Chris Hewett talks Tri-Nations, Tigers and dissertations with Pumas prop Marcos Ayerza in The Independent.
"The "good cop, bad cop" tradition among rugby's propping community is one of long standing, stretching back at least 80 years to the Louw brothers, Fanie and Boy, who played for the Springboks in an age when self-policing at the scrum was all the rage.
"Today, Leicester are taking it to extremes. On one side of their front row is Martin Castrogiovanni, who famously decked a basketball coach as a means of convincing his mother that he should be allowed to play union instead. On the other? Marcos Ayerza, who spends his spare time playing Bach and Chopin on the piano.
"A highly developed appreciation of classical music is no guarantee of civilised behaviour: Hannibal Lecter was almost as interested in the labyrinthine structure of the Goldberg Variations as he was in his victims' internal organs. But Ayerza is almost too good to be true: an accomplished linguist, he is currently completing a degree in business studies – "It's more difficult for me in English rather than Spanish," he admits, "but I'm looking forward to writing my dissertation" – and is a rugby romantic who does not see the game purely in terms of the money he can make from it. A renaissance man in the Tigers' pack? Wonders will never cease."
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