Furbank fired up for chance to impress visiting England coach
Saints full-back can push international claims after kicking on this campaign, he tells Daniel Schofield
When England head coach Eddie Jones attends a match, he watches a maximum of two players, following their every movement on and off the ball. At full-time, if you were to ask him the scoreline or who was man of the match, he probably would not be able to tell you so intense is his focus on his scouting targets.
As he takes his seat at Franklin’s Gardens today for Northampton Saints’ Champions Cup match against Benetton Treviso, it is a fair bet that dashing full-back George Furbank will be one of those Jones is training his sights on. Furbank has been the form English No 15 this season in a position where England would benefit from fresh options entering a new World Cup cycle.
Furbank would offer something different to England’s attack. By his own admission, he is not the biggest or quickest. “I am probably not going to beat five people in a row and score a worldie,” he says. Instead his qualities are as a footballer. As Northampton’s attack coach, Sam Vesty, says, do not judge how well he plays in isolation, but in how his team-mates around him perform.
“There are different ways to play full-back,” Vesty said. “You can be an athlete who is really rapid but you will need facilitators to get you the ball and find you the space. Or you can be a guy who finds space for other people. George brings the best out in other people. He gets a lot out of his wingers. His first instinct is to look for space.
“You could effectively put him on a basketball court and he would know how to find the space. Same on a football pitch, he would know where the space was even if he didn’t necessarily have the skills to get the ball there. Knowing where space is, is such an undervalued skill in rugby.”
If that puts Furbank in the mould of Alex Goode, a player to whom Jones has never taken a shine, then there is also more than a passing resemblance to former Northampton full-back Ben Foden with his rock-star looks. He even appeared in a Take That tribute band – Take This – while at school. “Someone somewhere probably has some footage of that,” Furbank grimaces. “I really hope it never sees the light of day.”
If all this makes Furbank seem like the golden boy for whom everything came easily then that would belie several years of graft and patience. A boyhood Saints fan, he came through the junior and senior academy but until the start of last season had made just one appearance for the club
– a try-scoring debut against Exeter Chiefs in the Anglo-Welsh Cup. Before that he spent two seasons on loan at Cambridge and one at Nottingham.
Many young players in such a position become impatient for first-team opportunities. Furbank, 23, who is taking a six-year Open University degree in geography, recognised that he was a late developer and was content to bide his time. “If you let yourself get into that mindset at that young age then you are never going to break through,” Furbank said. “I never had a negative mindset towards it. I kept trying and got my break in fourth year.
“When you see lads come straight out of school starting in the Premiership, like Marcus Smith, you think, ‘I wish I was him’. But guys develop at different rates, learn at different rates. I was never the real natural talent that I could come straight from school into that environment. It took me time to adapt and learn.”
As with many of his academy cohorts, it also took the arrival of
Chris Boyd as director of rugby in the summer of 2018 for his potential to be recognised. Furbank was initially injured when Boyd arrived having snapped a tendon in a finger while on loan at Randwick in Australia, but was told he would get his opportunity in the Premiership Rugby Cup. “Chris is happy to throw boys in now, which is nice and refreshing,” Furbank said. “Quite a lot of lads left as well so that opened the door for the young lads to come through. You look at guys like Lewis [Ludlam] and Hutch [Rory Hutchinson], they have kicked on and become full internationals.
“With me he said, ‘This is your chance to show me what you have got and it is an opportunity you need to take if you are going to push forward’. ” Take it
Furbank did, establishing himself as the club’s first-choice full-back ahead of Ahsee Tuala and Harry Mallinder, who is just coming back from longterm injury. Furbank too has had his share of setbacks, suffering a serious concussion against Harlequins last April that ruled him out for six months.
“At the time, I remember waking up in the physio room thinking how did I get here?” Furbank said. “I came back to training a couple of weeks
‘I was never the real natural talent that I could come straight from school and go into the first team’