2010-2020 - The Decade's XV by position

 Below is a list of the fifteen players who made more league starts in a single position than anyone else. Taken using all league fixtures from the 1st Jan 2010 until the 31st Dec 2020 - including all playoff semi finals and finals.

1 – Loosehead Prop

Joe Marler – Harlequins – 125

The England international leads the loosehead prop category in terms of starts for both his side and the entire league. He featured in a handful of games off the bench before making his first start of the decade in a convincing win over the Chiefs in the 10/11 season. Across a hundred and twenty-five starts plus appearances off the bench Marler scored seven times. His most important came late on in the 11/12 playoff semi final against the Northampton Saints. With the clock ticking down Quins piled into a near fifteen-man maul to push over for a match-winning score, Marler was at the bottom. Two weeks later he featured again as the London club won their first Premiership title beating rivals Leicester. The twenty-nine-year-old would start in two more playoff games in the coming years but he lost both as Quins slipped out of the top four. Marler’s effectiveness and leadership can be seen in the numbers, when starting at loosehead Harlequins boasted a win rate of 61%, considerably up on their 52% that they averaged in terms of all league games across the decade. Of late Marler’s passion and uniqueness has been seen in his exuberant hairstyles and media interviews but at times this has been his downfall mid match. Collecting a total of eleven league yellows and two red cards has made him one of the division’s most serial offenders.

2 – Hooker

Rob Webber – Wasps/Sale/Bath - 135

Featuring for three different sides Rob Webber finished with an impressive one hundred and thirty-five caps. With Wasps he made thirty starts, fifty-four for Sale and fifty-one for Bath (making him the club’s most started hooker over the last decade). Webber featured for Wasps in the very first weekend of the decade, as the then Wycombe based side battled it out with the Newcastle Falcons. Tom Lindsay slowly overtook Webber as the starting hooker though and he moved north to Sale before then heading to the West country at Bath. Across his trio of clubs, the hooker was sin-binned five times (including once from the bench), a miserly total for a front-row forward. Dylan Hartley who made ninety-five starts for Northampton was sent off twice and sin-binned five times whilst David Paice of London Irish made just over a hundred starts but was red carded twice (two yellows once) and given eleven yellows. He was also wasn’t the most prolific try scoring hooker, he scored fourteen in total, seven for Sale, two for Wasps, and five for Bath.

3 – Tighthead Prop

Dan Cole – Leicester – 112

When it comes to single club appearances for a tighthead Cole is a comfortable winner, his one hundred and twelve is way ahead of Worcester’s Nic Schonert’s seventy-three in second. Cole also comes out as the league’s most started number three even when combining stats from across multi club players. He is also one of a handful of players that featured in their club’s first and last league games of the decade. In total the Tigers played two hundred and twenty-eight league fixtures between January 1^st 2010 and December 31^st 2019, meaning Cole started just under half of every game his side played. Add in his appearances from the bench and he comes in comfortably over the 50% mark. Cole played in all but one of the Tigers’ twelve playoff matches, the first four he was on the bench still overshadowed by Martin Castrogiovanni. The next two seasons saw Leicester make the final again and although they won one and lost one, Cole started all four games both semi-finals and finals. The Tigers made the semis for another consecutive four years but lost every time; Cole starting all of them bar Northampton in 2014 where he was completely absent.  Incredibly for a man who has been named in the matchday twenty-three almost a hundred and fifty times the Leicester stalwart only scored one league try, it came in a 21-11 win versus Bath in 2015. Perhaps even more surprising though is that despite his perceived reputation, Cole was only sin-binned four times in league matches, and never once received a red card.  

4 – Second Row

Stuart Hooper – Bath – 97

Narrowly missing out on a century no one made more starts in a number four shirt than the now Bath head coach Stuart Hooper. He featured in Bath’s first game of the decade and kept his place for another twenty-eight straight league matches. Peter Short was the man to end his run and despite continuing to feature fairly regularly any major run of back-to-back starts was prevented by the presence of Dave Attwood and Dominic Day. Unlike Hooper who only played four, both these shared their game time across the lock positions. Regular game time returned at the start of the 2013/14 season and continued for two entire seasons. He started 87% of league matches including a trip to Twickenham in Bath’s only Premiership final of the decade. After defeat to Saracens that day he only started eight more games, Charlie Ewels and later a combination of Luke Charteris and Elliott Stooke, began to push him slowly into his current role. Despite this though Hooper’s ninety-seven makes him Bath’s highest starter for any position across the last decade, narrowly beating Rokoduguni on the wing by one. In terms of in-game measurables Hooper wasn’t particularly flashy, he scored two league tries and was sin-binned twice, the good news for Bath was that when either of these events happened, they never lost.

5 – Second Row

Christian Day – Northampton – 119

Sporting his famous red scrum hat Christian day racked up a hundred and nineteen starts at number five. He started 53% of all games that the Saints played in a position he particularly dominated between 2010 and 2015, although he kept playing until May 2018. Unlike players like Courtney Lawes who made starts across the forwards Day made only one other away from his favoured five, when he once started at four. Impressively the former Stade and Sale man didn’t receive a single card across any of his league games; substitution appearances included. To add to his cool temperament Day also had a fondness, at least for a lock, of the white line. He bagged eleven tries across five seasons, scoring three in the 12/13, 13/14 and 15/16 seasons and one each in the 14/15 and 16/17 campaigns. Day started all of Northampton’s playoff games apart from the two that led to their only Premiership title in 2014, on these occasions he was on the bench as the Saints first beat Leicester and then Saracens at Twickenham. The Saints only won forty-nine games away (including away semi-finals) all decade, thirty of which came with Christian Day in the side.

6 – Blind-side Flanker

Jamie Gibson – Leicester/Northampton/London Irish – 89

Compared with the other flank the number six has seen far more residents come and go across the league. The result meaning the eighty-nine starts of Jamie Gibson is enough to take the coveted accolade of most starts at blind-side. Gibson began at London Irish under Toby Booth where he was eyed as a replacement to Steffon Armitage. He made thirty-four league appearances in the back-row but only thirteen of these were at number six, instead preferring the other flank. His appearances impressed the hierarchy at Welford Road and he moved to Leicestershire where he added thirty more starts being used almost entirely as a blind-side. It was at his current club though where the bulk of his appearances come from, the remaining forty-six coming in Saints colours. When starting at six Gibson saw his sides record win rates far over their decade averages, an improvement to any team on that basis. In terms of scoring the former Classics student collected eleven in total, one at Irish, three for the Tigers and seven for Northampton where he looks set to continue as one of the cornerstone of their back-row.

7 – Open-side Flanker

Julian Salvi – Bath/Leicester/Exeter - 116

Another three-club man Julian Salvi, like Hooper, is another who has since moved into the world of coaching. The Australian made the bulk of these at Leicester where he commanded the shirt in a seventy-six-appearance stint. He made a further twenty-eight with Exeter where he now coaches, all added to the twelve he’d accrued at the first of his clubs; Bath. Salvi’s tenure at Leicester began in 2011 where he played four seasons for the club, winning one title. Across those seasons he started 81% of Leicester’s games at open-side playing right up until his departure to Devon. Having moved to Sandy Park, Salvi was reunited with Thomas Waldrom whom he’d played with at the Tigers. Over 40% of his starts were made with the big number eight starting alongside him. Unlike ‘The Tank’ Salvi didn’t score all that many tries, he got nine in total, with two for Exeter and the rest for Leicester. His appearances spread across three clubs meant he was able to leapfrog the high-flying start counts of two single club men, David Seymour of Sale on a hundred and thirteen and Will Welch of the Falcons who started a hundred and nine times.

8 – Number Eight

Thomas Waldrom – Leicester/Exeter – 119

Like Salvi, Thomas Waldrom was another to rack up the starts courtesy of the Leicester-Exeter combination. Waldrom nicknamed ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ started at the base of the scrum fifty- one times for Leicester and was in fierce competition for more starts with Jordan Crane who was eventually favoured. Owing to this the New Zealand born forward moved to Exeter where he enjoyed far more regularity to his play. Not only did he score two tries in his first Chiefs start but he also started every league game of the 14/15 season. He continued to be a regular for the next two years only missing out on starting eleven times in a forty-six-game period. His game time eventually began to drop off as Sam Simmonds rose through the ranks and subsequently, with his age in mind, he returned to his homeland. It is Waldrom’s try scoring prowess that he will be best remembered for though. At Leicester he scored a very respectable thirteen, averaging a score every 3.9 starts. During his tenure with the Chiefs he took this to a whole new level. He amassed a haul of forty-two, topping the league’s try scoring charts twice and averaging a try every 1.6 starts. To date he remains the record Premiership try scorer for Exeter and was twelve ahead of Ollie Woodburn at the turn of the decade. Although he was part of season conquering teams with Leicester, Waldrom never started and won a Premiership final with the Tigers. However this changed at Exeter where he was part of the history making Chiefs team that beat Wasps.  

9 – Scrum-half

Danny Care – Harlequins – 136

Another one club man, Danny Care narrowly edged a heavily competitive category in the scrum-half position. Ben Youngs recorded a hundred and twenty-eight starts and Care like him, played in their side’s first and last game of the decade. Not far behind him was Joe Simpson who enjoyed a hundred and twenty starts with mainly Wasps but more recently Gloucester. Richard Wigglesworth and Lee Dickson also made a century of starts. Care started 62% of all of Harlequins games, an achievement that saw him feature in Quins’ one league triumph in 2012. His involvement with the starting lineup rarely dropped off and the most consecutive games he ever went without a start was an impressively low eight. In such cases it was often injury or international callups that kept him away as oppose to lack of favour or form. Not only was he the most started number nine of the decade but Care also finished as the top scoring one. Forty-seven tries in total made him the Quins’ leading scorer of the decade, Mike Brown in second who has been around for a similar time has thirty-eight. Ben Youngs for comparison in the scrum-half class managed a comparatively weak twenty-two. Harlequins have a very apparent form split in their regular season home and away form, at the Stoop (and home allocated games) they won 69% of their games, whilst on the road they performed at a much lower 34%. Care’s win rates in games he started reflect this, 70% at home and 44% away, although they are slightly higher. Off the thirty-two he’s started on the road since the 14/15 season Harlequins have only won nine.

10 – Fly-half

Stephen Myler – London Irish/Northampton – 143

Having made the switch to rugby union in 2006 Myler has enjoyed a near decade of dominance over the Northampton Saints shirt only really relinquishing it at the end of the 17/18 season when he was readying a move on. His destination was London Irish and he helped the Exiles back to the Premiership making him the only player on the list to have played a Championship season in the last decade. Having returned Irish to the top flight he then added a further five starts to his a hundred and thirty-eight he’d amassed with Saints. These were crucial in putting him three ahead of the second placed Gareth Steenson of Exeter. Like Danny Care, Myler’s many starts for Northampton meant he began a huge 62% of his side’s league games last decade. Myler wasn’t a particularly prolific try-scoring ten, he scored just nine for Northampton with one coming in the infamous ‘Dylan Hartley’ Twickenham final against Leicester. He’s still yet to score a Premiership try for London Irish. Myler traded more in twos and threes when it came to scoring and although he never won the golden boat, on three separate occasions he finished second in the top point scorer’s table. His biggest haul coming in the 13/14 season when Northampton won the title, he amassed an impressive two hundred and forty-five (beaten by five by Andy Goode) that would have seen him finish on top in most other seasons.

11 – Left wing

Chris Wyles – Saracens – 81

The only player from a country that doesn’t register as a Tier 1 nation, Wyles the American made a total of a hundred and forty-seven starts for Saracens. Just over half of these, eighty-one, came on the left wing. These were enough to put him slightly ahead of the likes of Matt Jess, Matt Banahan and Jonny May who narrowly missed out. Wyles started Saracens opening game of the decade on the left wing against Leicester but he never really held the same spot down for a prolonged period of time. In the 15/16 season he made nine consecutive starts on the left wing, the most he’d ever make back to back. His versatility made him a key player for Saracens but ultimately held him back from reaching the century of starts in a single position. The currency of wingers is tries and Wyles wasn’t shy of the whitewash, no one scored more than his nine playoff tries, helped by the fact Saracens spent more time playing fixtures of that kind than any other side. Outside of knockout rugby he scored a further thirty-five tries meaning that remarkably his potency was far superior in the latter stages of the season. In normal season time he averaged a try every 4.2 starts, whilst in the playoffs he boasts a far greater try every 1.3 starts. These statistics exclude appearances from the bench but even with them the gap between remains just as large. However, one achievement that did escape Wyles in his Premiership career last decade was that of the hat-trick. He scored two tries on seven separate occasions but never found the third.

12 – Inside-centre

Brad Barritt – Saracens – 157

Likely one of the players you first think of when it comes to longevity, Barritt has churned out starts in the centres all decade. He was another to play in both Saracen’s first and last games and in every full season completed in the last decade not once did he fail to make it into double figures. Seen as a more defensive minded centre Barritt scored twelve league tries and despite a huge amount of game time which was almost solely in the twelve shirt (one start at thirteen and four appearances on the bench) he was only sin-binned once. Where Barritt started at inside-centre Saracens won on average 77.1% of the games they played, when he started at home the North London side lost only seven matches all decade. Playing for as long as he did in a team that dominated English rugby allowed Barritt to start in fifteen of the seventeen playoff matches Sarries played in, including seven finals, a record he shares with Alex Goode. Despite his long-standing affiliation with the twelve shirt Barritt very rarely had the same man outside of him. Other than Marcelo Bosch thirty times and Duncan Taylor twenty, none of the other eleven players who joined him in the centres partnered him for more than twelve games. In fact, the most consecutive games he went with the same partner was seven, doing it with both Chris Wyles and Adam Powell.

13 – Outside-centre

Jonathan Joseph – London Irish/Bath – 101

Joseph reached his century of outside-centre starts in the penultimate game of the decade. Playing for Bath he bought up the milestone against London Irish, the side where he kicked things off with twenty-six starts at the beginning of the decade. The British and Irish lion as he now is, moved to Bath for the start of the 13/14 season having scored thirteen tries with the Exiles. Joseph went straight into the starting lineup at the Rec and he scored on his home debut season as he began a partnership with other centre Kyle Eastmond who he played twenty-two of his first thirty games alongside. His try against Leicester was the first of twenty he scored for Bath, the last coming in the final game of 2019 to help narrowly beat Sale. Of those tries he scored it was by the Avon that JJ was most prolific, 80% of them coming at the Rec, including five in four consecutive home games during the 14/15 instalment of the Premiership. Another feather in Joseph’s cap during his decade in England’s top flight is the fact that not once did he receive a card, centre is perhaps not the most confrontational position but given the shear number of appearances he made this is an impressive achievement nonetheless. At twenty-nine its unlikely he will play another full decade but there remains plenty of time in his career to add to his affiliation with the thirteen jersey.

14 – Right wing

Charlie Sharples – Gloucester – 142

The only man to feature with a link to the red and white strip of Gloucester, Sharples finished the decade with a hundred and fifty-seven starts for the Kingsholm based outfit. Fifteen came at fullback with the rest bar one coming on the right wing. Unlike the eighty-one that saw Wyles claim the other wing position this side of the back-line featured far bigger numbers. Chris Ashton and Christian Wade both made centuries which would have usurped Wyles but here on the right their efforts were still comfortably beaten by Sharples’ a hundred and forty-two. Needless to say, with that many starts and playing on the wing, the flyer who was actually born in Hong Kong finished the decade as Gloucester’s leading league try scorer. He scored fifty-two in the end including a hattrick on the final day of the season against Sale in 2011. Only the aforementioned Wade scored more league tries for a single team over the past ten years, Sharples was comfortably beaten though with the now prospective NFL player amounting a huge eighty-two. Of the fourteen other teams he played against only Leeds were fortunate enough not to concede a try to him, in Sharples defence he did only face them three times, once from fullback and twice from the substitute bench. So, in terms of starting on the right wing he scored against every side he faced, particularly enjoying Northampton who he dotted down eight times against.

15 – Fullback

Alex Goode – Saracens – 159

No-one made any more starts in a single position than Alex Goode did at fullback. Goode’s massive total didn’t see him romp to victory in the fifteen tshirt though, Mike Brown finished only five starts behind him and in fact due to far few playoff games he actually began a higher percentage of his team’s matches. Starting in January 2011, Goode started forty-one consecutive Premiership games, a run that took him all the way up to late September 2014. It was shortly after this that he experienced his longest run outside the starting lineup, a ten-game stay. Goode also acted as goal kicker on numerous occasions as well as playing ten on fifteen occasions. In total he scored twenty-seven tries, only beaten by two out and out fullbacks; old rival Mike Brown and Ben Foden of Northampton. His absence from the England set up of late as been well debated, with some claiming his form being overlooked by Eddie Jones has been a major mistake by the Australian. The man preferred, Elliott Daly, only started twenty games at fifteen for Wasps, and a mere two since the end of 2014. England’s loss has been Sarries’ gain though and Goode’s longevity as a backline threat has seen them win five titles out of a possible ten and reach seven finals.