There were, inevitably, growing pains, much greater in intensity than those required to stretch his limbs to their current 6ft 2in span. Two years on, however, Ford is not only a bigger man, but a bigger player for the Reivers, an uncontested first choice at hooker in a side starting to spread its wings.
Strange as it may sound, the next step in his development entails repeating the very first: moving up to the front row. After a fortnight where he first caged the threat of the Glasgow forwards in the loose, then helped Steve Bates’s team hang on for a nailbiting win against Cardiff last Sunday, Ford is virtually certain to be named in the 30-strong Scotland Six Nations training squad on Tuesday. It is the player’s equivalent of a ringside seat, close enough to feel part of the action, but still fenced off from meaningful participation. Ford knows he is on Frank Hadden’s agenda; now to get onto his teamsheet.
“The challenge for me is actually making it into the side,” he concedes. “I’d like to think that I’ve done myself no harm by the way I’ve been playing recently. I’m hoping to get into that training squad, and then it will come down to showing my wares against Dougie (Hall) and Scott (Lawson), showing Frank I can actually play his way.”
Hall and Lawson, however, who hook at opposite extremes of the M8, made enough headway in the autumn tests to suggest they will not be overtaken, at least not on the road into the 22 for the opening game against France on February 5.
That Ford will even see the Murrayfield back pitches over the next two months is an achievement in itself, though, considering how belatedly the seeds now bearing fruit were sown. Only once in his first 18 years of existence did Ford attempt to pass himself off as a hooker, filling in for a depleted youth side at Kelso, his alma mater. No wonder, then, that his debut season in the role (which also happened to be his first as a professional) often saw him feel, and look, like an unconvincing actor as he floundered between the props.
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“I felt a bit out of place to start off with; I was struggling,” he recalls, even though Matt Williams saw enough to give him his one, and so far only, cap on the summer tour of Australia. “People at the SRU had told Tony to push me up (to hooker) but in the early days I was adamant I wouldn’t stay there. I was dead set against it, actually, but Tony sat me down and explained why he wanted me there. He felt I had a better chance of making it there because of my size and shape (he packs 115 kilos), and eventually I came round. I struggled in the scrum against international hookers like (England’s) Steve Thompson, but lineout throwing was the main sticking point early on.”
Indeed, his set-piece delivery, while not quite as erratic as of old, remains his most evident weakness. If international selection were a driving test, however, it would have to go down as a minor fault in the context of his overall road worthiness. Ford, like his Reivers’ front-eight counterparts Semo Sititi and Opeta Palepoi, is good with his hands away from the obligatory mauling and brawling. Those creative genes are surely a legacy of the years spent among the breakaways, who are often obliged by a game’s dynamic to pose as stand-in half-backs. Ford takes this alternative theory of evolution one stage further. “If flankers have to be auxiliary backs, in our system you (at hooker) are just like an extra flanker, trying to be big at the breakdown and to get around the pitch.”
His model for going that extra mile is a man who has made the same journey, Kevin Mealamu, the New Zealand hooker who, himself, started out in the back row. “Controlling the scrum and lineout is paramount, but not enough in itself. Mealamu is a man I take a lot from, he’s so powerful and really gets about the park. I’m always looking for other elements that I can build into my armoury. I enjoy creating as much as destroying, but it’s uplifting for the team if someone puts in a huge hit.”
A contrasting pair of smash-and-grabs currently occupy his thoughts. The first concerns Reivers’ attempts to cadge a place in the knock-out phase of the European Challenge Cup as one of three best runners-up from the group stages, something that will be impossible should they not beat pool leaders Newcastle Falcons today at Kingston Park stadium.
The second is a rumoured raid from Edinburgh to whisk Bates away as a replacement for Todd Blackadder, the interim Gunners coach who will return to his native New Zealand at some point between now and the end of the Celtic League season. Would such a move mean the end of the new beginnings in evidence at Netherdale this year? Ford is equivocal.
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“We’ve got a core group of players here who understand the way he wants to play, and are happy carrying it out. We’ve come on leaps and bounds under him so we don’t want to see him go. We’re quite confident that he’ll stay, though.”
With a Celtic League improvement of anything up to seven places on last year, and a slot in next season’s Heineken Cup eminently possible, the Reivers’ is a fight most people would find it hard to walk away from, and as their hooker confirms, staying there doesn’t stop you going places. Especially when you’re prepared to ford any stream to get there.