Kyle Sinckler: The maturing England prop opens up ahead of Scotland opener in Six Nations

James While

With two British & Irish Lions tours behind him and approaching 50 caps in the white of England, Kyle Sinckler, still only 28, is fast becoming one of the senior citizens of Eddie Jones’ new vision.

Planet Rugby’s James While caught up with the Bristol Bears tighthead as he eases into his sixth season of Six Nations rugby.

Buzzing

It’s safe to say England‘s 2021 year was something of a curate’s egg. An underwhelming Six Nations saw them finish a remarkable fifth, yet once freed from the shackles of lockdown rugby an impressive summer campaign became a precursor to an outstanding November Test series, where England went unbeaten, taking the scalp of the world champions South Africa and putting in high quality showings against both Tonga and Australia.

Nevertheless, the underwhelming Six Nations campaign still rankles with the players and Sinckler is keen that England get back to demonstrating their progression in the 2022 season, believing that the closeness of their group is key.

“Touching on the autumn, I think everyone was buzzing to get together and in some cases, keen to right the wrongs of the Six Nations. During the summer, a few were rested, some went on the Lions tour and when the squad was finalised for the autumn it was key that we all got together and enjoyed the experience of being together again and to perform well.

“Over November, I think we did that at times – it’s never perfect, but I feel our intent was right up there, and just like any group, when you’re winning games together, everything else kind of happens a lot easier and a lot more naturally. When everything is firing like that, it’s a joy to be around the boys,” commented Sinckler.

England’s first 2022 training week certainly had its ups and downs, with the team having to move hotels due to an electrical fire, Joe Marler falling victim of Covid-19 for the second time and a number of high-profile players having to withdraw their availability due to injury. Nevertheless, Sinckler believes that good sides cope with disruption and is comfortable with England’s contingency planning.

“It’s normal life resumes, isn’t it?” he quipped.

“To be honest, in elite sport you’re used to loads of things like that happening. If you remember in 2019 in the Rugby World Cup when a typhoon hit, credit to our backroom staff that they had actually planned ahead for this.

“I remember Eddie in one of his first World Cup meetings pre-season telling us ‘there will be a typhoon – it’s typhoon season and we need to be ready for one’. He explained what we needed to do, and the protocols should it happen. When we heard it was going to hit we were ready and eight hours later, we were in Miyazaki, where it was wonderful sunshine as opposed to the rain drenched and windy Tokyo. When we had the fire, it was no big deal – all we had to do was move 100 metres down the road, due to the efforts of the great support team that we have.”

He added: “For me, being a senior player now does that change the way I think? Yeah, it definitely does. As you become older and as you mature as a player, you have to become far more accountable for what you do and how you hold yourself around the group.

“When I was younger, I realise that at times I’d fly off the rails a bit and show my emotions whereas when you’re being seen as a senior player and you’ve got younger guys coming through such as Orlando Bailey, Raffi Quirke, all of them really, you have to be accountable and those lads. Some are born in 2001, and 2002 and it makes you feel really old, and they are looking to you to set an example, so whatever you do, they’re going to do.

“It’s important that you hold yourself to a standard, whatever’s going on in the background. It’s easy to complain and once you go down that martyr line, it becomes infectious, so I’ve become aware it’s crucial how I hold myself within the group and how others perceive me. No-one’s perfect, but I’m always striving to be better and importantly, cherish the moment – we all know this isn’t going to last forever. That means getting the best out of every game, every training session, every gym session, trying to ensure I reach my potential, because, well you know, I’m getting old!”

Respect

Sinckler’s new found maturity isn’t an overnight thing. Progression, experience, caps and so on all combine to give context to an international career. He believes it comes only via action and through personal example and he’s relishing his wider input within the team environment.

“The more you play, the more caps you have under your belt, then other guys and the coaches start to ask for your opinion and that happens naturally, in an organic way. It’s not just that one day you flick a switch and you’re a ‘senior player’, first and foremost you gain the respect of your teammates through how you act and through your actions on the field. It’s easy for me to say the right things here (press conference) but the tough thing is to do it every day, every session and beyond, six or seven weeks down the line, when you’re not feeling great and your body is battered and bruised. It’s about being consistent and following my pattern and my process every day, because I believe actions speaker louder than words.

“I look back to that first tour (New Zealand 2014) where I’d been playing half a season of professional rugby and bang, I was in the England team, but in some respects it was subconsciously a little too easy for me. In reality, I got very lazy, I thought I was a lot better than I actually was and for two seasons I stagnated. It took Eddie to have punt on me when I wasn’t starting for Harlequins due to the excellence of Adam Jones and Will Collier. He must have seen something in my 20 minute cameos that season because he took a chance on me, which really relit the fire inside of me and when I came back, I got a sense of clarity of where I really was.

“Now, we are quite self coaching as a prop group. It’s a combination of coach thinking, review, analysis, everyone being on the same page and it’s all about learning combinations and how to feel comfortable in the set up.

“I scrum with X, Y and Z at Bristol, then I get thrown back into this group and we’ve not scrummed together for a while, but we’ve scrummed against each other in the Premiership. So we know who is good at what and we have conversations such as ‘when we played each other I thought you were doing this or that really well’ or ‘have you thought about doing this or that’.

“The key is to be honest with each other, because as a scrum, we have to be on the same page, so a lot of it is self-coached, talking about where we are physically comfortable and asking Matt Proudfoot and Richard Cockerill what they want from us,” explained Sinckler.

Scottish challenge

As England head up to Murrayfield next Saturday, they are facing a Scottish side that have been the toughest opponents of the Jones era, with two defeats against the Bravehearts and a thrilling 38-38 draw in 2019. For some reason, England often struggle to cope with the fast, unstructured game that characterises Scottish rugby and that, coupled with a propensity to be slow starters in the Six Nations, means that they have to ‘start hot’ when they commence their Six Nations campaign.

“Looking at the Scotland game, the guys that have played a few times against them in the Six Nations have been stressing the importance, as we all know, of momentum. If you don’t win your first game, then you spend the rest of the campaign chasing your tails and we know how hard that is.

“I went on the Lions tour via a different route to others, so when I went I wanted to be an open book with the Scottish coaches – Gregor Townsend and Steve Tandy, who is an exceptional coach, it taught me many little details about what they want. You have to be an open book – you can’t be holding a secret so people tend to share their experiences and yeah, you pick up different things from the various nations, so going into the Six Nations afterwards, you tend to know a lot about each other,” he explained.

“Murrayfield is one of the toughest places to go, firstly because of the fans up there – it’s really inhospitable, but then the team rivalries in the oldest fixture in international rugby. It’s always unpredictable but it’s essential we get that good start as everything else then follows – all the off-field stuff starts to take care of itself and the group becomes tighter, so our focus is just to hit the ground running and start well, despite being under no illusions it’s a really tough place to go and get a result.

“Whilst the fans will be daunting, I tell you, it’s a lot better than playing in front of no fans. Over the last 18 months, when you’re playing in these big empty stadiums and you’ve got the reference points of a packed Murrayfield, Cardiff or Twickenham in your head it’s just weird to hear silence. I know I get a bit of stick from all the fans, particularly the Welsh ones, but I love it.

“That’s what the Six Nations is all about – the fans wearing their hearts on their sleeve whatever country they’re from and giving it large to all the boys, even if sometimes it overboils.

“For me, it just shows how much it means to people and defines the power of sport.”

READ MORE: Luke Cowan-Dickie on Guinness test and being leaner ahead of Six Nations

 

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England prop Kyle Sinckler ahead of the Six Nations

England tighthead prop Kyle Sinckler speaks to Planet Rugby's James While.