Chunk

More than a decade since his retirement, we caught up with Allan Jacobsen, the larger-than-life former Scotland prop

- TOM ENGLISH

ALLAN 'CHUNK' JACOBSEN'S story might have been over long before it really got started. The life and times of one of Scotland's most beloved rugby players might have had an abrupt ending had it not been for Todd Blackadder fishing him out of the drink on Manly Beach that day.

Chunk-named after a character in the comedy film The Goonies - went on to have a storied career for Edinburgh and Scotland, an old-school prop in the professional age, a player with a heart the size of a house, a scrummager who could shift, a warm character who everybody identified with.

Without trying, Chunk was a human magnet. He was funny and loveable and people wanted to be around him. When he got the ball in his hands on the rugby field, folk got to their feet.

Brick walls wouldn't have stopped him on some of those barrelling breaks.

And we saw plenty of them, from his international debut in 2002 to his final cap a decade later, an era that brought 65 caps. As a kid, just one would have done him.

But back to Manly in the summer of 2004. "Oh aye, that was mad," he laughs. "I was in a very tricky situation. It was a Scotland tour and we went across to the ocean for a recovery session.

Some of the boys were mucking about but I was kinda staying out of the way because I'm not a great swimmer.

"I didn't know it but the stretch of the beach was famous for riptides. I'm bobbing away, no bother. The water's up to my waist. Bobbing, bobbing. Next thing, the water's up to my nipples. Then it's up to my neck. I'm panicking.

*F**ing hell, I'm 30 metres from everybody else all of a sudden'.

I went to swim and got nowhere.

"Todd was our forwards coach at the time and he sees the panic on my face. 'You alright, Chunk?' I nodded to say, 'aye'.