Former England and Lions stalwart cut an impressive frame in South Africa in 1997
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The Sunday Telegraph's Paul Ackford wonders whether the English game has lost a key element?
"Twenty-odd years ago England used to send their biggest players out on to the pitch first. As the changing room door opened, especially in the bear pit that was the Parc des Princes, Dooley, Richards, Teague and Skinner followed Carling into the tunnel.
"It was team policy, a deliberate attempt to intimidate the opposition by sending the roughest, toughest, ugliest brutes out at the head of the queue.
"Ian McGeechan was of the same opinion later in the decade when he appointed Martin Johnson to lead the 1997 Lions to South Africa. McGeechan wanted Springbok skipper Gary Teichmann to look up into the face of the taller Johnson at the coin toss before each of the three Tests. It was that elemental.
"On Wednesday Stuart Lancaster revealed the forwards who will do battle on England’s behalf in the forthcoming Six Nations and on the tour to South Africa in the summer. With the greatest respect to that bunch, when compared to the likes of Dooley, Johnson, Cotton, Teague, Blakeway, Colclough, Chilcott, Grewcock, Dallaglio and the rest, there isn’t an enforcer among them, which begs the question: where have all the hard men gone?"
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