The Breakdown | From France to Old Reigatians: the most inspiring sides in rugby history

It is an entirely subjective question but still worth pondering as the autumn mists descend. What is the most inspiring rugby team you ever saw? Not the absolute best, necessarily, because that is too restrictive a filter. This is about sides who, in addition to stringing a few wins together, had something about them that still captures the imagination even decades later.

In part these things are shaped by timing and circumstance. You never forget the first international you attended, say, or how that experience made you feel. For anyone who has stood in the Shed for years, the sight of Gloucester sitting atop the English Prem table may just be stirring similar emotions. That said, it may still take a while for this year’s squad to nudge past Teague, Fidler and Blakeway in the Cherry & White hall of fame.

Over in South Africa many are arguing that the best of times are right now and they may be right. Should Siya Kolisi and his team claim an unprecedented third successive men’s Rugby World Cup triumph next year, the sense of pride will ripple way beyond rugby into the hearts and souls of every South African.

You could say something similar about the All Blacks in the days when their entire nation defined itself by the weekend’s result. Or England when they were approaching their 2003 date with World Cup destiny. Even now people are still out in their back yards pretending to be Jonny Wilkinson. The wave of public enthusiasm could yet be colossal in Australia next year if the Wallabies come storming up on the outside rail.

So let’s go, with a couple of quick caveats. Not allowed are teams containing – or coached by – family members. And no one will judge you for veering off piste. Because where’s the fun in simply listing the usual suspects or ranking success purely via statistics? If that’s your preferred measure, thank you for reading this far down.

For everyone else my proposed top six starts with France, specifically the team who won the 1977 Five Nations grand slam. As with the Pontypool pack of the late 1970s, that French team sheet sent a shiver down the spine even before a ball, or head, was kicked. If the back row of Jean-Pierre Rives, Jean-Claude Skrela or the giant-sized Jean-Pierre Bastiat didn’t flatten you that was because the props Gérard Cholley, Robert Paparemborde and the locks Jean-François Imbernon and Michel Palmié had already done so. They’d have been truly formidable in any era, with the diminutive Jacques Fouroux and his half-back partner Jean-Pierre Romeu supplying the tactical garnish.

Next up is the illustrious Wallaby touring side of 1984, who comprehensively sliced and diced the home unions. Mark Ella, David Campese, Michael Lynagh … has any attacking side ever moved the ball so sweetly? With the exception, perhaps, of a free-flowing Fiji as demonstrated in the 2016 Olympic sevens final in Rio de Janeiro. To watch Ben Ryan’s side of god-fearing supermen fulfil their gold-medal destiny in front of a global audience was to witness the rarely-glimpsed unicorn of sporting perfection.

Then we have the Barbarians, even if their ideals of self-expression, camaraderie and shared adventure have been slightly bruised by the collision with professional reality. But, at heart, they continue to reflect the essence of why so many people take up rugby in the first place. And even after a million views the sight of Gareth Edwards diving full-length into the corner in Cardiff in 1973 still raises the neck hairs like little else. What a player, what a score!

Which leaves only two remaining podium spaces, starting with the biggest domestic cup upset in history. It will be 40 years this January since your correspondent was in the crowd for the John Player Cup third round tie between Old Reigatians and Saracens, the sort of David v Goliath encounter that no longer exists. As the, ahem, Daily Telegraph’s Old Boys’ Rugby correspondent – yes, it was a while ago – I’d been covering the former pupils of Reigate Grammar School for a while and knew a few of them. Which is probably why their improbable 12-10 win over Sarries – having already defeated Exeter in round two – felt as special as it did. It really did prove, beyond any doubt, just how far close friendships, smart coaching, endless desire and no fear, with an added touch of luck, can propel you even on the most daunting of days.

And numero uno? Last Saturday evening in deepest Dorset I attended the 50-year reunion of the best team you’ve never heard of. For almost five – FIVE! – years between December 1974 and the late autumn of 1979 absolutely no one could beat the pale-blue-shirted 1st XV of Sherborne School, an astonishing unbeaten run which spanned more than 40 matches.

Along the way they beat all-comers from as far afield as Wales and Ireland and did so with a beguiling mix of power, guile and panache. It was also no coincidence that they possessed two outstanding coaching mentors. The forwards were tutored by Mike Davis, an England coach at the time and a teacher at the school, while the backs were taken by the keen-eyed, empathetic Phil Jones, a former Bath fly-half who later became headmaster of Christ College Brecon.

The former England lock Davis would lead his “honey monsters” down to the other end of the field, lie down in the mud clad in the jersey of their fiercest local rivals and invite them to ruck the living daylights out of him. Jones would fine-tune the tactics and encourage his talented fly-half David Dally – the Stephen Larkham of his day – either to keep his forwards on the front foot or to release the greyhounds outside him.

The high point, reckons Jones, was when an unbeaten Clifton College were swept aside by the most complete performance he had seen any schoolboy side produce. Not that he watched it all. At one stage, he told us on Saturday night, the team were playing so sublimely well he slipped away behind the pavilion and had a quiet weep. Enlightened coaching, great players, a supportive environment, shared passion … maybe it was not totally by chance that an impressionable kid on the touchline grew up to be a rugby correspondent. Fifty years on, the four key ingredients for oval-ball nirvana remain largely unchanged.

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