Read Leads Fight Against Rise Of The Machines

Put the fire back into Edinburgh Cockers, but try to avoid any nose rubbing.

- Peter Jackson

Kieran Read stands out in a land of giants for a reason other than his status as leader of the best team on the planet. His name springs to mind over the chorus of international coaches babbling on about the Test arena having escalated into a 23-man game. In that event, nobody has told the captain of New Zealand... and nobody will.

The obsession with substituting around five-eighths of every pack in every international does not apply to Read. The Global Positioning System (GPS) may have been behind Ross Moriarty’s absurdly early exit against England but no machine will ever tell the All Blacks to give their skipper the shepherd’s crook.

In a Six Nations where coaches talk of “emptying the tank” as if certain players in certain positions are not fuelled to go the distance, Read stands apart – the supreme 80minute man, the one who never runs out of gas.

At a time when more and more forwards seem programmed for no longer than an hour at most, the double World Cup winners assume that their totemic No.8 will be there from start to finish, and at every point in between.