England great explains the ‘non-negotiable’ that can earn Henry Pollock ‘a bit of credit with Andy Farrell’
Henry Pollock reacts during last month's Champions Cup final with Northampton
Ex-England skipper Dylan Hartley has given his verdict on the rapid progress of Henry Pollock, the 2024 U20 World Championship winner who is poised to now tour Australia as a member of Andy Farrell’s 2025 British and Irish Lions squad.
The 20-year-old announced himself on the Test rugby stage with a two-try cameo on debut off the bench for Steve Borthwick’s England in their record hammering of Wales in March. He has since embellished his burgeoning reputation with Northampton, helping them to reach their first Champions Cup final in 14 years courtesy of a swashbuckling away semi-final win at Leinster.
Saints were subsequently defeated by Bordeaux in the final at Cardiff, a showpiece that ended with the youngster getting assaulted by a rival player after the full-time whistle and ridiculed by the French team for the ‘pulse-check’ celebration he had used after scoring against Leinster in the semi-final.
With the dust now settled on that acrimonious May 24 final and the Lions getting ready to assemble in Portugal to begin preparations for a tour that will start in Dublin against Argentina on June 20 before they fly to Australia, Hartley has spoken at length about the emergence of Pollock whom he first encountered when mentoring sports students at Stowe.
“There were four or five mustard players involved with academies and three of them involved with the Saints – including Henry,” explained Hartley in an interview with OLBG. “So, I had the pleasure, the absolute pleasure of working with a 17-, 18-year-old Henry Pollock.
“Quite sweet that he actually remembered something…”
“He was one of many good rugby players in the first team. He was always a very confident personality, which is everything you need to thrive in the environment that he is in. In an alpha male-dominated environment, physically, you have to compete; verbally, in a changing room, you have to compete.
“And it’s quite clear when he plays, you can see the character that he is and why he is thriving in the environment that he is in. He is a fantastic player, and he’s going to go from strength to strength.”
Hartley was 22 when he made his England debut in 2008, going on to play 97 times before announcing his retirement through injury in 2019. He hopes that Pollock doesn’t change the type of character he is now that he has broken through to the Test rugby scene.
“I’m just thinking about my own experiences and how I coped,” he said. “The difference is Henry is actually a quality player! Very athletic, very beautiful. He has scored lots of tries. I scored about four tries in my whole career. He is the sort of guy who is big enough and bold enough to know if he is playing that confident, try-celebrating, abrasive-in-your-face game, he knows the rules of that game.
“If you put yourself out there, people are going to take shots, whether that’s on the field, in the press, social media or even walking down the high street in Sydney. But it’s a bit like if you’re going to play with fire, you’re going to get burned. He knows the game.
“So far, his story’s been ultimately 99.9 per cent positive. It’s like the press, if you want to read all the good reviews, you’ve got to read the bad ones as well. I’d hate to see him shy away and now be authentic. You don’t want it to change.”
Hartley added that Pollock recently remembered a pep talk he had given him some years ago. “I went down to Saints before the Castres game and had a brief moment with Henry. “As he walked off, he alluded to a metaphorical graph that we used to talk about in terms of where he wanted to be in six months, 12 months, and what sort of Henry Pollock he wanted to be. It was quite sweet that he actually remembered something I had spoken to him about.”
Looking ahead to a Lions trip where the three-Test series versus the Wallabies begins in Brisbane on July 19, Hartley reckoned Pollock just needs to be himself to make a lasting impression on tour boss Farrell. “Henry brings that energy and enthusiasm. That’s the non-negotiable as a young guy. The one thing you can bring at that age is energy. It’s something that a lot of people lack.
“He shows that he cares, he shows that he is invested in the game and those around him sort of feed off that energy and it’s good. I’d love to have played with him actually. He has got to earn a bit of credit with Andy Farrell, but you need guys like him on tour to bring the energy to train, to play midweek games, to thrive in that environment – and he might play his way in.
“Andy might change his opinion on him. He might earn it [Test team selection]. That’s the thing, he has to earn it. He’s not Tom Curry. He’s not just going to walk into it.”
