Woody Allen once joked he’d failed to make the chess team because of his height.
Selection can be a subjective matter.
Rewind all the way back to 1993 when Wales played Scotland at Murrayfield and took an absolute pasting, losing 20-0 and barely offering an argument. The pack, in particular, was smashed. In the aftermath, there were suggestions every single member of the forward unit might be under scrutiny for the next game — dropped en bloc, even. It was that bad.
Nothing of the sort happened. When the team to face Ireland in the next Five Nations round was announced, the only casualty was Wayne Proctor on the left wing. The then Wales coach Alan Davies never was a man to be swayed by public opinion. He made up his own mind on such matters.
Wayne Pivac has been bang on with some of his selection calls of late, among them the picks of Dan Lydiate and Tommy Reffell to tour South Africa. You can read more about how well Reffell played here.
But his blind spot when it comes to Ospreys prop Nicky Smith takes some explaining. At 28, Smith is in his prime, with 41 caps and a World Cup campaign behind him. His play around the field has always been excellent, with the Swansea-born player good over the ball, a solid defender and an effective carrier with his ability to twist out of tackles at pace.
His display in the home game against Munster last season suggested there is not much wrong with his scrummaging. Then, facing Ireland international John Ryan, he forced a number of penalties in one of the finest displays of his career. By any standard in Wales, it was one of the individual performances of the season.
Did it do him much good in the eyes of the Welsh selectors? No, it did not.
Smith hasn’t played for Wales since the first Test against Argentina last summer, a match which ended in a 20-20 draw. The Welsh No. 1 that day topped the tackle charts with 12 hits and no misses. Awarding him a 6/10 in his WalesOnline player ratings, Delme Parfitt said: “Some huge hits which helped balance the physical battle. Energy and work-rate was second to nobody in the Welsh pack.”
RugbyPass gave him a joint-highest mark of 6.5/10 for the Welsh starters that day, saying: “As props go, Smith is a real competitor over the ball and picked the Pumas’ pockets here more than once. Tackled his guts out.”
Nothing obviously career-ending at Test level, then.
But, since then, three Wales squads have been picked and Smith hasn’t appeared in any of them, with Wales using Rhodri Jones, Wyn Jones and Rhys Carre as their looseheads in the autumn and naming Gareth Thomas ahead of Jones in the Six Nations and for their tour of South Africa.
What’s been going on?
Former Wales prop Graham Price said: “It’s hard to read selectors’ minds, and people will have their own views of players. When Nicky Smith burst onto the scene his work around the field caught the eye and seemed to take him forward a bit.
“Rightly or wrongly, the feeling among some, then, was that his scrummaging may not have been quite as strong as the rest of his game. I don’t really buy the idea of plenty in modern rugby that if a prop isn’t the complete article by 23 — strong in the scrums and good around the field — he should be discarded.
“Back in the day there was a feeling that props didn’t mature fully until they were 27 or older, and I still think there’s something in that because players become more experienced, develop physically and improve their techniques.
“Smith seemed to improve as a scrummager last season. It’s become a feature of his game but the irony is he can’t get in the Wales team anymore.
“I’m not saying he’s the be-all and end-all. But it's up to him to show what he can do in the coming months. All he can do is perform as well as he can on the field and hope the selectors’ change their minds over him or a chance comes along through an injury to someone else. If it does, then he has to take it.”
It certainly doesn’t seem eight years since Smith made his Wales debut, against Fiji.
In his second Test, he came on against New Zealand and made an immediate impact. “When Nicky burst on the scene, he was unbelievable,” his Ospreys team-mate Scott Baldwin is on record as saying. “He came off the bench against the All Blacks in a game where we drilled their scrum. Unfortunately, Nicky tore his pectoral muscle and was out for a while.
“He seems to have been in and out of the squad since, having really good moments but then going back to the region and not being picked for whatever reason for the next Wales campaign.
“You can’t be sure what the thinking is. But I just think Nicky needs to stick at it and try to play as well as he did against Munster in every game. Consistency is key for selectors — I know, because I struggled on that front at times. You can’t be in and out. The challenge is to play well in every game. I have no doubt Nicky will respond.”
Maybe it's a case of Wales being happy with their other loosehead options. Gareth Thomas has just completed an excellent tour of South Africa, Wyn Jones is a Lion and Rhys Carre a player the selectors evidently feel can develop into something special.
But Smith will hope form counts for something.
There is no power deficit in his game. Two years ago, there was a list published of bench press records in world rugby. Smith’s then Ospreys team-mate Gheorghe Gajion sat at the top of it, with the so-called Beast from the East — Moldova, since you ask — said to be capable of pushing 230kg off his chest. Smith was in fifth place with a best of 200kg. In old money, that’s 31st 7lb. In any language, that is a lot of weight for the ex-Swansea RFC player to be chucking about. There’s a lot more to being a prop than the ability to lift weights, for sure, but having the kind of strength Smith boast isn’t a negative for a man in his line of work.
The way things stand, he faces a tough battle to win a place at the next World Cup. But never say never. He just has to keep on knocking on Pivac’s door and hope the coach will answer.
It’s not wildly out of the question. Is it?
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