Ruthless Farrell has come a long way since I nailed him in training

During the 2008-09 season, I was fortunate to train several times with the Saracens men’s academy team. The thinking was that the England women’s squad would improve dramatically by training with the best young talent in the men’s game, and my team-mates and I were welcomed into academy set-ups across the country.

I learnt so much from those sessions, many of which were overseen by Eddie Jones, who at that time was the Saracens director of rugby.

It certainly helped that the Saracens academy side was packed with players who were clearly destined for great things. I remember thinking that George Kruis was fantastic, Jamie George was clearly going to be a brilliant player and Will Fraser was a serious prospect, too.

Then there was Owen Farrell. He would have been around 18 then but even at that stage we knew he was going to be special – he just had an aura about him. He had a Justin Bieber style haircut he would probably rather forget but, apart from that, he was exactly the same person as he is now: calm and collected but also extremely self-critical and filled with a drive to maximise his immense talent.

He was incredibly focused, and it did not matter to him that he was training against a woman – he quite rightly saw you as nothing more than an opposition player with a weakness that he would find and ruthlessly exploit. In my case, he thought tackling might not be my strong point.

I remember one night, in a session run by Eddie, he decided to run down my channel and test out that theory. I lined him up and, in true Sam Underhill style, I stopped him in his tracks. He did not run at me again after that. Even Eddie was impressed.

But despite getting the better of him that time, what struck me was how assured Owen was in everything he did. Every action was thought through, nothing done just for the sake of it. He was a very physical player who relished confrontation, but he also had a tactical brain that was constantly scanning the opposition, looking for gaps.

As I sat in the stands at Twickenham last weekend, I could see that very little had changed. Owen was only the water boy for England’s game with Argentina but his mind was always working, looking for chinks in the armour that his team-mates could exploit. He was very vocal, shouting out instructions to the team and issuing them in person when he went on to hand over the drinks. He was a leader in that team even though he was not playing.

Despite his efforts, what last weekend demonstrated was how much England miss Farrell when he is not playing, and I am sure Eddie had no hesitation in bringing him back into the side to face Australia this afternoon.

The thing with Owen is that, when he is at his best – and he is almost always at his best – he not only plays well himself, but he improves the performances of those around him, a quality few players possess.

I think there are four reasons for that. The first is that he plays on the gain-line. England spent too much of last weekend going backwards or laterally, making it so much harder to make an impact in a well-organised Argentine defence.

You have to be brave to stand so flat as a second receiver, but Owen has the confidence in his ability to do so to give his team an 26 Billinge 52 Saracens (2008-) European Player of the Year in 2017, having helped Saracens to a second successive Champions Cup and overtaken Glen Jackson as the club’s all-time points scorer.

Missed entire Six Nations in 2014 with a knee injury.