Scotland international Jonny Gray produced one of the most startling performances in rugby history with his effort for Glasgow Warriors against Leinster in the Guinness PRO14 encounter at the RDS.
The Warriors forward made 43 tackles without missing a single one.
Josh van der Flier had set a PRO14 record with 34 hits for Leinster against Connacht last year but Gray’s display blows that mark clean out of the water.
The 25-year-old was initially credited with 41 tackles only for the figure to be upgraded.
Leinster’s players would have been seeing him in their sleep on Saturday night.
The 6ft 6in, 18st 10lb lock seemed to have sneaked a twin brother onto the field as he went about his work, scything down anything that moved in an opposition shirt.
By the time the referee called a halt to proceedings, Gray’s display worked out at more than a tackle every two minutes, a superhuman defensive effort that would have left Davy Crockett in awe.
Throughout his career the Glaswegian has been known for his prodigious work without the ball.
Indeed, in 2018 he became the first man to complete a century of tackles in a Six Nations campaign when he made 100 out of 103 attempts.
But his show in Dublin was on a different level again.
In pulling off a surprise 39-24 over reigning champions Leinster, Glasgow dug deep to the point where they completed more than 300 hits. Their final tally was 302 out of 331 attempts, with seven players completing 26 tackles or more.
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Gray has made 97 hits with no misses over his last five games, one of which was as a replacement.
Complementing his exploits as a human barricade against Leinster, he also made 14 carries which yielded 18 metres for his team.
“His tackle count is scary to the point where sometimes people think our analysts are fudging it,” his team-mate Tommy Seymour once said.
But on Friday, all those hits really did pile up.
