These are supposedly tough days for specialist open-side forwards. Not only is their profession increasingly brutal but the laws of the jungle have altered, banning the tackler’s old freedom to get up and cause legitimate mischief on the opposition’s side of the breakdown. It is not intended to make life easier for defenders, let alone up-and-coming English ball poachers like Sam Underhill.
So why did Underhill, with a solitary cap behind him, appear so unconcerned this week at England’s training camp in Oxford? Perhaps for the best of reasons: he is good and clever enough to adjust instantly to whatever lawmakers and referees decree. The grapevine has been suggesting for two or three years that England have a natural-born predator at No7 who could become as crucial to his country as Richie McCaw was to New Zealand.
This is no ordinary 21-year-old tip-toeing his way into the Premiership. That much was clear in Bath’s game against Northampton a fortnight ago, the forceful Underhill’s first for his new club since transferring back across the Welsh border from the Ospreys. “I think he made 25 tackles and had about 12 carries … and that was his first game out of the blocks,” says his director of rugby, Todd Blackadder, himself a former All Blacks back-row and captain.
So, leaving aside the obvious unfairness of the comparison, does Blackadder believe English rugby has taken delivery of the new McCaw? If anyone should be sensitive to youngsters being weighed down by impossible expectations it is Blackadder, but before Sunday’s game at Wasps he has also detected something special.
“If he plays consistently, the way he played that first game, then there is no reason why he can’t be of that ilk,” he says. “Richie’s core skill was mental toughness. I’ve not seen anyone who had the cardio-capacity he had. He would just go all day. You saw a lot of those traits in Sam. He doesn’t stop, he just fires into everything.”
No wonder Eddie Jones is a fan. Newish England squad players have mostly been wrapped in media cotton wool and placed off-limits until they can be trusted not to say anything too interesting in public. Underhill, who has just switched to the University of Bath after two years studying for a degree in economics in Cardiff – “I don’t like maths very much, which is a terrible thing to realise halfway through an economics degree” – is refreshingly different. This newcomer is bright, focused and mature enough not to need nannying.
From a back-row perspective he also offers a viable alternative to the bigger six-cum-sevens who have been in vogue. “A lot of sevens here are big sixes whereas he is an out-and-out openside which could be his point of difference,” says Blackadder. “He needs to continue to be strong and physical over the ball. Law adaptations? They do suit him. Look at how Richie adapted and kept adapting to law changes, half of which were supposedly designed to keep him out of the game. Great players adapt to circumstances. As a flanker you’ve got to be able to read the cues and clues at every breakdown.”
That requires brains as much as brawn, which suits Underhill. He comes from an interesting family – his father, a group captain in the RAF, was awarded an OBE last year and one of his three older sisters is engaged to the grandson of the former prime minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home. His own plan is to pursue a degree in politics with economics, keeping his fingers crossed he will not have to repeat all the modules he passed in Cardiff.
After an unfulfilling spell at Gloucester’s academy it was his decision to study in Wales, which temporarily delayed his ascent because of England’s policy of picking only home-based players; now he is free to advance on and off the field. “By having a degree I can open more windows for myself. That will probably facilitate me doing something after rugby that wouldn’t be attainable if I didn’t have a degree.”
Sidestepping the excesses of freshers’ week, as he intends to do, will also not faze a powerful athlete who was not entirely sold on rugby as a teenager until he found that competing hard around the tackle area suited him perfectly. “Some guys are really quick. I was never one of those guys. Some guys are naturally really good with the ball. I probably wasn’t one of those guys either.
“Justin Tipuric at Ospreys is one of the best open-sides in the world, one of the most skilful guys out there. As much as I’d like to be like that I’m never going to be that player. I can’t catch and pass. I like tackling, it is as simple as that.” Modest, talented, ambitious, focused: Underhill’s Test career is still in its infancy but he already looks born to it.
