I’m really impressed by the ambition on show
Jonathan Pendlebury following a successful U18 Six Nations festival So, Jonathan three wins from three, how would you sum up the past few weeks?
It was a really successful campaign in that we got three brand new caps in among the 26 lads. They fitted in well alongside guys who won their first against France earlier in March, as well as some guys that were involved in South Africa back in August. One of the measures we put on the campaign is how does the tournament align with their individual development and areas of focus that they’re working on with their academies. Certainly those guys that are heading straight into contracts with senior academies or even some of them contracts with the first team, it provides a development opportunity post-education. So that’s the success that we’ve put on it. The boys are ambitious, they want to win every game and we certainly try and set up the team to win every game but you could see there were three different starting XVs with different combinations across them.
Scoring with the last play of the game to beat Georgia last Sunday, you must be pleased with the spirit of your side especially as you also beat Wales in the same fashion?
There’s the technical areas that you’re trying to work on, which you see more explicitly. But there’s a lot of the areas off the pitch, whether it’s the mental skills in terms of thinking; I’ve been selected to start my first game or to start another game, I’ve not been selected to start, and I’ve either been dropped, rotated out. However, you want to dress it up there was a lot of scoring late tries in halves of games, playing right up until half time and scoring late tries in games, or even having to manage through some pretty difficult passages of playing periods of play where we were giving away a lot of penalties. There was a lot of growth in the guys and development in an area that is is often talked about in youngsters coming through around their experiences that they can’t manage games or they’ve not got good game understanding well. We were pleased with a lot of that and a lot of hard work went in from the the staff individually to create challenging opportunities but then review back to try and measure learning.
Georgia are a new addition to the tournament, how do you think they fared?
They were exactly what you’d expect. If you were to write it down before you played them, you’d put passionate and physical but I was super impressed with how they wanted to try and play. They tried to play an organised style from set-pieces and use that as a launchpad but then also how they wanted to try and play through the half backs, as well as bringing some of the middle backs in the game combined with some pretty physical abrasive forwards in front of them. They are certainly a different challenge to France, Italy and the other home unions.
I presume you’re all in favour of adding emerging nations such as Georgia and Portugal?
It’s only going to make northern hemisphere rugby stronger. It means there’s more players playing rugby and at a better level. It’d be just be the same as if, for example, there was only six clubs playing rugby in England, if we added another two clubs to play in that it would mean that there’s more players to pick from, more players getting better learning opportunities. That’s all it is at this level, experience. Having experiences is a massive pillar of what we’re trying to do within the pathway.
Bath’s James Linegar was a real stand out, slotting the match winning conversion against Wales and performing well off the tee. What are your thoughts on him?
I keep banging on about it all all the time. It’s hugely important to us as a staff group and what we’re trying to do with the lads is overcome challenges. James had a similar kick in a similar situation versus France two weeks before, and he missed it. He was then given the opportunity where he ended end up kicking from a similar position and and probably one of the more high pressured moments that he’s had in his rugby career. That’s what you want to try and create in a situation like that. He’s kicked for his school, his academy, he’s kicked goals and drop goals in academy finals when he’s represented Bath.
It’s about the opportunities and situations these players find themselves in, and what learning can they take from it. Whether it’s James, the forward pack scrummaging, the halfbacks managing the game or centres taking us forward or getting the ball back.
How did captain Connor Treacey lead the side?
Connor led through the development camps that we’ve had before Christmas, as did other players. It’s not just the technical side of it, it’s how we try and create opportunities for players to grow, put them in a situation where they might be having to lead in attack or defence or set-piece or even a slightly smaller area of the game that might suit their skill set or an area that is more prevalent today. It’s important as a leader they have great awareness around that whether that’s Connor or Patrick Hogg, who captained as well. Going into each game we had six leaders on the pitch that were supporting each other and and as a XV there were three key areas that we went after developmentally. We were pleased with Connor and the contribution of all. They all had opportunities to preview and review games. That’s as much part of leading as somebody is wearing the captain’s armband and going up for the toss.
“Adding in Portugal and Georgia will improve nothern hemisphere rugby”
“They all have got different needs and they all bring a different skill set”
What are the potential work ons?
There’s a lot of areas to improve and each group’s different and the end goal of this is to produce players who have a high potential that can move the game forward in England. Whether that’s playing Premiership that these guys are competing to win championships or whether it’s English clubs competing in Europe, this programme is to prepare them for the next level.
They’ve all got different needs individually and they all bring a different skill set. So we often talk about meeting the players’ needs now as well as the future. You may have a very strong player technically that needs more tactical input, or a player who’s strong tactically, but he’s quite a way off physically so you focus on that area. There are players we select that struggle at first, they may look a little bit out of place because they might be a bit off the pace fitness wise, technically, tactically or look a little bit slow or gangly but there’s something in them that we see, that their academies see, other experts see that we’re trying to develop.
There are key principles of attack and defence. There’s key principles of contact area and ball carrying, ball presentation, how you break down a defence, how you get the ball back quickly and how you manage your backfields and introducing the guys to some elements of the game that they might not get exposed to at school or club level, they might only start getting exposed to academy level, but then it might not be as repeated as much as it could be at international level.
What impressed you most about the players?
The ambition to learn impresses me every year, and I expect it because they are ambitious young men. Don’t forget as well these guys have been revising and coming back into exams. Kids get a lot of stick these days for what they’re doing and what they’re not doing. But we’ve had 26 lads out there who have been asked to commit to three fixtures and eight training sessions. They’ve also self managed themselves around living like a professional rugby player for two weeks, as well as effectively being full-time or part-time students with us. How ambitious they are puts them in good stead for transferable skills in rugby.
Did watching Mark Mapletoft’s U20s lift the Six Nations title provide inspiration for your side?
It inspires them every year because that’s the next group. The way that England men were finishing off the Six Nations and the way
that we’re trying to play means that the seniors are trying to take take the game forward. When we were in camp in Oxford we watched the U20s final game around a big screen all together which was great because some of the guys will have played together with some of those U20s last year when those guys were U18s.
There seems increased alignment between the pathways, how beneficial is that for a player’s development going forward?
A young lad coming in as a 16-year-old who’s U17, who then goes all the way through, he could have 44 months with us in the pathway. He could also have six months with us because Tofty (Mapletoft) could just call him up in the six months before the Junior World Championships and he then goes to Cape Town in June.
The lads that are with us all the way through have got anything between 20-34 age group appearances for England which is like a full season of rugby. But it’s the alignment of what these guys are doing through their regional academies and through what they’re doing from the the community clubs in the schools.
They’re also studying GCSEs, B-tec’s, A-levels and that’s difficult to manage alongside rugby, players need buy in from parents to drive them up and down the country. There’s a lot of ups and downs that gets to that and there’s a lot of players that won’t see any adversity until they come to the pathway and that might be the first time that they’re not picked or they’re dropped, that might be the first time that they don’t start all the games and it’s about how they self regulate and manage themselves through that.
Was the alignment not going to plan before and hence the RFU decided to put a focus on that?
There’s always been conversations, I just think there’s got to be understanding. Eddie Jones was in as head coach before and he was trying to select and compete for World Cups. Then Steve Borthwick came in and he went straight into a Six Nations before a World Cup. I think there’s different cycles and the senior guys will always work on World Cup cycles. They’ll always work on seasonal cycles as well and there’s different stages of the year where we can have some really good conversations. There’s times where you won’t see each other as it’s not like we’re here Monday to Saturday every week, we’re all over the country but we’re all working together.
Tofty has got his EPS squad, then there’s 72 players that we’re aware of in the U18s, 105 in the U17s, Steve then has his senior squad. Introduction to rugby, right down at the bottom to the community game to mini rugby, into junior and intermediate rugby, all feeds into it. If you’re coaching or volunteering in rugby you could probably say in some sort of way, you are an England coach because somebody somewhere will come through your system. Whether it’s somebody who makes their debut in 2025 or 2035 or even 2055 somebody, somewhere in England’s had an involvement in it. So, that’s a pretty cool alignment in place.