Alex Mitchell
The Northampton nine talks garden cricket, rugby league and cancelled holidays
WITH NO apparent heir to England’s nine jersey, young scrum-halves will ache to impress. Recent England apprentice Alex Mitchell says in the future the best nines will be Swiss Army knives – versatile and sharp. So during a pandemic-enforced break, the Northampton Saint explains a few varied aspects of his life so far…
I’m not too bad with free time. Me and my housemate Dave (Ribbans) entertain ourselves. We will play backyard cricket quite a lot. One-hand, one-bounce as we’ve got a little track there.
We always do random stuff, so we’ll get board games in and we’re both into PS4. We’re both doing university, too, so at the moment we’re not too bored. We’re getting some gym stuff from Saints. We’ll try to make a home-made gym in the garden (while isolated). If we’re off for three weeks we need to stay fit.
I’ve just got back fit and played two games. You want to be training, get back into it. But there are bigger things in the world.
It’s been quite helpful to get through the work for uni. I study economics and mathematical sciences, so it’s interesting to see what happens with the economy and stock market. It’s interesting to see the long-term effects. That should be quite good if I’ve got an essay to do in economics. I could link it to coronavirus and it’d be quite an interesting topic. I’m from Warrington. When I re-signed for Saints I said #TheKidFromWazza – I stole it from LeBron James when he said ‘The kid from Akron’, but I said Wazza as I’m from all the way up north. If we’ve got a long weekend I may go back up; my mates and my parents, my mum, are up there. I will go back up maybe once a month if I can.
I was into league in primary school. But my dad is actually from down south, in Kent, and he’s big on union so he kind of pushed me to Lymm rugby club.
So I moved across to there and I always had the option to go to league with Warrington. A lot of lads go into league and I was quite lucky that my school were big on union, so I stuck with it. It was probably a good decision!
I could have ended up with Warrington Wolves. When I was 14, 15, I had the option to do some trials with them, but my dad said, “No, stay with union” and I was in the Sale set-up then as well.
I do watch them play sometimes – Luther Burrell is with Warrington Wolves now, so I’ve watched a few of his games. And it can all link back to union with the short running lines and defensively they’re pretty good, which is interesting to take back.
There are different defensive tactics at nine for different games. For example, some teams like Ireland like to use the short side. In some games, nines – like Antoine Dupont and Tomos Williams – do their own defensive stuff. They’re not part of the line, so they could shoot out at ten if they are looking to kick. You have to adapt to different teams.
You’ve still got to be aware of the chip. But nowadays it is less important because everyone reacts to that (running back).
It is about being adaptable. I prefer it really (to rigid structure). If you can read the play and if you’re independent of the line, you can fly out and then you look like an amazing defender!
Being with England for the Six Nations was obviously a good experience for me. It was the first time I had been in camp. It was weird to start off walking around and seeing all the big dogs! But you do get used to it pretty quickly. The standard is different.
Everyone wants the team to get better. So it was interesting to see how different people prepared, like Jonny May and George Ford are very keen on their preparation and getting ready for training. I took a bit of that and put it into my game so that every session is important. I really enjoyed it. Chris Boyd told me I might be involved as an apprentice/extra. The annoying thing was I had just booked a trip to South Africa that week. Then I’d been added to the England Six Nations WhatsApp group, so that’s when I knew I was going and obviously I was very happy but I had to cancel my South Africa trip. It was a win really, as it was full-on and I enjoyed it in Portugal.
I was going to go to Cape Town with Harry Mallinder, Ribbans and Ehren Painter. But I couldn’t get my money back for it – getting picked for England wasn’t a valid excuse to cancel the trip! The woman on the insurance said to me: “Congratulations, but our policy doesn’t cover that!”
Saints are in a good position. Look at our side at the moment and it’s very young – you could say inexperienced – but we’re still fighting at the top, we’re a top-four side. The more experience we get, the better we will be.