Groans and gasps at his old club for poor Sinckler

‘SPORT IS cruel,’ said Kyle Sinckler after the England prop was knocked out of the World Cup final after less than three minutes of the match.

Sinckler and his team-mate, Maro Itoje, had together gone in to tackle South Africa wing Makazole Mapimpi, and it was immediately apparent as the tighthead hit the ground that he had lost consciousness.

Some 6,000 miles away, in Earlsfield, south London, gasps were followed by groans when the realisation hit those watching the final in the bar of Sinckler’s first club, Battersea Ironsides. Just minutes before, club members, including some of Sinckler’s former junior teammates, had been cheering and chanting his name when they saw him walking through the tunnel at the Yokohama Stadium. There was concern and disappointment when they saw it was their own boy wonder who was lying unconscious.

Immediate medical attention on the pitch saw Sinckler soon sitting up and able to walk off the field, but his part in the 2019 World Cup final was over. What followed in Sinckler’s absence for his fellow England forwards was a harrowing experience, as six penalties were conceded at the disintegrating scrum, with Dan Cole, the tighthead replacement, repeatedly falling prey to Tendai Mtawarira. ‘Words can’t do justice to how I’m feeling right now,’ Sinkler tweeted. ‘Biggest moment in my life and not even being able to get a chance to shoot my shot.

‘Sport is cruel but we can never let adversity get the better of us. Want to thank everyone for their support, especially back home...’

Back home at Ironsides, club chairman Rob Newman, who witnessed Sinckler rise through the ranks, said: ‘It was a huge shame to see Kyle go off so early. He’ll be hugely disappointed himself.

‘He’s been an amazing player throughout the tournament, he’s got better and better. He’ll be massively disappointed because of the concussion and for the rest of the boys but you have to give him credit for the way he has performed.’

The first period was a painful watch for all England fans, not just Sinckler supporters. Loosehead prop Joe Marler offered some solidity to the scrum when he replaced Mako Vunipola in the second half, but the Springboks had already taken full control of the game.

Marler, a clubmate of Sinckler’s at Harlequins, said, ‘I was really gutted for Kyle. He has had an unbelievable tournament and he has really come of age here.

‘I put him up there as one of the top tightheads in the world. It was a blow to lose him early on, because he has been in such good form.’

The shock of losing Sinckler seemed to play on the minds of the England pack.

‘It’s just one of those things that happens quickly in rugby,’ Mako Vunipola said of the Sinckler injury. ‘You’ve got to move on quickly, and I thought we did. But we didn’t adjust to what they were doing quickly enough.

‘At half-time we spoke about not waiting for them to put the ball in, maybe working a bit earlier. In that first scrum, we didn’t do that.

‘We wanted to be the No1 team in the world, and we fell short, but we’re still massively proud of what we achieved, even though it’s not what we wanted.’