England legend Richard Hill reveals the recent Test debutant tipped for success after just one pro game

When Richard Hill speaks, rugby people listen.

There’s many who would suggest that current England team manager and pathway mentor Hill is one of England’s greatest players. There’s little doubt he’s an all-time great in terms of back row forwards, but now, the World Cup winner quietly goes about his England role of connecting young Premiership players with the expectations of Test rugby – and rather like his playing style the former Saracen works in the shadows but provides immense value to the fortunes of English rugby.

Defining the role

Hill’s tenure with England post-playing started after a chance conversation with former head coach Eddie Jones who believed that the iconic flanker’s reputation within the sport needed to be harnessed for the wider good of the English game.

“Yes, I suppose my role started in 2014 just prior to Eddie. The pathway initially. Well, it was very much a mentoring role focusing on young back rows, and it was a case of let’s start and see how it goes; go support the age grades and be at some of the camps that the U18 and U20s hold and get to know some of the players and see how it goes.

“In 2016 Eddie wanted, I suppose, an English former player to join the group – someone who had a familiarity with young players. I suppose one of the first questions or statements he had for me when he first started is we have we have a need to find some open sides.

“I told him we didn’t have any at the moment but clearly there’s a couple earmarked for a couple years now that’s come to fruition. And then Steve (Borthwick) became involved again last year and wanted to keep that relationship and wanted me to maintain the pathway role even while doing this seniors role.

“So yeah, I’ve loved the joint nature of it and being able to see what’s coming through. And if Steve’s got any questions here, I’ve been able to advise him. We had 33 players at the World Cup, but as we all know there’s every chance that you could be having to swap some players out and get some players in that were playing in the Premiership Rugby Cup. It was important just to keep a set of eyes across all those teams just so that we knew how the players were getting along, who were on standby etc.

“And yes, if there is someone of interest for the future, then I make Steve aware, and Ethan Roots was one of those players. Steve would have been aware of him already from his club days playing (coaching) against the Ospreys and certainly, our analysts were aware of him.

“For me, he was a new face and in terms of what he showed in that match I knew there were skill sets that would interest us – certainly someone who can carry the ball, carrying in contact, heavy contact and defensively physical at the breakdown. He was physical and consistent in terms of the performances he put in throughout his Exeter start to his career, so they were they were all positives.

Sorry, who are you?

“Chandler Cunningham-South is another story in its own right. You know, he was someone that was picked up by London Irish. He came over (to Irish) as an 18-year-old born in England and I think he must have played probably one game for Irish before the London Irish academy were making sure that I had some clips!” Hill said.

“There was no doubting as an 18-year-old his physicality of carry was quite… well, not quite the norm for an 18-year-old compared to others that I was watching. He was doing fantastically well so I made sure that I connected with him at England U20s training sessions.

“He played in a couple of the regional matches that had to be organised when COVID was on and when there were not so many playing opportunities out there.

“I carried on chatting to him and then it was probably after a number of meetings that I’d had with him that John Fisher, who is the academy coach, decided to bring me to discuss more fully.

“And – you’re gonna love this – John said that Chandler has just told him how he turns out at U20s training and ‘a couple of times this old guy came up to me and has a chat about my game. He seems to understand how to play, and he’s got some reasonable ideas. You know, he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about.’

“So yeah, that was me! He only found out that I played in the World Cup probably three months ago! Chandler’s not that fussed about what’s gone on in the past!

“He wanted to know why I didn’t tell him, and I said it had no bearing on what we’re trying to achieve, which was him, not me. I must have a look at when he played his first U20 international as I suspect he wasn’t born in 2003!

“But there’s no doubt about what he does and he’s very powerful. He has aggression and he has the skill set of physicality which is important for breaking tackles and getting the team over the gain line. We saw at the weekend the cover tackle he made and that shows he’s prepared to cover the ground, and not only cover it but make sure he embeds his shoulder into someone’s ribs if needed. And I quite like that – it really appeals to me!”

Role evolution

Hill’s dual role of both pathway mentor and an aide to the coaching staff requires a lot of travel and footage review and, with the need to get eyes on the young English talent, Hill never appears to be far from the rugby pitches he graced with such brilliance.

“The role changed obviously, when Steve got involved. It’s quite widely known that there wasn’t a permanent coaching staff this time last year so there was an added role for me in terms of making sure that I was across all Premiership matches as well as some of these younger players coming through and that continued throughout the whole year,” he said.

“And also, with guys like Ethan or Manny (Immanuel Feyi-Waboso), there’s always questions about eligibility and it’s important we know who knows what and where the baseline facts are.

“Clearly there are positions where we’ve picked up a couple of injuries over the last month or so, which means that you then start dropping or you start looking at other players. We’ve got this England ‘A’ game against Portugal, which means we are looking at an even greater number of players at the moment. That’s good. That focuses the mind and that gets us prepared for the future.

“The more that I’m able to understand or we’re able to understand individuals, the better we can tailor a programme that suits them, whether it’s their learning style, the strengths of their game.

“Sometimes we know what we’d love a player to be, but you have to make an assessment of what they are actually capable of or what are they actually capable of delivering – from either the physical nature of themselves or just the skill set they have.”

Continuous improvement

He added: “You always need those players to have the mindset of wanting to improve. Personal experience tells me the moment you think you’re the finished article, or you’ve achieved in this environment, then you’re gone.

“Unfortunately, the game moves on. People are always looking at ways to beat the system. It’s not uncommon for a player to be outstanding, then all of sudden a couple of games in, the opposition have gone, ‘oh, cool. I quite like the look of him. We need to nullify him”. And then it’s about your skill set and the thinking of ‘how do you reinvent myself?’

“Look at Richie McCaw. I mean, geez, everyone, everyone said they knew how he played – well if you think that you’d think he’d be easy to shut down then wouldn’t you? Now sure, there were periods where probably he was quieter but then he’d find a different way of doing something- and that’s the challenge we have to put into every player that work comes through the system.

“We have the club system that comes into our international teams and clearly, I think what we’re going to try and do is develop as many of the players as possible. The nature of the sport is they’re not always going to be fit so the bigger spread of players we have the bigger group that we can get.

“Playing at the best of their ability allows training to be better, which allows them to challenge themselves more, which means ultimately, positions in teams are harder to get into, the games become that much tougher, and we get these better players.

“Yeah, there are things that we are talking about that we’re aware of and we’ll continue to push around specifics. I think it’s a well-known thing that we’ve had some front-five clinics this year, which is an important step forward. The scrum has reinvented itself as a really important piece of the jigsaw. If you don’t have a good scrum, you don’t have a dominant scrum, then it becomes very hard to have an effective back alignment.

“I’m also fully aware that we’ve had players that have already played for England who still have aspirations to play, particularly in the back row. And we still have some pretty exciting talent that’s currently not in this squad who believe they should be, and our job is to make sure they understand this is not a closed shop.

“We need to be flexible. I can’t say that I haven’t spoken around a certain player that is a back row that I’ve said as a centre, but I’ve been out voted about 99 to one!!”

Satisfaction

“I’m definitely satisfied in my role. There’s a lot of people in this management that spend a lot of time watching rugby, trying to make players as best they can be. And to see a player perform to see the team win is massively important for us,” Hill said.

“Yes, of course, that’s going to be satisfying. But as I say, that’s one game so far this season and we can’t afford to let that unravel with the second game with them not being good. The challenge is to make sure that we have the depth of squad that creates the challenge, so it has to be continuous.

“I also make sure that I’m very aligned with the coaches. I wouldn’t dream of going through their games and then making some profound statement about how they defend it or how the attack was, without having 100 per cent knowledge of our system, or at least cross-checking with Felix (Jones) or Wiggy (Richard Wigglesworth) or whoever the specific coach is involved and making sure that we’re aligned.

“The other thing is making sure that if there’s already been a conversation, I don’t need to have two conversations. There’s enough going on international week without doubling up their workload. I will input into it, and I might see something on a particular day that hasn’t been seen, but our coaches are amazing, and they’ve probably seen a lot more than I do.”

Welsh threat

With Wales next up in Round Two of the Six Nations, there’s always a temptation for the old dogs of Test rugby to want to put their boots back on.

Hill relishes his current role but is also wary of the threat that the Welsh side will bring with them on Saturday, particularly in his area of expertise the back row.

“Well, firstly, the playing days are definitely gone! The knee replacement I had 14 years ago says I’ve got no interest in running around but I love the atmosphere. I love being involved. I love it when we have a performance. I love it when we win. It’s that’s simple,” he laughed.

“But regarding Wales, at the weekend we saw talented individual performances from them –Tommy Reffell at the breakdown – he’s been a constant challenge, and the players will be well aware of that from their Premiership experiences. Aaron Wainwright carrying in that wide channel too, so the breakdown is going to be massively important for us as are first up tackles.

“We’ve got to make sure that our attack is such that they’re not able to get on the ball because our shapes make it hard for a tackle or they’re not able to make the big line breaks because they’re pretty fatigued from the other work that we’ve made them do. So, it’s about making sure that we’re on top of our own game as well.”

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