Not long ago international rugby players had time-consuming day jobs. England’s grand-slam winning side of the early 90s contained an RAF pilot, Rory Underwood, on the wing and a surgeon, Jonathan Webb, operating, so to speak, at full-back. In the professional era, as the England wing Jack Nowell is honest enough to admit, it is a slightly different story.
In common with many modern pros, Nowell has to endure his share of lengthy injury layoffs and ended up filling his idle days last autumn constructing elaborate Lego models. Among his favourites are a VW camper van with working lights, a helicopter, a plane and a fishing boat. So, Jack, what happened to the rock’n’roll lifestyle of a top-class sportsman? “Everyone thinks you are out doing all sorts. I’m sat in my lounge doing Lego.”
Not everyone, it transpires, shares his addiction to plastic bricks. “My girlfriend doesn’t like it because I am cluttering up the house but I’m a big fan of Lego. I go and buy the kids’ boxes from Toys R Us but they are getting quite pricey. Sometimes you can lose about five hours of the day. You start making it at about 2pm and suddenly it’s 7pm and dinner time. The boat was a difficult one. But I think I like the camper van best. The lights turn on, you lift the roof off and you have the steering wheel, the seats, the pullout bed. It’s pretty special.”
As the 23-year-old Nowell freely concedes, “simple things make me happy”. His Exeter team-mates, and everyone else, can think whatever they want. “They find it amusing and they like to take the mick out of me. [But] I think I saw a Lego sculpture Henry Slade made for Christmas so I might be starting something. It was Darth Vader. I think his mum bought it for him.”
Never let it be said Newlyn’s most famous sporting son is a grey company man. With his extensive tattoos and trademark rat tail, the trawler captain’s son enjoys standing out from the crowd and, since recovering from a broken thumb and a torn quad which kept him sidelined for almost five months, has been doing the same on the field. In recent weeks he has been outstanding against Ulster in the Champions Cup, claimed a spectacular overhead try against Saracens and been the defensive rock on which the Chiefs’ victory against Bath at The Rec was built.
Competition for England’s wing spots is steadily increasing – Semesa Rokoduguni and Christian Wade cannot even make the squad – but Nowell, so good at breaking tackles and forever hungry for the ball, is precisely the sort of “work rate” wing Eddie Jones craves. Despite not being a pure speed merchant, his starting place against France next weekend is all but assured: “People do talk about my pace but I try to get into positions that enable me to cancel that speed out. At the moment I’m not being outrun or made to look silly. Some of the big actions that maybe people don’t see are the defensive things and I pride myself on those. I’m obviously not as quick as Jonny May but there are probably very few people who are as fast as Jonny in the Premiership at the moment.”
After suffering from patellar tendinitis as a teenager and not always being able to train fully, he is also relishing his return to full fitness. He has not played for England since last summer’s Australian tour. Since his debut against France in Paris three years ago he has collected 18 caps and scored nine tries. Missing the autumn series was not easy to take: “There were mixed emotions. Obviously the main thing is that we carried on winning but I wasn’t involved. I was frustrated to be watching and it was the same with Exeter. We lost some tight games and it’s quite tough sitting back and watching that happen.”
The last Cornishman to be picked for a British & Irish Lions tour was Phil Vickery in 2009 and, this summer, Nowell might not be the worst person to entrust with the job of stopping New Zealand’s powerful Julian Savea. He much enjoyed his duel with Ulster’s talented Charles Piutau and emerged from it both victorious and with personal honour intact. A similarly eye-catching performance against France’s big wings would further make up for his autumn disappointments – “There were a few dark days” – and he is also about to be relieved of the bushy beard he has had to maintain lately.
The fuzz was the result of a pact between Nowell and his fellow Chiefs injury victim Matt Jess that neither wing would shave until both were back playing. Jess is poised to return on Saturday for Exeter against Wasps in the Anglo-Welsh Cup, giving his team-mate the chance to reach gratefully for the razor. Beneath his trusty blue headguard, though, will still be the same big kid who once clung to his mother’s leg and refused to play mini-rugby as a six-year-old at Penzance and Newlyn RFC. Much as he enjoys his Lego models, scoring Six Nations tries at Twickenham would be the ultimate restorative tonic.
