Through the Ages - Hooker

Just prior to this season beginning three stalwarts of Taunton RFC – Jack Matthews, Gerry Winter and Richard Walford – sat down to pick their best post-War Taunton XV. Each home game this season we’ll be putting forward their selections of the outstanding players position by position from the last 70 years. Do you agree with them?

Week Two: Hooker

Jack kicked off the debate by extolling the virtues of current Titans skipper George Gosling (65 appearances), saying that the PE teacher is a very good club man, a good player, is consistent and has some personality about him. Gareth Cooper, a former England colt, played 151 games in the number 2 shirt whilst John Gatford (280 appearances) was also a shining light in the early days of the move to Hyde Park. Other names came into the equation including Mike Newport and Jim Clatworthy (both with over 400 games), the latter being especially strongly considered by the committee for being the consummate club man, a local farmer who played in excess of 300 games for Taunton. 

In the end, the discussion settled not on Clatworthy but on another North Petherton man. Dan Frost played in a variety of positions at Taunton, including in the centre and the back row but it is as a hooker that he has gone on to play in the Premiership with Wasps and now Exeter Chiefs. Frost played in 64 games for Titans, scoring 16 tries and, said the selectors, is not just a great player but also “a hell of a character”. At just 26 he might just find himself in the prime position to make a case for an England call-up in the Six Nations should the Rugby World Cup go as badly as suggested for the men in white which would make him the first Taunton player in the professional era to go on to represent England.

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