“Islanders do things no Anglo-Saxon workhorse can” AS A YOUNGER player, I had deep, unsettling yearnings. I had ambition. I would spend my spare time poring over VHS tapes of players who played this odd game as it should be played. I would try to emulate them. I spent years incrementally improving my laughable squat PB, doing extra sprint work, vainly trying to grow a sidestep, in the forlorn hope of one day busting a tackle.
I obsessed over grip strength, and endlessly practised manipulating the ball with one hand, but my offload tally never rose above two a season. Eventually, after exhausting every avenue, finding myself down the cul-de-sac of disappointment, I resigned myself to my fate. I was always going to be an honest plodder, so wind your…