top of the range. Fin Baxter, excellent and improving. Bevan Rodd the same. Particularly exciting with Bevan Rodd. I think Genge, naturally, but Baxter is probably a level further ahead when it comes to scrummaging – it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t get done over like all props do at some point, everyone does – but he seems very good at learning from what’s just happened and improving. But Bevan Rodd is a fabulous rugby player and his scrummaging as he gets older and does more of it and gets coached by Dorian West more and more will get better and better. So I think coming up in the wings, he’s a very exciting player.

“On the tighthead, Will Stuart we know about, top of the range. Asher Opoku-Fordjour, I just love, love watching him play either side of the scrum. He’s a big guy, but he’s not a giant. There’s an awful lot of power in that body, but there’s also confidence and a bit of venom when it comes to scrums. So, if he smells blood, he will tune you up, which I quite like. Joe Heyes is a really interesting one because he is absolutely enormous, he’s like a house. So, the genes are there, he’s experienced now, he’s got a good number of caps, he’s played tons of PREM and European games, we will know in a year or so whether he’s probably going to be the guy that takes over from Coley. You’d imagine he is at Tigers, will he be with England? Coley was one of those guys who you could just set and forget. Just pick him and don’t worry about it for the next five years, and you’re all set. He’s got a back set in concrete, iron will, very durable. Joe Heyes has big boots to fill, but the genes are good with that one.”

There is a standard to meet when it comes to scrummaging at Test rugby and that has been set by world champions South Africa.

The scrum was yet again the source of penalties in the Springboks’ 67-30 win over Argentina in round five of the Rugby Championship on Saturday, just as it had been a round earlier against the All Blacks.

As every team in the world scrambles to match South Africa’s penalty machine and their production line of world-class props, Flatman conceded that it is close to an impossible task.

“There’s no one at South Africa’s level,” he said. “That’s partly the gene pool they’ve got, there’s a lot of big men knocking around in SA, but it’s also cultural. There’s always been a culture there where they take real pride in being very, very large and aggressive with that size at set piece and around the field. That’s been their brand, whereas the All Blacks’ brand, for example, yes, they want tough scrumming guys, but really they want overall contributors. Whereas you look at Frans Malherbe, it’s changing a bit now, but Frans Malherbe has won two World Cups, and he’s not a one-trick pony, there’s more to him than that, but you know why he’s there. He’s there because he’s got a specialist role and he’s very good at filling that.

“They’ve embraced the specialist role during the professional era better than anyone else. Things move on, of course they do, and they’ve got the guys contributing more and more now, but they are proving there is still space for someone who does everything pretty well, but has got one thing. You don’t have to be a jack of all trades, you could be a master of one.”