All Blacks: Prop without fear or favour

Owen Franks is known for the strength of his running as well as his tackling, but the scrum is his main concern. Photo / Paul Estcourt

Owen Franks is known for his ferocious tackling but earns his corn anchoring the eight-man set-piece, writes Dylan Cleaver

From the base of Owen Franks' neck to the small of his back is a tattoo of an anchor.

It's not the sort of thing that would make you think, "He's a keeper", if your daughter walked through the front door with him on her arm, but for a tighthead prop it's an oddly comforting motif.

Franks, 23, grew up in Motueka and Lyttelton. He is from fishing stock, and the anchor is a nod in the direction of his seafaring heritage.

"My uncle, dad and granddad were fisherman. It's nothing deeply personal or anything like that, I just thought it would be pretty cool to get that done."

The anchor could just as easily explain his role in the team.

It is upon his ridiculously broad shoulders that the All Blacks scrum will be set. Tighthead prop is one of the game's more curious roles. They are rarely noteworthy unless things are going wrong (as they did in the recent Tri-Nations test against South Africa in Port Elizabeth, a test Franks did not suit up for).

Instead they make their name by maintaining a ramrod-straight back as 900kg of muscle in the opposition tries to push you off the ball.

Franks has made a name, also, for his ferocious tackling in open play and sound ball-handling, but make no mistake, it is anchoring the eight-man set-piece where he earns his corn.

"You can do all those things well, but if your scrum didn't go well that day, it's a pretty hollow feeling. Set-piece first, other things come second."

Franks gets a bit edgy waiting for that first scrum. Even if a knock-on came from the kick-off, that's too long to wait in Franks' world. Instant gratification is what he's after.

"It's a bit hard when there's a lot of running early on and suddenly 15 minutes is up and you haven't had a scrum. You're trying to do your work around the track, but always in the back of your mind you're thinking about what you have to do at that first scrum."

It's a tough man's role, so the image of Franks in tears is hard to reconcile. Mind you, you have to go a long way back to find them. His earliest memories of rugby are from Motueka, in a different code.

"Playing league for the Motueka Tigers," Franks recalls. "I was pretty young and was keen on tackling my own teammates. I used to get told off for that. I also remember crying when my brother got all the trophies."

Brother being fellow All Black frontrower Ben, of course, more than three years older.

The competitiveness over man of the match trophies has dissipated and has instead been focused on their ferocious training habits that include the lifting of eye-popping weights.

"We try to push each other to get better. It never gets really personal or anything like that. There's not that many times when we've come to blows," Franks drolly notes.

Their work ethic is universally admired, although their tendency to go above and beyond what is considered sensible in the free weights room has not always been met with glee by team trainers.

"Early on they tried to rein us in a bit, but now they see how hard we're working and the results we're getting the [trainers] work with us."

To sustain the energy required for such intense training, Franks will eat six meals a day, seven if he's feeling a bit light - his ideal playing weight is a tick under 120kg.

It must have meant a bank-busting food bill in the Franks household, but it was all part of a masterplan.

"My dad, Ken, always pushed me, even from a young age. He always convinced me I was going to be an All Black," Franks recalls.

"The first goal was to be a professional and I probably first started to really believe I could do that when I made the Christchurch Boys' High School 1st XV when I was 16. I started to really believe."

To the point where he genuinely has no idea what he would be if he was not a rugby player. He pauses, considers the idea, then gives up.

"I don't know. It's a hard question because I've always wanted to be a rugby player."

Which is why he takes nothing for granted, why he keeps working as hard or harder than anyone else, why he treats every loosehead prop the same, whether it be an ITM Cup second-stringer or England's Andy Sheridan.

He respects them all, but fears none.

"I don't mean that in a disrespectful way, but any loosehead you're going to come up against is different," he says. "That's what makes scrums hard - no two are really the same.

"What many people might consider to be an ordinary loosehead could be difficult for me and it works the other way too. The moment I get complacent about anyone is the day I'll get pushed over, which is something I don't want to happen.

"I'm not scared of anyone and I'm not [dismissive] of anyone. I treat everyone the same."

There's something else about Franks that is slightly disconcerting. He, along with Crusaders teammate Sam Whitelock, weren't even born when New Zealand lifted the Webb Ellis for the first and only time.

"I've always known we've won one, but it would be awesome to be part of a team that finally won again."