Steve Borthwick continued his tour of the Premiership’s rugby clubs with a recent stop off in Brentford. Borthwick spoke with London Irish’s Director of Rugby Declan Kidney about the England eligible players, in what could be the start of future international call-ups from the Exiles.
London Irish winger Ollie Hassell-Collins became the club’s first player to start for England in 10 years, when he made his international debut during the 2023 Guinness Six Nations. There are definitely more contenders for an England call-up at the G-Tech Community Stadium, with talented back-rower Tom Pearson leading the conversation.
Kidney did not give definitive details towards Person’s England discussion, but confirmed that he and Steve Borthwick have had a conversation regarding the talented back-rower.
“What we did was, Steve called over, we had a good chat, we went through all the players that qualify for England. It would be wrong to be picking out one over the other, so it was just a good open chat. And he explained where he is, and we explained where we were, and it was just sharing where everything is really.
“We compared notes. And we are pretty similar notes as to what Tom is working on, Tom is very aware of those himself. And he’s like all young players, or like all players really, all players have work-ons, so he’s already on those cases. And we agreed with that when we discussed it.”
Kidney continued to discuss how he has been impressed with London Irish’s younger stars, who have matured exponentially throughout the course of this Gallagher Premiership season.
“I think like all our players are maturing, you know, like a lot of our younger players. I remember being asked a question at the start of the season, as to which of our new players were I looking forward to seeing the most, and I think my reply was that it was actually our younger players, and seeing how much they would mature.
“So a bit like Tom, you know, Ben Loader, Ollie Hassell-Collins, Lucio (Cinti) a lot of the players of that age, they’re all maturing nicely, and they’re all getting more consistent as a result of that.”
Back onto the topic of Pearson, Kidney is excited to see the powerful back-rower make his return to the full Exiles training sessions, after a prolonged injury absence kept him on the side-lines.
“Well we have been seeing him in a few training sessions, he’s obviously been out for an extended period. So he’s due to join in this afternoon, for the first time fully. And so we’ll see how he rocks up with that. He’ll need to do a few sessions to get under his belt. Just to get a bit of match fitness and things like that. Without being able to play matches so he’ll have to do that through the training sessions. Just to have him there is always very handy anyway.
“You want to get players back because you never know at what stage you’re going to need to call on them. So, like, Tom, like other players Will Goodridge-Clarke is starting to come back into it now as well then too. So it’s handy to be getting them back.”