Hepburn hits heights after taking long road to the top
Exeter prop has broken into England squad and is determined to stay there, he tells Charlie Morgan
Alec Hepburn speaks slowly but still manages to meander between a rich variety of topics in half an hour: from muscle cars to Olympic weightlifting via mullet maintenance, Big Macs, Dusty Springfield songs and more. The 24-year-old Exeter Chiefs loosehead prop, England’s latest debutant, is enthusiastic and amusing on each. Take this answer, for instance.
“It’s actually been really educational,” he admits, raising his eyebrows. “There are definitely areas where I’ve thought, ‘I’ve gone the long way around there’.”
Rather than a stint under Eddie Jones in the NatWest Six Nations, which brought first caps from the bench against Italy and Wales, Hepburn is describing his prized possession: a 1970 Buick Skylark. “I always wanted one,” he says. “I bought it from Scotland and flew up there to drive it down. I’ve got to plug Rob Dudley, who’s a local mechanic. We’ve done a lot to it. I have pictures of the engine all ripped out. We put in new camshafts, new manifolds.”
His Buick is currently covered up outside the house Hepburn shares with tighthead Harry Williams and lock James Freeman. The trio often pause the television to engage in current affairs debates. They must weigh beyond 350kg (55st) as a combination, but all three use either Williams’s Nissan Micra or Hepburn’s Volkswagen Lupo – “it doesn’t have locking or anything like that” – to get to training each day.
Hepburn’s career path has been similarly unconventional. Australian rules football was the sport he grew up with in Western Australia, supporting current AFL champions Richmond Tigers, before moving to England with his father at the age of 13. Hepburn traded Ravensthorpe District High, more than 300 miles outside of Perth, for Gillotts School in Henley and excelled in rugby on taking up the sport. Two world championship campaigns with England Under-20s completed a strong spell in the age-group system, although one training camp anecdote sums up his rawness.
While chatting to strength and conditioning coach Neil Taylor, now with Wales weightlifting, Hepburn started chomping through a McDonald’s takeaway. “It was all new to me,” remembers Hepburn, laughing bashfully. “I guess I didn’t realise I should have been doing it on the sly. I just took it out and started eating it. He thought it was a joke, then he was pretty p----- off. Thankfully, we still keep in touch and are good friends.”
After helping England to a maiden world under-20 title in 2013, Hepburn was loaned out to London Welsh from Wasps. Following a developmental season in the Championship, he asked Dai Young to be released from his contract to re-join family Down Under. Hepburn would pursue a Super Rugby deal by playing for National Rugby Championship outfit Perth Spirit, supplementing his income by coaching weightlifting in gyms – he registered a 152.5kg (336lb) clean and jerk at 18. Then injury left him at another crossroads.
“I was sort of walking the plank. I didn’t have anything lined up beyond informal meetings with some of the staff at Western Force [Super Rugby team]. I got injured and was staring down the barrel. I wanted to devote all my attention to rugby but it was looking bleak. I had an operation while I was out there on a knee cartilage injury and, at that point, Mitch Lees sent me a message asking if I’d be interested in speaking to Rob Hunter [Exeter Chiefs forwards coach], whom I’d known at the Under-20s.”
Besides former London Welsh colleague Lees, Henry Slade, Jack Nowell, Luke Cowan-Dickie and one-time landlord Sam Hill are all ex-England U-20 team-mates and eased the transition. Hepburn remains grateful and humbled for how Exeter incorporated him into their rehabilitation programme as soon as he arrived in early 2015.
His performances have repaid such support. A mobile, wholehearted front-rower, Hepburn relishes confrontation in the loose and at set-piece situations. He is also an intelligent ballplayer. Those attributes led to a storming tour of South Africa with England Saxons in 2016. Despite a broken thumb and a ruptured ACL restricting his part in Exeter’s Premiership-winning season to five September appearances, England turned to him this spring as loosehead stocks ran low. Hepburn enjoyed his brief taste of Jones’s regime. By way of an initiation, he was asked by Dylan Hartley to reveal how he looks after his hair: “I proceeded to tell the squad I used TRESemme shampoo,” and chose Son of a Preacher Man (the Dusty Springfield song) as his first-cap song.
A cumulative total of 10 minutes on the pitch was enough for a “special moment” in Rome as Hepburn reached try-scorer Sam Simmonds for a celebratory, all-Exeter group hug that Williams and Nowell joined in on. He is aware that an easy-going demeanour might mask ambition for further England involvement. “No, once you’ve seen it, you can’t un-see it,” Hepburn confirms.
Hepburn’s first try of the Premiership season last Saturday helped Exeter to a 31-30 win over Northampton Saints that stopped a difficult run of defeats. With Saracens visiting Sandy Park today, it was a crucial result.
Unsurprisingly, his account of Monday review sessions with forwards coach Hunter is far sharper and more candid than the standard. “You could have anything up to 70 involvements in a game. The challenge is getting the bits right that people don’t see, something as simple as making an efficient clear-out, removing the threat early, putting the ball on a plate rather than getting into a slog.
“You’ll come off and feel like you’ve played all right but you’ll think, ‘I missed that breakdown’ or ‘That lift wasn’t great’ or ‘That scrum didn’t go well’. All of a sudden, there are more things you can keep working on.”
Whether honing cars or his skills, Hepburn adopts the same diligent attitude.