By his own admission Sam Simmonds does not much enjoy big cities. In his home town of Teignmouth the nearest thing to rush-hour chaos is a bit of traffic on the bridge across the estuary to picturesque Shaldon. The last time he ventured into central London with his Exeter team-mate Henry Slade things did not go well: “We took the tube but we didn’t have a clue where we were going. We got off a couple of times and jumped back on what we thought was the right train, only to discover it wasn’t. I guess I like the simpleness of Devon.”
Even on a chilly January midweek afternoon this is a man far more at ease on his windswept local beach than he will ever be in Europe’s bustling capitals. His Exeter team-mate Jack Yeandle still remembers driving a scrawny ginger-haired academy kid up to Sandy Park for training and failing to extract a single word from him. “Stone-cold silence, bless him,” recalls the Chiefs captain. “Nerves I think it was. There was a lot less timber on his frame as well. Eddie Jones wants him to put muscle on top of muscle now but there was only skin and bones then.”
No one, least of all Yeandle, imagined the skinny youth from a small coastal town would be England’s starting No 8 within five years. Barely a year ago he was still playing for the Cornish Pirates and had yet to make his Premiership debut. Now he is a capped England international, a dynamic low-slung presence in line to fill Billy Vunipola’s massive boots against Italy in a fortnight’s time. Not since Teignmouth’s other favourite sons, the rock band Muse, returned for a special homecoming gig has there been such intense local pride.
The near-vertical ascent of the 23-year-old, whose brother Joe also plays for Chiefs, also reveals a couple of other things. Firstly there is plenty of rugby talent lurking out in the more distant corners of England. Secondly it shows how far determination, hard work, good club coaching and a bit of luck can take you. The teenager who joined Exeter was 90kg and still occasionally playing in the centre. Before his side’s pivotal Champions’ Cup pool game in Glasgow, the back-rower now tips the scales at 16 stone which he believes is his ideal playing weight.
It will still not silence Eddie Jones’s familiar refrain – “What are you weighing?” – when Simmonds reports to England’s pre-Six Nations training camp in Portugal. Vunipola is around four stone heavier and leaves an extra large hole. Hence Jones’s recurring foodie conversations. “He wants me to get bigger, doesn’t he? Before I went away to England my knowledge of nutrition wasn’t great. I was eating the right stuff but I wasn’t eating enough of it. On a normal day I’d have breakfast but wouldn’t eat again until lunch. I’d come in, train and find I’d lost a bit of weight. Now I’m having snacks in between.”
At least not-so-big Sam knows dinner will be fresh. His rugby-loving father David and uncle Rob are in the crab and lobster fishing business and when the pots are full their families tend to benefit. “Whenever I go to my dad’s he’s always got crab, lobster, almost any type of shellfish going. It’s a bonus, isn’t it?” His mother Nicola works as a hairdresser but the days of her cutting his hair – “I’ve given her the boot” – have now gone.
So, too, have the days of rugged lower league rugby on loan at Brixham, Plymouth Albion and the Pirates against big, tough men with a taste for pint-sized flankers. “You do play some older heads who have dropped down a league or two. I remember my first year playing for Plymouth. I was 18 or 19, pretty fresh and we were up against some big boys.”
His rare pace enabled him to survive and a long-term knee injury also gave him the extra motivation to lift sufficient tin in the gym to earn promotion at Chiefs. Subsequent events have been startling: the winning try in last year’s memorable play-off semi-final win over Saracens, a Premiership champions’ medal and, now, England recognition. “I didn’t imagine it happening even a couple of years ago,” says Simmonds. “I’ve spoken to boys who have said ‘I always knew I was going to play international rugby’. To be honest my focus was just to push through and play Premiership rugby.”
Now, in terms of Premiership defenders beaten this season, he is the league’s top-ranked forward. Which is why his club director of rugby, Rob Baxter, believes England should play to Simmonds’ strengths. “The number on his back and where he packs down in the scrum is almost irrelevant. It’s about what freedom and role he’s given. If he’s going to be the guy they want to get on the ball plenty of times he’s going to have a lot of effect. If they want him to get off scrums and be first to arrive at rucks and tackles – well, he’s very effective at that but you’re not going to see much of his natural ball-carrying ability.”
As Glasgow will discover on Saturday, Simmons is also not too bothered who he is facing. He felt like a fish out of water initially with England – “it was quite daunting” – but that phase has passed. “The more I’ve played you realise it doesn’t matter who you come up against. It’s about how you perform as an individual and as a team. You see that with Exeter. You could be playing a team of superstars but if we get everything right – physically, tactically, emotionally – I feel we can beat anyone.”
That just happens to be the same mindset England want to develop. Baxter also suspects a good game against Italy – “If you start the tournament well in a winning side it gets pretty hard to change that squad” – will cement Simmonds’ position for the whole Six Nations. Devon may forever be Simmonds’ natural habitat but now is the moment to dazzle the city boys. “It’s never good for anyone to get injured but it does open up opportunities for me and others. As a kid I remember watching England singing the national anthem. It’s pretty surreal to be there doing it yourself.” As long as he avoids travelling by tube he should be fine
