Whatever people think about English rugby union they tend to agree on one thing: if the Rugby Football Union ever fully maximises its financial muscle and its vast playing numbers, the potential is colossal. Unfortunately for England’s opponents that may be in danger of coming to pass, for reasons which have nothing to do with the senior side’s run of 16 consecutive Test victories.
Perhaps the most significant breakthrough of recent weeks did not take place at Twickenham or Cardiff or even within earshot of Eddie Jones but under a heap of rubble in Wiltshire. Exposing academy kids to a simulated earthquake in the care of specialists in international disaster relief might not sound the obvious way to unlock world-class rugby talent, but English rugby is beginning to think that little bit differently.
The young players, who had simply been given a postcode and told to report at 9am sharp without any further instructions, are the guinea pigs in a programme designed to develop more players capable of thinking for themselves on and off the pitch. Dean Ryan, the RFU’s head of international player development, is wearily familiar with the blinkered world of the average young professional and is in the process of yanking open the curtains.
Like everyone else Ryan, the director of rugby at Worcester until last summer, has watched professional rugby evolve over the past two decades along predictable “bigger, faster, stronger” lines. The academies spew out their annual batch of battery-farmed products, the Premiership takes the cream and demands results yesterday. As Ryan puts it: “A successful rugby player gets on a treadmill aged 19 or 20 and runs like mad. He never really gets a chance to step off it and reflect why he’s running.”
Ryan, long one of the game’s clearest thinkers, believes it partly explains why England’s Six Nations grand slam last year was the country’s first since 2003. His objective is not solely to produce more leaders but to enhance character, self-reliance and decision-making skills away from the usual routine backdrop of training pitch and gymnasium. “I don’t think it’s necessarily an England problem, it’s a professional rugby problem,” he says.
“This is the first cycle of players for whom rugby is all they’ve ever known. They’re now being coached by similar people. A lot of the environment is fairly sanitised; pretty much all the rest of your life is cleaned up and programmed to make sure you’re available for next week. I’ve always felt we’re asking for self-aware, resilient players at the top end but where are their reference points for getting there?
“They don’t have much interaction with the rest of the world. They haven’t got concerns about paying their mortgage, they’re not solicitors, bricklayers or carpenters. Something went out of the game without us realising it and it’s now playing itself out.”
It is much the same, argues Ryan, for youngsters in professional football: “I’m not sitting here to be critical of football but it’s such a big vehicle it excludes people from real life.”
Hence the RFU’s rationale for challenging English rugby’s most athletically-gifted millennials to dig themselves – literally – out of a hole. No corporate jolly, this; all involved were profiled in advance to help predict how they might respond. Nor were they all the same age: they ranged from a promising 17-year-old schoolboy to a comparatively seasoned 21-year-old. “There has been a danger in the past of excluding people because they don’t conform,” Ryan says. “This isn’t about being selected because you’ve behaved yourself. You’ve just been identified as having something people think might make you a future England player.”
It sounds a minor shift but it represents a sea-change in RFU priorities. It may also be no coincidence England’s Under-20 side have started this year at express pace, beating France 59-17 and Wales 37-21. Italy will need to front up in Darlington on Friday to repel a host nation who have belatedly realised there is more to elite player development than simply winning under-20 World Cups.
As well as seeking to produce more rounded, grounded individuals with the requisite character to win senior World Cups at a later date, Ryan also reckons 80% of under-20 players in England are not getting sufficient game time. Hence the negotiations to get more of them involved at Championship level to accelerate both their skills under pressure and their life skills.
“When I started to look at our potential players for the 2023 World Cup I couldn’t find them because they weren’t playing,” Ryan says. “We’ve got a massive playing base, strong resources and a great winning product at the top but there are some other key parts we have to get aligned.”
There are also other challenges. In terms of utilising all its feeder areas English rugby remains a basket case; only two of the 107 red rose players capped at senior level in the past decade hail from the north-east. Almost a fifth of those 107 individuals also either spent their teenage years being schooled abroad or playing rugby league. The major cities of Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham have barely produced a handful of recent caps between then; take away the Youngs brothers and East Anglia has supplied only a couple.
Maybe that will finally change under the new forward-looking Twickenham regime, headed up by Ryan’s long-time ally Nigel Melville. Imagine if everything does fall into line: fewer imports, players from a wider spectrum, rough diamonds polished up rather than prematurely discarded, better targeted investment, improved youth coaching and more. Relationships between the RFU and the club are already improving, with 60 schoolteachers having also been invited to an England Under-18 camp this weekend to encourage the swifter trickle-down of elite methods. “I feel we’re trying to make a difference rather than just run age-group programmes and watch kids churn through,” Ryan says. “England has mass potential but that doesn’t mean we’re getting the most out of it. That’s what I’m hoping to do.”
Super rivalry
Super Rugby will kick off this week against a slightly unusual backdrop. Normally the sight of spectacular tries galore on faraway sunlit pitches prompts widespread European angst but suddenly the coloured boots are on the other foot. In last weekend’s Premiership six games, there were 47 tries scored, with only Leicester’s home win over Bristol resembling a romp. An average of almost eight tries per game in deepest February with spring on its way and the most entertaining Six Nations in years, with the latter also being watched by record terrestrial television audiences? Let’s just say the gauntlet has been thrown down to the southern hemisphere’s finest.
And another thing …
All power to the Rugby Players’ Association’s new drive to remove the stigma around mental health issues. The LiftTheWeight campaign is a timely one, with a rising number of professional athletes in all sports – make that all walks of life – struggling with depression and anxiety. If the raw, honest testimonies of a few can make life even slightly easier for future generations to cope, their dark days will not have been in vain.
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