Opinion: Maro Itoje is not the problem, he is one of the very few things that isn’t
England captain Maro Itoje during the 2026 Six Nations.
There is a peculiarly English habit of finding a world-class player and deciding, on the basis of no discernible evidence, that he is actually quite overrated.
It happened to Jeremy Guscott, the finest Lions outside centre in history and arguably the finest the position has ever seen at any level, who spent significant portions of his Bath and England career being told he was too languid, too instinctive, insufficiently committed to the grind.
It happened to Luther Burrell, who earned fifteen England caps, scored six tries, three of them in a single Six Nations, and was quietly shown the door whilst players with half his strike rate were handed extended runs. Burrell eventually made a very large fuss indeed, alleging that racism was rife in English rugby.
An RFU investigation found his claims to be true on the balance of probabilities. He has since compared his situation to Colin Kaepernick’s. The numbers spoke, but nobody listened until he forced them to. One does not wish to be cynical about what connects the players who attract this particular brand of stubborn, evidence-resistant criticism in English rugby, but Maro Itoje is the first black captain England have had. He is the first black captain the Lions have had. And the voices quickest to declare him overrated, unsuited to leadership, somehow not quite the real thing despite every metric and every teammate saying otherwise; those voices have a consistency that goes beyond rugby analysis. Draw your own conclusions.
The facts
It is happening now to Maro Itoje, and it is becoming tedious. Let us establish the facts before the opinion, because the facts are rather overwhelming.
Itoje was born in Camden in 1994 to Nigerian parents, Efe and Florence. He did not play rugby until he was eleven. He joined the Saracens academy at seventeen. He made his senior debut for the club at eighteen.
By twenty-one he was in the England squad. By twenty-two he had a Grand Slam winner’s medal, a World Rugby Breakthrough Player of the Year award, a European Player of the Year award, and had become the youngest player named in a British and Irish Lions touring party in the professional era.
In four Tests on that 2017 New Zealand tour, he was the outstanding forward in either squad. The Lions drew the series.
Since then: five Premiership titles. Three European Champions Cups. Three nominations for World Rugby Player of the Year. Lions Player of the Series in South Africa in 2021, voted by his peers. Named the first black captain in Lions history in May 2025. Led the Lions to a 2-1 series win in Australia, the first Lions series victory since 2013, starting every minute of the first two Tests before an injury curtailed the third. One hundred England caps, achieved at just thirty-one, making him only the ninth man to reach that milestone for England.
Throughout the 2024 international calendar, Itoje won fifteen turnovers for England, three more than any other player from a tier one nation. He was also first for attacking rucks hit with 300, and first for defensive rucks hit with 137. In this Six Nations campaign, those numbers have not softened. He has conceded precisely three penalties across four matches.
He has won three turnovers on the floor and four at the lineout. His tackle completion rate sits at 92 per cent. He is averaging seventeen tackles per match. He is England’s first tackler, meaning the man who arrives at the breakdown before anyone else, 79 per cent of the time. In a team whose defensive system has been the subject of prolonged and justified scrutiny, Itoje is the one doing the work that makes any of it function at all.
And then there is the scrum. England’s set-piece is, in a campaign of otherwise bewildering inconsistency, the one area where they have been demonstrably world-class. It does not happen without the engine in the second row driving it. Loosehead, tighthead, hooker; all benefit from what Itoje provides in terms of timing, body position and sheer mechanical will. The scrum wins England penalties. The scrum creates platform. Take Itoje out of it and watch what happens.
His mother Florence did not live to see his hundredth cap. “In many ways, it’s going to be a little bit sad that my mother is not here to witness this in the flesh,” he said. “But she will be there in spirit. And I know she’ll be cheering down from the heavens.” He then went out and played, because that is what he does.
The criticism arrives in 2026 from two directions. The first is the broader “overrated” charge, which has been circulating in a certain corner of rugby discourse since approximately the moment he became undeniably good. The second, more specific and more tedious, is the captaincy question. Eddie Jones, in a 2021 book, questioned whether Itoje was suited to be a captain, calling him “very inward-looking.” Itoje thought the assessment wrong and unfortunate, and said so. He had, after all, captained England U20 to a World Championship at nineteen. He captained Saracens. He then captained England. He then captained the Lions to a series victory, so the argument has not improved with age or when evidenced with facts.
Testimonials
Sam Warburton, speaking after watching Itoje captain the Lions in Brisbane, called him “awesome,” noting his turnovers, his line speed, his non-stop energy.
“Maro seems unflappable, very composed,” Warburton said. “You bring the fire pre-match in the changing room but then you are composed on the field. That’s what I like about him.”
Kyle Sinckler, who has played alongside him for both England and the Lions, was equally unambiguous: “When you are playing alongside Maro and he’s at his best, it is so infectious.”
Steve Borthwick has said: “Maro leads through his actions every day, sets the standard for others and cares deeply about representing his country.”
Every player who has shared a dressing room with Itoje says a version of the same thing. The dissenters, almost without exception, have not.
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The sin-binning against Italy was stupid. He knows it was stupid; slapping the ball from Alessandro Fusco’s hands at a maul with England two points ahead in the final quarter is the kind of decision that belongs in the park on a Sunday morning, and it helped cost England the match. It deserves criticism and received it. The distinction that escapes a section of the commentary is between criticising a specific act of ill-discipline, entirely fair, and using that act to reopen a settled argument about whether Itoje is actually any good. He had won three turnovers in the same match before the yellow card. He had competed superbly in the lineout and he had been England’s best forward on the pitch.
This is who he is. A player who operates at extraordinary intensity for eighty minutes and occasionally crosses a line that his intensity has blurred. It is the same intensity that produced fifteen turnovers in 2024 when nobody else in tier one rugby managed twelve. You do not get to take the turnovers and leave the yellow card; it’s about fine margins and they come from the same source.
Off the pitch, Itoje has launched the Pearl Fund, a charity funding education in Ghana, Nigeria and across Africa. He maintains an art gallery in Lagos showcasing young talent. He studied Politics at SOAS whilst beginning his professional career. He has spoken with clarity and intelligence about racial bias in positions of power. He is, in every measurable sense, what English rugby should want its captain to be.
The England team’s current difficulties are real and they are serious. Three consecutive defeats, a historic loss to Italy, an attack that lacks cohesion and a defence that leaks under pressure. These are structural problems that belong to a coaching regime, not to one lock forward who is topping the tournament’s turnover metrics, completing 92 per cent of his tackles and driving the only set-piece in European rugby that England currently do with any authority.
Itoje is not the problem. He is, in fact, one of the very few things that isn’t. There is a certain type of middle England rugby supporter, you know the one, shaved red sunburned head, Union Jack on the Facebook page, Farage reposts in his timeline, firmly of the view that things were better before they got complicated, for whom no amount of turnovers, no Lions captaincy, no hundred caps, no Pearl Fund, no art gallery in Lagos will ever quite be enough.
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To bolster the argument regarding the “Burrell” section of the text, it is worth noting the concrete findings that sparked this discourse. In 2023, an independent report commissioned by the RFU following Luther Burrell’s allegations found:
| Metric | Finding |
| Prevalence | 62% of players from ethnically diverse backgrounds had experienced some form of racism in rugby. |
| Reporting | Only 7% of those who experienced it felt comfortable reporting it through official channels. |
| Perception | 1 in 4 players noted that “banter” was used as a justification for discriminatory language. |
