THE PERFECT CURRY RECIPE!
England World Cup star has all the ingredients to be one of the greats
ELEPHANTS couldn’t daze Tom Curry. He loves the physical side of rugby like a masochist. But, as family folklore has it, he was once stunned by the fists of a seven-year-old girl.
Admittedly, Curry was the same age, playing in a mixed tag match, he for Crewe & Nantwich and the female puncher for Old Anselmians.
‘He didn’t know what to do — it was one of his formative rugby matches and he was whacked right in the face,’ remembered Tom’s father David, chuckling.
That incident apart, it is Boys’ Own rough and tumble that shines through the making of Thomas Michael Curry, who on Sunday will take his brand of relentless rugby into the heart of France’s Six Nations ambitions.
At just 21, Curry established himself as an outstanding back row with his Herculean efforts in England’s run to the World Cup final last year. The flanker had already made his mark by then as the country’s youngest Test starter in 90 years, against Argentina in 2017.
His partnership with Sam Underhill, a pairing distinguished by its remorseless tackling, has since won them the soubriquet, ‘the Kamikaze Kids’, from coach Eddie Jones.
‘I enjoy the feeling of not being able to get out of bed in the morning,’ said Curry of his body-on-the-block devotion. ‘ You hobble down to breakfast feeling a bit mashed and that’s a good sensation.
‘I might look back and think it’s a bit stupid. My mum thinks so.’ The Curry family are close-knit. They are nice, decent people, the kind who are the backbone of rugby union up and down the land.
Every weekend his headmaster father David and his PE teacher mother Susanne — Susie to family, an accomplished sportswoman herself from a strong sporting family — drive to watch their sons play: Tom and his pretty-much equally talented identical twin and Sale Sharks team-mate Ben.
The devoted parents, often with grandparents in tow, have missed perhaps four or five of their sons’ matches since they started out.
‘We just enjoy it,’ David told me over speakerphone as he headed down the motorway on their latest Saturday trek, from home in rural Cheshire to distant Exeter.
Tom’s upbringing began in the then family home in Middlesex, not far from Twickenham. David was already steeped in rugby, taking it up when his own father, an Army sergeant, was stationed in Italy and he was sent away to Barnard Castle, the County Durham school that produced such international luminaries as the Underwood brothers and Rob Andrew. The die was cast.
A few weeks after Tom and Ben had cut their milk teeth at Grasshoppers
RFC in London, the Currys moved into their four-bedroom house in the village of Willaston, Cheshire, close to Susie’s roots in the north west of England.
By sheer coincidence, their mortgage adviser sponsored the junior section at Crewe & Nantwich and told them the club was to be found just up the road from their new home.
David turned out for the first team — he also played for Rosslyn Park and Wasps. The twins went to watch him, home and away, at places like Ormskirk and Fylde, soaking it all up — the choice language, the bang of the lockers.
Back at home, they knocked out the panes of the family y greenhouse with one sporting ng missile or another. One neighbour our resented the errant balls that came over her fence. She stored themem up until she had a boxful to hand back with a scowl.
One vignette sums up the Curry boys’ fierce competitiveness. It was when Tom and Ben, aged about 10, spent Christmas Day with their uncle John Olver, the former England hooker, and their cousin Sam, now a fly-half at Doncaster Knights.
Olver and David lit a fire in the garden and sat back with a couple of bottles of red wine and watched the young bloods chuck a rugby ball about. The Curry brothers took on Sam, three years their senior, two-on-one. ‘They beat the holy hell out of each other for three hours,’ recalled Olver.
‘There was no fighting. They just battered each other to a standstill. Inside they were watching thinking, “Christ, what’s happening?”
‘But David and I thought, “This is proper stuff”.’
The boys, who got on well but provided each other’s competitive traction, played all manner of sports — football, athletics, tennis, swimming, gymnastics. They were decent cricketers and even had trials with Manchester City, aged 12. But Tom’s headed own goal put paid to that.
In truth, they were never going to be masters of the round ball game — unlike another cousin, Patrick Jarrett, Jarr who is on Stoke City’s books. Their The older sister Charlotte maintained mai the sporting theme with Great Gr Britain Under 17 Frisbee honoursho to her credit. The boys combined school rugby ata Bishop Heber School in Malpas, where David is headmaster and was their rugby coach, with commitments on Sundays at Crewe & Nantwich, where in thet bungalow clubhouse the loolo led to the changing rooms thatth led to the bar. Susie cooked bacon bac butties in the outbuilding, ‘TedTed’s Shed’, a place the hygiene inspectors insp forgot.
Big Bi and strong, the boys supplemented their daily school diets with extra grub — bagels and tins of rice pudding and peaches supplied by mum and dad. So much so, that when Tom and Ben celebrated their 21st birthdays, their old pals ribbed them by handing over ‘presents’ of bagels.
Their parents stock up the fridge when they return now, a 40-minute drive from their shared home near Altrincham, Greater Mancheter, where they live with two cats, Lily and Rosa.
The Heber team thrived, the Currys helping them become the first state school to win the All-England Sevens for 27 years. Tom won the Trevor Watton Cup as the best Under 16 player in the country.
Up to a certain point, there were no assurances of professional rugby careers. Tom wanted to be a vet, Ben a medic. They were A and A* GCSE pupils. And, at A-Level Tom got AAB grades and Ben AAA.
They left Heber for Oundle, the Northamptonshire public school, with its billiard-table pitches, on rugby scholarships. Their uncle John (Olver) was master in charge of rugby.
From there to Sale academy and into the first team, pronto. Ben was called up to England’s tour of Argentina in 2017 but is yet to win his first England cap.
For Tom, he is already a World Cup veteran, his reputation ascending like the lark.
Mates from Cheshire and from Oundle — ‘The Muppet Show’ as Olver affectionately calls the tight group of their seven or eight sixthform pals — travelled to Japan, along with the family, cheering Tom on.
He paid for his parents’ trip, offering them first-class air tickets, a luxury declined.
They will, selection permitting, be in Paris on Sunday.
‘We are utterly, utterly proud, with goosebumps singing the national anthem,’ said David. ‘Then your parental side kicks in and you just hope he doesn’t get hurt.’