Mitchell has that Melville quality

BACK in the early 1980s, a time when there were no arguments about ring-fencing in England because there weren’t any leagues to ringfence, Nigel Melville emerged from nowhere – well, Yorkshire, which amounted to the same thing as far as the snootier end of the RFU set was concerned – armed with the fastest pass any of us had seen.

Melville was far from a one-trick pony, but speed of service alone marked him out as a 24carat Test scrum-half in waiting. But for injuries, he might have played almost as much international rugby as Ben Youngs, despite the hot competition from Richard Hill, Richard Harding and Ben’s dad Nick.

England have not been blessed with such an obvious stellar talent since, although Kyran Bracken ticked most of the boxes at the start of the 90s before experiencing Melville-scale hassles of the orthopaedic variety. This explains why Eddie Jones’ selectorial knickers have been in such a twist for the last five years.

But unless your columnist’s eyes deceive him, Alex Mitchell of Northampton is one for the none-too-distant future. The One, probably. The sooner he is picked – in the team rather than the wider squad – the sooner we’ll know for sure.

He has the Franklin’s Gardens DNA in him: he covers ground like Lee Dickson and has Cobus Reinach’s eye for off-thebase breaks and long-range support lines. And, praise the lord, he can pass. Not as well as Melville, maybe, but far better than most.

If it turns out that he also possesses Matt Dawson’s physical resilience, highly-developed sense of opportunism and that uncanny ability to get on the nerves of the opposition, he will indeed be a gift from the gods.