‘Quiet man’ Lawes ready to lead by example after earning team’s respect
Experienced England flanker has the high standing to come in as captain again for the injured Farrell tomorrow
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Even as a 15 year-old, Courtney Lawes knew how to make an impression. One Sunday morning, in a game for his home club Northampton Old Scouts against Newark, who were well below them in the pecking order, the opposition coach noticed a “hell of a big lad, I knew Courtney would make a good rugby player”.
That coach was Dusty Hare and he remembers the match so well because his son, who played for Newark, was the same age as Lawes. Having developed an excellent eye as a talent scout after his playing days, he was drawn to the teenager.
Although most will associate former England full-back Hare with Leicester Tigers – the club he made almost 400 appearances for – he would cross the East Midlands rugby divide to become the Northampton Saints academy manager in 2010 for seven years and, although Lawes had already broken into the first team, Hare developed a relationship with the player who will lead his country for the second time tomorrow having done an admirable job against Tonga two weeks ago.
Hare never had him pegged as England-captain material but makes a comparison with an England great of yesteryear.
“Big guy, what a guy!” says Hare with a laugh. “I was so fond of him. He is a lovely bloke and that is the best thing off the field.
“He will come and talk to you – he had no scruples about talking to anybody. He will talk to the youngsters and in my time he was good with the academy kids. He was a Northampton Old Scouts player and he was a real Northampton lad.
“I have to be honest, I wouldn’t have said he was captain material. I was lucky when I was at Leicester, we had Peter Wheeler, who was a leader of men, Dylan Hartley was a leader of men, and I wouldn’t put Courtney in that category. He is probably a bit like what Billy Beaumont was – he led by example on the field and you had to follow your leader.
“A coach understands his players because he is with them all the time, so they know what a player can and can’t do,” he adds.
Hare gives a clue as to why the father of four has become so key to Eddie Jones’s leadership group. “He is not aloof at all,” he says. “He is quiet – he just gets on with it. He leads by example, he gets on with his training and his work, and he is a super bloke. And as a player every year he has developed. He is like a fine wine, isn’t he? He has just got better.”
Chris Boyd, the Northampton director of rugby who coached Beauden Barrett at Super Rugby franchise the Hurricanes, was impressed with Lawes the player before meeting him. “I always liked him because he is skilful and has a hard edge, you often don’t get those two things together,” Boyd says. “Often, guys are highly skilled but to have a guy that is highly skilled with an abrasive edge to him, is less common.”
And the man he met off the field was often muted but always true to himself. “Off the field, my first impression of him was that he was reasonably quiet, laid back, he didn’t get too bothered about life – he was pretty horizontal. You have to be what you are, you can’t fake it when you are around 50 people for such a long period – you have to be true to yourself.
“But what I learnt pretty quickly was that Courtney didn’t speak very often but when he did – the delivery is always good and the message is always good. He is not a person who is fussing around other people’s business. He is quite selffocused but when he was holding other people to task he was always well considered, firm and everybody listened. He was well respected. “To be brutally honest, I’m not sure he has changed much since I have known him. Courtney has strong personal opinions but he generally keeps them to himself, he is well read and quite worldly.” Boyd explains that Lawes is part of the club’s leadership group known as “The Lords” – it is modelled on Parliament’s upper body – and has his own unique way of contributing. “He is a guy who will only intervene or speak when he feels he has something to add. He is not a guy that chats a lot,” he says.
“He is not a guy who feels responsible for other people’s motivation but when he thinks that people need to be held to account either for lack of preparation, accountability or effort – he is not afraid to say ‘boys, we need to do better’ and it is usually a bit bluer than that.
“He is a man of few words and I think in the England camp, he would be the same – I think the inspiration that comes from him is that you know what you are going to get every day, every hour, every minute – Courtney just wants to be a world-class rugby player and that is how he leads.”
‘As a player, he is like a fine wine, isn’t he? He has just got better’