Swain's challenge to Cunningham

Connoisseurs of the craft of the modern day rugby league hooker might be denied the chance in Cardiff today to compare and contrast two of the best in the business, but Keiron Cunningham and Richard Swain are unlikely to have seen the last of each other this autumn.

With the two due to face each other on five successive weekends, their personal contest was shaping up as a five-round prize-fight. In the red corner, Cunningham of St Helens, Wales and Great Britain; in the black, Swain of New Zealand and Melbourne, en route to Brisbane.

If their first encounter, when Saints met the Kiwis last Friday, was a mere preliminary skirmish, today was supposed to mark the start of the hostilities in earnest.

It was something that the Great Britain coach, David Waite, was never happy about, fearing that it represented an unnecessary risk with one of his key players. What he was presumably not to know was that Cunningham would not get as far as the Welsh team hotel, having aggravated his hand injury doing bench presses on his own before linking up with the party.

"Obviously it's a blow. It would be a blow to any team losing a player like Keiron,'' said the Welsh coach, Neil Kelly, also a hooker in his playing days. "Apart from wanting him to be in my Welsh side, I was looking forward to seeing him and Swain against each other.''

Kelly is now likely to use the Salford half-back, Ian Watson, at hooker at the Millennium Stadium this afternoon, but Cunningham comes close to being irreplaceable.

"There's no one as explosive as Keiron, not even Swain,'' Kelly says. "But that's the beauty of the job. There are a lot of different ways of doing it. I rate Swain very highly. He's the quiet achiever of the New Zealand and Melbourne sides, and probably Brisbane now as well. He just gets the job done and is the perfect straight man for Stacey Jones.''

The good news for Great Britain is that Kelly is confident that Cunningham will be fit for the Test series. Among those hoping that assessment is correct will be Waite's assistant, the former Great Britain hooker and captain, Brian Noble.

Like Waite, Noble sees the contest between Cunningham and Swain as pivotal. "I was brought up on the philosophy that your scrum-half, stand-off and loose forward were the triangle who took you around the field. But there are so many attacking opportunities around the rucks these days that your hooker is as important as any of them.

"There are two great hookers in this series, but I don't think they are all that dissimilar. Keiron's built a bit more powerfully. He's got a great hand-off and leg power. Swain's got speed, but Keiron's got speed – powerful speed."

Although Noble would unhesitatingly opt for Cunningham if he had to choose, he was deeply impressed by Swain's performance against Australia. "He showed what a handful he can be, if he gets the gaps. Maybe Australia underinvested in him, which they shouldn't have done after seeing him in the NFP and which we won't do.

"Mind you, I do think that he's improved and I can see why Wayne Bennett has gone for him at the Brisbane Broncos. He plays with his head up and he can find players, plus he has a very good rapport with Stacey Jones."

If Swain only plays the one season for which he is initially contracted with the Broncos, his next move could be to England, where Hull are in pole position and intend to keep in touch with him. "I hope [the Broncos] will turn into a long-term deal, but if not I'd certainly be interested," he says.

But if he comes to Britain, Noble believes he will still have to play second fiddle to Cunningham's home-grown talent. "Richard is the sort of player who can have a big influence on a game," he says. "Keiron can blast a hole in it."

Already, though, the mutual respect is strong. "He's definitely more of a power player than me," Swain says of Cunningham. "I've seen enough of him in big games to know how devastating he can be.

"We have to have different styles. I'm only 86kg and he must be about 100. He runs through people and I'm more of the type of player who relies on a quick play-the-ball and tries to generate something through that."

After the first meeting between the two, Cunningham also emerged with a healthy regard for Swain. "He's a good kid, isn't he?" he said of a player a year his senior. "Very quick, very clever."

More than anything, Swain has been famous in Australia's National Rugby League for his defensive work-rate, setting a series of tackling records at Melbourne. Cunningham is a big hitter in defence, but nobody would realistically expect him to rack up Swain's numbers.

The Kiwi admits that he became a little bored with being regarded primarily as a tackling machine. This season – and especially in the Test against Australia – he showed a new degree of ingenuity and sheer slipperiness from dummy-half that should act as a warning to Great Britain.