In the shadow of the Malvern Hills, the next generation of English rugby talent kicked off their new-look season on the same turf on which the likes of Noah Caluori, Henry Pollock and Kepu Tuipulotu have all cut their teeth in recent years.
Wednesday marked the launch of the Defender Prem Next Gen League, the under-18 academy division which Bristol won last season but which this year has had a revamp. The annual day in Malvern, graced not just by England’s current youngsters but also by more seasoned internationals, such as George Ford, Owen Farrell and Marcus Smith, is normally one of friendlies, with the league starting later in August or early in September. But not this year.
This year in Malvern, the matches comprised round one of the new league and, in another tweak, semi-finals will take place at the end of this season, mirroring the Prem’s play-off system.
The refreshed league, with sponsor Defender joining for added impetus, coincided with the launch of the Prem’s new player development performance strategy, which brings the clubs and the Rugby Football Union (RFU) together for an unprecedented level of collaboration. Allied to last year’s professional game partnership, the high-performance agreement between the Prem and the RFU that runs through to 2032, Neil McCarthy, the league’s head of player development, has spearheaded the new strategy for elite players in England aged 18 and below. The hope is that this is the beginning of a new era for English rugby’s brightest and best.
“This is the first time we’ve had a fully collaborative go at this, with this level of detail, between the RFU and Prem Rugby around what we want to give the academy system and what we’ve identified as weaknesses,” McCarthy says. “This is what we want to chase after as a professional game, in terms of player development, and clubs have been able to work off that with their own regionalised context. It’s now aligned, which it was not previously, because we have been set the challenge by the Professional Rugby Board of having and producing more world-class players.”
The under-18s is big business. Wandering around at the prestigious Malvern College on Wednesday, there was no shortage of familiar faces. George Skivington of Gloucester was the only senior Prem director of rugby in attendance but Joe Launchbury, the former England second row now involved with Worcester, was present, as were Anthony Allen, Ali Hepher and Matt Ferguson, of Leicester, Exeter and Harlequins respectively. Hepher, too, introduced a minute’s silence for Robin Cowling, the former England prop who did so much for the Chiefs academy and rugby generally in the South West.
There was no shortage of analysis, either. Drones were either in the air or on large poles while every match was videoed from a vantage point on halfway.
Had that footage been streamed live, as the finals day is, they would have seen some extraordinary talent. Northampton defeating Leinster Schools, an invited team to rectify the odd number of sides, a stunning Gloucester comeback but, equally, a show-and-go from Sale fly-half Tom Gaffey that Dan Carter would have been proud of. And if I see a better offload this season than that of Evan Oxley, the full-back, for the Sharks’ second try, then it will have been a high-quality 12 months indeed. It was one of those that even had his team-mates with their hands on their head, incredulous at what they had just witnessed.
Concurrently, on another pitch, Bath got their campaign up and running with a last-minute snatch-and-grab against Newcastle Red Bulls, while Harlequins demolished Exeter and Saracens and Bristol put Leicester and Yorkshire respectively to the sword.