>> Nick Cain reports
Sinckler a bad boy? No it’s just his emotions
“He wears his heart on his sleeve. So, when he wins little battles or has little losses, he shows it”
KYLE Sinckler is back. Hamstring pulled in the Portugal training camp healed, ban served, the dynamic Harlequins, England and Lions tight-head is ready to take on Wasps in the Premiership at the Stoop this afternoon.
Sinckler is well ahead of schedule after an initial prognosis of six to eight weeks healing time, and desperate to press his case with Exeter’s Harry Williams supplanting him as England understudy to Dan Cole.
If the tank-like Sinckler comes through with flying colours in his bid for inclusion in England’s Six Nations line-up no-one will be happier than John Kingston, the Quins rugby director, who, as a former prop, takes an almost avuncular interest in his progress.
Kingston has no truck with the portrayal of the 24-year-old Sinckler as a controversial figure with a hair-trigger temper, and defended him staunchly when he was served with a seven-week gouging ban after an incident involving Northampton lock Michael Paterson in October.
Sinckler has insisted that any contact with Paterson’s eye was accidental, and Kingston believes that his player deserves wholehearted support in his bid not to be typecast as one of the bad boys of the English game.
He said at the time that Sinckler, who missed the autumn series due to the ban, had been saddled with “an unfair public reputation” and asserted that overall he has a good disciplinary record.
However, a subsequent assessment by Eddie Jones that Sinckler has to prove this season, “how much he really wants it – otherwise he’s going to become a pantomime character”, is not something any ambitious player can ignore.
It probably explains why Sinckler, in a mistaken bid to control the image agenda, has told the Harlequins media team that he is only happy to do interviews looking forward rather than anything retrospective. This includes not wanting to reflect on a Lions tour last summer in which he made a strong impact in three Test appearances as a replacement against New Zealand.
Although all Sinckler’s 11 Tests – he has won the other eight caps for England – have all come off the bench, Kingston says he was not surprised he got ahead of Dan Cole as back-up to Ireland’s Tadhg Furlong on the Lions tour.
Kingston says: “Maybe there was a perception that Kyle was better equipped to come on with 20 minutes to go in the Tests. However, if there was an opening for one or the other to start a Test, it wouldn’t have shocked me if Kyle had got it.”
Kingston believes that the Harlequins tight-head’s ability to handle the intensity of the Lions series was no surprise because of the hidden depths to his game.
“Although there is a perception that Kyle is young and inexperienced, he has already played a lot of senior rugby. His game is unique for a tight-head because of his explosive strength, and although he might have got found out in one game in every three at the scrum when he first came into the Premiership, that soon changed.
“He is now a very accomplished scrummager in his own right, and you can count the bad scrums he has during a season on fewer than the fingers on one hand. He is a very determined tighthead, and a genuine international player.
“He is very analytical, and every time he got taught a lesson he would learn from it with the help of the great coaches we have here, like Graham Rowntree and Adam Jones.”
Kingston revealed that Sinckler is also capable of giving a scrum tutorial or two in his role as assistant coach at Guildford RFC, where Quins hooker Dave Ward is head coach.
“It helps that he is a coach himself, and has the mindset to put things right. He coaches alongside Dave, and makes his way down there to training sessions every Tuesday and Thursday night. He is a very shrewd lad in terms of his understanding of the game overall, and you can see he really enjoys it. The added benefit is that becoming involved in coaching has accelerated his own learning as a player.”
Sinckler’s mobility, power and handling – nurtured as a full-back at Battersea Ironsides until he was 13 – make him a rare breed of prop according to Kingston: “He has explosive physicality and ball-handling skill, and, especially in his position, he is an outstanding footballer. Kyle is very happy to step in at first-receiver and run the game, which makes him pretty unique for a prop.”
Kingston says that with the media spotlight being shone on Sinckler’s disciplinary issues he is wary of the limelight: “His mantra at the moment is to get his head down and get on with it. His initial reaction to interviews is simply that he wants to get on with playing. He loves his rugby, and he is very ambitious to do well, but he is not about self-PR.”
The Harlequins boss also offers an explanation of why Sinckler, who has been yellow carded twice this season in addition to the ban, is seen by many as being a disciplinary time-bomb.
“I think it’s because he wears his heart on his sleeve. So, when he wins little battles or has little losses, he shows it – and that passion draws attention to him more. The incident in Northampton did not help, but outside that his disciplinary record is not bad.
“He picked up a yellow-card against Ulster in Belfast in the European Cup, and another against Wasps. The one against Ulster resulted from him getting his timing wrong on a big hit, while the one against Wasps was a team yellow-card after a number of infringements.”
Kingston adds: “He attracts attention more than most players because he is very passionate and displays his emotion, in the same way Lawrence Dallaglio did.”
Suggest to Kingston that this automatically makes Sinckler a target for the wind-up merchants and he says: “Yes, and that’s something he has to understand.” However, Kingston says that the young prop – who was raised by his mother, Donna, on a council estate in Tooting – has another side to him that many outside the Stoop are not aware of. He says that Sinckler has a strong social conscience, and that a need to put something back into the community is a significant part of it. Kingston says: “What I can tell you is that outside rugby he thinks hard about how to support the wider community, and he does a lot of charity work. I am very fond of Kyle and spend a long time talking to him. Without trying to moralise, I try to help, and support him in life in a wider sense. We all get things wrong sometimes – all of us do – and anybody who says they don’t is lying. “Kyle is a pleasure to work with because he has bundles of energy and passion – and his heart is in the right place.” It is a good thing that Kingston sees pastoral care as an important part of his job, especially as his Quins prop contingent includes England loosehead Joe Marler, whose list of misdemeanours
s much longer than Sinckler’s. It ncludes the six-week ban for a high hit n Sale’s TJ Ioane which has ruled arler out of contention for the first wo rounds of the Six Nations, as well s an earlier three-week ban in October or striking Wasps lock Will Rowlands. However, Kingston insists that while inckler and Marler may have a few ransgressions in common they are disnct individuals. “They are very different. People ake an assumption that they are simiar characters because they play for arlequins and are England internaonals, and they are both extrovert on he pitch. They are different characters, t different stages in their careers – for start Joe is five years older, and arried with children. “They get on well, and Kyle always ants to learn from people. Joe is cerainly someone he feels he can learn rom as a prop, as he can with Adam ones and Graham Rowntree.” Ask Kingston how frustrating is it for im to lose both of them with some reglarity due to disciplinary bans and ngland call-ups and he says it is imporant to be objective, but not to ver-react. “There have been three disciplinary alls involving Kyle and Joe this season, nd because they are avoidable, I deal ith them quite strongly. The international call-ups are great for them, but they also love this club with a passion. In a way we have been victims of our own success, but international call ups are great a honour for Harlequins. The key is to get the balance right, and to maintain your depth by continuing to bring players through your development system.
He continues: “Discipline is a different exercise for different players. More than anything it’s about understanding that any ban hurts other people in the club. That’s why I take extra-curricular activity on discipline, which could come in the form of additional fines or getting them to do Quins community service.”
However, Kingston also points to mitigating factors in Marler’s case: “If you take Joe Marler’s sending-off at Sale, I thought it deserved a soft sanction. In my opinion he would not have been sent off if it had been anyone other than Joe Marler, and that the crowd noise and atmosphere contributed to the decision. He was completely remorseful afterwards – and you have to believe that at some stage people tend to learn from their mistakes.”
He adds: “In that game Joe took action as a result of two previous incidents. If he had wanted to hurt TJ Ioane he would have done – instead, he was just saying don’t mess with me.”
So, given that the current England captain, Dylan Hartley, has had his own well-publicised problems on the disciplinary front, has Kingston considered using sports psychologists to dampen the fast-fuses Sinckler and Marler are hard-wired with.
“Yes. I have a psychologist and if there’s a benefit to be had if a player is targeted and needs to learn how not to retaliate, we will do that. It’s good to have a trigger word, so that you learn to take a deep breath and count to ten – so we will look at that.”
However, in the great scheme of things, Kingston says he does not consider Sinckler to be in danger of becoming a serial offender: “I’m not worried about Kyle’s discipline – in terms of the list of my priorities it’s not even on the radar.”
When it comes to an article of faith, Sinckler could not ask his Harlequins boss for more. Now it’s a question of living up to it.
“It’s good to have a trigger word, so that you learn to take a deep breath and count to ten”