When Eddie Jones took the surprise decision to include Willi Heinz in one of his squads a couple of years ago it led to the usual outrage that tends to greet England call-ups for players with an antipodean twang. Jones was unmoved, wondered what the “hoo-ha” was all about and suggested that if England were to reach the World Cup final two‑and‑a‑half years later Heinz could well have a role to play.
To say this is evidence of Jones’s long-term strategy over scrum-half selection would be wrong – more accurate is that he still does not know the identity of his preferred backup to Ben Youngs – but a scenario where Heinz is called on in Japan no longer seems as fanciful even if Ben Spencer is possibly in the box seat to travel as Youngs’s understudy.
Heinz’s inclusion in England’s World Cup training squad – his first since 2017 – was not greeted with the same sort of acrimony. Perhaps it is because Brad Shields bore the brunt as recently as last summer, or maybe because, as so perfectly demonstrated by the England cricket team, diversity is something to be celebrated. Jones has selected 11 players born outside England in his World Cup training squads with plenty more having roots in countries ranging from Scotland to Samoa, the Netherlands to Nigeria.
In Heinz’s case, he was born and raised in Christchurch and qualifies to play for England through his grandmother, Aylieff, who hailed from Southampton. Listening to him explain how close they were – and the role she had in developing his love for sport – hammers home how narrow-minded it is to question his right to represent England.
“Honestly, I just ignore it,” Heinz says. “I’m not on any sort of social media apart from Facebook to keep in touch with friends and family. If I worried about what 99% of the public were saying about me I’d get bogged down pretty quickly.
“My grandmother was English, she was born and raised in Southampton and met my grandfather in world war two – he was over here in the New Zealand navy. They hit it off pretty quickly, moved back to New Zealand, started a family of their own. I was really close with her, she lived just up the street from where we lived and after my grandfather passed away she moved in with us.
“She was a very proud English woman and I was always sport mad. Not just rugby, all sports, and she was always really encouraging of me to come over, live in England and experience life over here. I know she would be really proud of me, playing professionally and bringing up a young family in a country she was so proud of.”
Longstanding calf problems help explain why two years elapsed between England call-ups but at 32 Heinz offers a steady hand on the tiller and after four seasons with Gloucester he is recognised as among the leading scrum-halves in the Premiership.
As and when Heinz makes his debut he will join a small number of players – the most recent being Joe Marler – to play for and against England, having been part of the Crusaders side crushed by Stuart Lancaster’s midweek XV in 2014.
Starring for England that day was none other than Heinz’s Gloucester half-back partner Danny Cipriani. “That was a really cool experience, I was just amazed at the intensity and physicality they brought to that game,” he says. “They wiped the floor with us. I remember the pack, the way they were hitting rucks, creating quick ball for the 9 and 10. Danny was playing in that game and he reminds me often that he stepped me clean and set up a try.”
Heinz could have missed out on a career in England altogether had Gloucester not been as patient as they were. “In 2014-15 we decided we really wanted to make the move and it was looking pretty good with Gloucester, then I played a pre-season game with the Crusaders and snapped my leg pretty badly.
“That was in the middle of the negotiations and I thought potentially it might have been off the cards but everything was saying that I would make a full recovery, which I did and the rest is history, here I am. I’m still pinching myself that I’m here with potentially a chance further [of playing in a World Cup] down the track but there’s a lot of work to do just yet.”
