Catalogue of logistical mishaps leads to crazy numbers in Test match

We’ve all heard of fly-halves that can play 12 or 15, hookers that can play 7 and even in the case of Ben Earl, back-rowers that can play 13, but opensides that can play 1958? Sweden international Vaa Iuta Fryxell must lay claim to having had the most unusual number on his back, possibly in the history of Test rugby, when he took to the field at the weekend.

Fryxell and the rest of his teammates played their Rugby Europe Trophy game away to Luxembourg in kit hastily borrowed from the second team of a Dutch Fourth Division club after a series of cancelled flights and mislaid luggage left their pre-match preparations in tatters.

Funding issues meant that Sweden couldn’t afford to travel to Luxembourg until Friday, the day before the game, and by then, they’d already lost the starting loosehead Viktor Cordes, to a virus. The Stockholm flight, which had eight players and the manager, physio and analyst on board, as well as all the training gear and match gear, baled out on take-off due to a technical problem.

With limited direct flights into Luxembourg from Sweden, the travelling party had to split into three and travel to Luxembourg via Amsterdam, Hamburg and Frankfurt, and didn’t arrive in the team hotel to join the rest of the squad, who had travelled from different parts of Europe, until midnight.

It was at this point that it was discovered that all the team’s kit had been lost in transit and was unlikely to be located before the 18:00 kick off at the Stade de Luxembourg stadium.

🇸🇪 v 🇱🇺 TRY! Sweden are leading in that trophy game against Luxembourg pic.twitter.com/DCQTt1ERbq

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Ever-resourceful, head coach Alex Laybourne, who’d flown with Nottingham/Leicester prop Ale Loman from Stansted in England, rang the Swedish sevens manager, Richard van den Broek, who he knew was a four-hour drive away in the Netherlands, to see if he could find a solution.

Luckily, van den Broek picked up the phone despite the late hour and by 5am on Saturday, 13 hours before kick-off, he’d scrambled some kit together that was closest in resemblance to the Swedish national team colours of yellow and blue, with Nijmegen-based Dutch Fourth Division club, The Wasps, coming to their rescue.

Unsurprisingly, the kit was a hotch-potch of different sizes and included multiple number 1s and also, possibly the most unusual number ever seen on a team sheet in Test rugby, 1958.

Laybourne picks up the story …”There were three no1s, so we had to tape on an 8 and a 9 to make an 18 and a 19, and the second-row Adrian Wadden had to wear 12 because Tim Johansson had to wear the No4 shirt as it was the only one left that could fit him. So Tim played fly-half wearing No4 in his 50th cap, and Tezza (Fryxell) ended up with 1958.

“I think matchday squads are made up of 22 players at that level of Dutch rugby, and they only needed a 23rd whenever they went on tour, so they picked 1958. I think it might have been the year the club was founded, instead of a No23. When Tezza scored the first try, the match commissioner asked what number he was, and when I told him, the admin people behind him thought we were taking the mick.”

A handful of players had to wear their own shorts, and Luxembourg lent their opponents a set of socks to wear. Despite looking like a rag-tag outfit, Sweden’s players kept it together to serve up a convincing 57-18 win and maintain their 100 per cent record in the competition. Captain and outside-centre, Alex Kalling-Smith, scored a brace of tries to take his overall tally to 20 from 25 appearances and move to within one try of Sweden’s all-time leading try scorer, Ian Gowland.

“Ultimately, the most important thing was that all 23 players had arrived by the time we had the team meeting on the morning of the match. We said just go out there and play a Swedish brand of rugby, and everyone knows it is you and it doesn’t matter about the shirt. I was really pleased with how they went about it,” said Laybourne, who will hope he never has to experience another weekend quite like it again.

Sweden are currently at their all-time high of 30th in the World Rugby rankings and face Poland, who are also unbeaten, in their final fixture. Win that on 12 April, and the Trophy title will be theirs for the first time in history.

“I think the playing potential of this group is to get into the Championship and be a competitive Championship side. I think we’re capable of doing that,” added the Englishman.