My year’s been crazy, says Manny
JuST 10 months ago, Manny Feyi-Waboso was playing on loan for Taunton Titans in a National League 1 relegation decider in front of 1,000 fans.
Any notion that the young medical student would be having to choose between playing for England or Wales in this year’s Six Nations would have been laughed off by his semiprofessional team-mates who trained two nights a week. Taunton dodged relegation and Feyi-Waboso has not looked back. He enjoyed a breakthrough season at Exeter Chiefs and barely thought twice about accepting Steve Borthwick’s invitation to pull on the white jersey. So when he sat down at Twickenham yesterday to do his first big interview, the 21-year-old quickly offered a potted history of his English heritage.
‘A lot of my family are English. My grandmother is English, lives in Gloucester. My dad is half-English and my mum’s Nigerian. I was born in Wales, in Cardiff. My dad’s an ophthalmologist. My parents moved around a lot.
‘When I came to Exeter my dad was like, “Yeah, I’ve lived here too”. He’s been around a lot, spent some time in Scotland. We settled in Cardiff for a decent amount of time. I was there until I was 15 and I went to school in Bristol.’ With straight A*s in his A Levels, Feyi-Waboso applied to study medicine at Cardiff but was not given an offer. Instead, he enrolled at Aston university in Birmingham, which coincided with his time at Wasps, before switching to Exeter when he joined the Chiefs.
Does he ever think about how things would have played out if he had studied in Wales?
‘Not really, no. As soon as I didn’t get in, I didn’t think about it again. I moved to England. As soon as I made the transition to Wasps, then Exeter, I had a lot of stability.
‘As soon as I got into England it was a decision to think about but I thought it would be a lot further in the future.
‘The first conversation I had with Steve was after Northampton away (in November). That was a terrible game for me. I think I gave away four penalties in the first half. He rang me after that and said I’m on his radar.
‘I was really shocked at the call and I kind of thought he was just saying I’m in his mind, but obviously I’m here now.’
Feyi-Waboso’s decision to play for England has been one of the biggest talking points of this year’s Six Nations.
The winger made his debut off the bench against Italy before being an unused sub against Wales last week.
Asked about any backlash, he said: ‘Early on, you hear people talking about external noise but I didn’t really hear any of it. It started to creep in and initially I started to read comments and stuff. Right now, I delete Instagram throughout the week. There has been a bit of noise but I blocked out a lot of it.’
With his next exam two weeks away, Feyi-Waboso brought his textbooks into camp. Revision offers the ideal switch-off from any external noise as next week’s Test against Scotland nears.
‘At the moment it’s musculoskeletal systems, endocrinology, reproductive systems, stuff like that. Cool stuff. A lot of theory.
‘I’m managing. I have an exam three days after we come back from France, so I’ll be revising. It can be a lot to think about but you make timetables and you manage. And there’s a lot of help around. We’re going to do some exam prep with the RFu doc (Katy Hornby).’
At some point, in between the Tests and exams, Feyi-Waboso will stop to reflect on a whirlwind year. ‘It’s crazy,’ he said. ‘This time last year I was playing for Taunton. It’s been a step up, definitely. Being around the new boys, all of them have been really welcoming — it’s quite shocking as I thought there would be more of a hierarchy but they’re all so friendly. I’ve enjoyed the journey.’