Stephen Jones salutes rugby's flyers, and in particular Biarritz's Takudzwa Ngwenya, in The Sunday Times.
"You can measure raw pace with a stopwatch or an electronic timer. Without such accuracy, your personal impression and even your sense of joy will do. When Jeremy Guscott took a pass from Stuart Barnes in the 1993 England v Scotland match at Twickenham and devastated the visitors’ defence with a diagonal run before putting in Rory Underwood at the corner, I swear it was the fastest I had seen a rugby player move.
"Had Guscott decided to dedicate himself to athletics, he could have been a contender. “I only did the sprint training so that the big forwards wouldn’t catch me,” he says.
"Who were the fastest men he knew? He chooses David Trick, a Bath and England colleague who ran a searing 10.4sec for the 100m when still a schoolboy, and Martin Offiah, the dual-code wing. “Offiah was seriously quick. Seriously. It was like trying to tackle a ghost.”
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