We’ve all heard of fly-halves that may play 12 or 15, hookers that may play 7 and even within the case of Ben Earl, back-rowers that may play 13, however opensides that may play 1958? Sweden worldwide Vaa Iuta Fryxell should lay declare to having had essentially the most uncommon quantity on his again, probably within the historical past of Check rugby, when he took to the sector on the weekend.
Fryxell and the remainder of his teammates performed their Rugby Europe Trophy sport away to Luxembourg in package unexpectedly borrowed from the second crew of a Dutch Fourth Division membership after a collection of cancelled flights and mislaid baggage left their pre-match preparations in tatters.
Funding points meant that Sweden couldn’t afford to journey to Luxembourg till Friday, the day earlier than the sport, and by then, they’d already misplaced the beginning loosehead Viktor Cordes, to a virus. The Stockholm flight, which had eight gamers and the supervisor, physio and analyst on board, in addition to all of the coaching gear and match gear, baled out on take-off because of a technical downside.
With restricted direct flights into Luxembourg from Sweden, the travelling celebration needed to break up into three and journey to Luxembourg through Amsterdam, Hamburg and Frankfurt, and didn’t arrive within the crew lodge to affix the remainder of the squad, who had travelled from completely different components of Europe, till midnight.
It was at this level that it was found that every one the crew’s package had been misplaced in transit and was unlikely to be situated earlier than the 18:00 kick off on the Stade de Luxembourg stadium.
🇸🇪 v 🇱🇺 TRY! Sweden are main in that trophy sport in opposition to Luxembourg pic.twitter.com/DCQTt1ERbq
— Rugby Europe (@rugby_europe) March 29, 2025
Ever-resourceful, head coach Alex Laybourne, who’d flown with Nottingham/Leicester prop Ale Loman from Stansted in England, rang the Swedish sevens supervisor, Richard van den Broek, who he knew was a four-hour drive away within the Netherlands, to see if he may discover a resolution.
Fortunately, van den Broek picked up the cellphone regardless of the late hour and by 5am on Saturday, 13 hours earlier than kick-off, he’d scrambled some package collectively that was closest in resemblance to the Swedish nationwide crew colors of yellow and blue, with Nijmegen-based Dutch Fourth Division membership, The Wasps, coming to their rescue.
Unsurprisingly, the package was a hotch-potch of various sizes and included a number of quantity 1s and in addition, probably essentially the most uncommon quantity ever seen on a crew sheet in Check rugby, 1958.
Laybourne picks up the story …”There have been three no1s, so we needed to tape on an 8 and a 9 to make an 18 and a 19, and the second-row Adrian Wadden needed to put on 12 as a result of Tim Johansson needed to put on the No4 shirt because it was the one one left that might match him. So Tim performed fly-half carrying No4 in his fiftieth cap, and Tezza (Fryxell) ended up with 1958.
“I feel matchday squads are made up of twenty-two gamers at that stage of Dutch rugby, and so they solely wanted a twenty third each time they went on tour, in order that they picked 1958. I feel it might need been the 12 months the membership was based, as a substitute of a No23. When Tezza scored the primary attempt, the match commissioner requested what quantity he was, and once I informed him, the admin individuals behind him thought we have been taking the mick.”
A handful of gamers needed to put on their very own shorts, and Luxembourg lent their opponents a set of socks to put on. Regardless of wanting like a rag-tag outfit, Sweden’s gamers stored it collectively to serve up a convincing 57-18 win and keep their 100 per cent document within the competitors. Captain and outside-centre, Alex Kalling-Smith, scored a brace of tries to take his total tally to twenty from 25 appearances and transfer to inside one attempt of Sweden’s all-time main attempt scorer, Ian Gowland.
“In the end, an important factor was that every one 23 gamers had arrived by the point we had the crew assembly on the morning of the match. We stated simply go on the market and play a Swedish model of rugby, and everybody is aware of it’s you and it doesn’t matter concerning the shirt. I used to be actually happy with how they went about it,” stated Laybourne, who will hope he by no means has to expertise one other weekend fairly prefer it once more.
Sweden are at the moment at their all-time excessive of thirtieth within the World Rugby rankings and face Poland, who’re additionally unbeaten, of their last fixture. Win that on 12 April, and the Trophy title will likely be theirs for the primary time in historical past.
“I feel the enjoying potential of this group is to get into the Championship and be a aggressive Championship facet. I feel we’re able to doing that,” added the Englishman.
