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'Completely nuts' Premiership Immortals XV named by Austin Healey

(Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images)

Ex-Leicester utility Austin Healey has named his Premiership Immortals XV in a very Austin Healey-like way – only selecting players that he played with at Tigers. Healey had 20 years’ worth of players from across the league to choose from, but he opted to keep things in-house at Welford Road, an approach that is sure to fire up English top-flight supporters.

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After fans had selected their Immortals XV via a series of online polls, Healey was the second of four BT Sport pundits to name his own XV ahead of a round-table debate show on May 27 featuring Lawrence Dallaglio, Ugo Monye, Ben Kay and Healey.

“This is a real opportunity,” he began. “Obviously, you have got to have a criteria to pick it and my main criteria was players that I played with. You don’t get to do this very often, it’s hypothetical. Most people would have shot my team down anyway. I was on a hiding to nothing, so what I did was I just picked the whole Leicester team that I played with.

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“It makes perfect sense. They won four titles, most of them are great blokes and I understand everything about them… there will be criticisms for this, but my aim was to get as many of my mates into that Immortals team as possible and almost all have got a valid case.

“People will realise what a great team I have selected. You only get one chance to pick the Immortals team, so why would I want to pick a load of people I never played with? They’re very versatile, dynamic, strong, fast!”

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Healey went on to steadfastly defend his selection approach, naming a team that included usual suspects such as Martin Johnson, Neil Back and Geordan Murphy. But he will surely raise eyebrows regarding how he picked himself at No9, chose Andy Goode as his No10 and included a largely unrecognisable name at No11 instead of Alesana Tuilagi.

Here is how he explained some of his choices, beginning with loosehead. “I have picked Graham Rowntree because he was probably ahead of his time. He was completely nuts, ran around the field just hitting ruck after ruck. I used to call him Shaun Edwards because in training he thought he was Shaun Edwards, the rugby league star, playing first receiver, distributing the ball, but he was an absolute rock in the pack.

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“Didn’t go to the World Cup, probably wrongly so, but lots of appearances and wins. That is the key thing here, this team’s win ratio is better than every other hypothetical Immortals team that will be selected over the course of these TV shows.”

Darren Garforth was Healey’s tighthead prop, with good reason. “In my first game for Leicester, his job was always to ruck and I went into a ruck and he came in and stamped on me and told me, ‘That is my job, get out of the ruck, I’ll look after you out there’, so I listened to him for the rest of my career and didn’t go near any of those areas.”

As regards Johnson at No4, Healey reckoned: “One of his key attributes was his ability to run. His mum was an ultra-marathon runner, he used to go training with her. He had a phenomenal engine. He had one pace, it was average speed, but he didn’t stop. He’d start the game running at that speed, and he would finish the game running at that pace and that is why he had so many impacts on the game, both physical and mental in a lot of ways.

“He was very pragmatic, very sarcastic, less so in the changing room, but he just dealt with black and white. He eliminated all the grey which is what great leaders do and he enabled the team to focus on what was really important, which was getting the ball to me.”

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Healey went on to tell an amusing in-between-pubs story about Martin Corry, his No8. “Nobody knows but he was the England captain and an absolute rock. Mentally one of the strongest individuals you will ever come across. On my stag-do, we arrived back at Newcastle train station after being out on an afternoon at Whitley Bay and I bet him a pound that he couldn’t do a forward roll all the way to the Quayside.

“He did 400 forward rolls to the Quayside, put his hand out and went, ‘Where’s my pound?’ I gave him his pound, he went thanks and we went into the pub. So mentally, very, very strong. Never took a backward step ever. I remember a little bit of a punch-up with another guy I could have picked, Lawrence Dallaglio, and Martin won that fight.

“He just stood in and just hit him repeatedly and we all stood back because he didn’t need any help. That is the reason why I didn’t pick Lawrence because if it came down to a scrap, he didn’t really have it in his locker.”

Healey had no issues naming himself as his Immortals XV scrum-half. “A lot of people say, ‘I’m not going to pick myself’ but if you are the best player you should pick yourself and I was the best player in any one of those positions and we got four titles two Heineken Cups off the back of it. You will admit if you look at that pack, it’s a great pack but without the magic behind it it’s not winning titles… modesty is largely overrated. That is why I went for myself.”

Next came Goode at out-half. “I actually loved playing nine and 10 with him. He was a very intuitive player, fantastic right foot, he controlled proceedings, he attacked the line, he never took a backward step physically, people commented on his shape but he did what he needed to do every time you put it in front of him…

“I used to know I would get to the breakdown and fling out a pass and he would always be there. He would know where the ball was going to. He has got a brilliant rugby brain and he knew how to use it.”

Healey went on to reveal the menace of the bed-flipping Leon Lloyd, his No13, a habit that at one stage injured Healey and ruled him out of a Leicester match against Leinster. “You’d go in for a little afternoon nap on top of the bed and then he would come in and basically flip the bed and you would end up awake with the bed on top of you.”

The most eye-raising Healey selection, however, was left wing Winston Stanley. “A lot of people won’t know this guy. I only played with him for a couple of seasons… this guy came out of nowhere and whenever you got the ball to him, he scored. He was unbelievably quick and really elusive quick. You could argue this team by itself won two titles and then he arrived and we won two more and two European Cups. He might have been the missing link that took us to the next stage.”

Austin Healey’s Immortals XV: 15. Tim Stimpson; 14. Geordan Murphy; 13. Leon Lloyd, 12. Will Greenwood, 11. Winston Stanley; 10. Andy Goode, 9. Austin Healey; 1. Graham Rowntree, 2. Dorian West, 3. Darren Garforth, 4. Martin Johnson, 5. Ben Kay, 6. Lewis Moody, 7. Neil Back, 8. Martin Corry.

  • Watch BT Sport’s Premiership Immortals on BT Sport 1 from 1pm on Saturday, May 27, to see who makes the greatest Premiership XV of all time. The final episode will be followed by BT Sport’s exclusive live coverage of the Gallagher Premiership final from 2pm on BT Sport 1 btsport.com/immortals
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J
JW 3 hours ago
'Passionate reunion of France and New Zealand shows Fabien Galthie is wrong to rest his stars'

Ok, managed to read the full article..

... New Zealand’s has only 14 and the professional season is all over within four months. In France, club governance is the responsibility of an independent organisation [the Ligue Nationale de Rugby or LNR] which is entirely separate from the host union [the Fédération Française de Rugby or FFR]. Down south New Zealand Rugby runs the provincial and the national game.

That is the National Provincial Championship, a competition of 14 representative union based teams run through the SH international window and only semi professional (paid only during it's running). It is run by NZR and goes for two and a half months.


Super Rugby is a competition involving 12 fully professional teams, of which 5 are of New Zealand eligibility, and another joint administered team of Pacific Island eligibility, with NZR involvement. It was a 18 week competition this year, so involved (randomly chosen I believe) extra return fixtures (2 or 3 home and away derbys), and is run by Super Rugby Pacific's own independent Board (or organisation). The teams may or may not be independently run and owned (note, this does not necessarily mean what you think of as 'privately owned').


LNR was setup by FFR and the French Government to administer the professional game in France. In New Zealand, the Players Association and Super Rugby franchises agreed last month to not setup their own governance structure for professional rugby and re-aligned themselves with New Zealand Rugby. They had been proposing to do something like the English model, I'm not sure how closely that would have been aligned to the French system but it did not sound like it would have French union executive representation on it like the LNR does.

In the shaky isles the professional pyramid tapers to a point with the almighty All Blacks. In France the feeling for country is no more important than the sense of fierce local identity spawned at myriad clubs concentrated in the southwest. Progress is achieved by a nonchalant shrug and the wide sweep of nuanced negotiation, rather than driven from the top by a single intense focus.

Yes, it is pretty much a 'representative' selection system at every level, but these union's are having to fight for their existence against the regime that is NZR, and are currently going through their own battle, just as France has recently as I understand it. A single focus, ala the French game, might not be the best outcome for rugby as a whole.


For pure theatre, it is a wonderful article so far. I prefer 'Ntamack New Zealand 2022' though.

The young Crusader still struggles to solve the puzzle posed by the shorter, more compact tight-heads at this level but he had no problem at all with Colombe.

It was interesting to listen to Manny during an interview on Maul or Nothing, he citied that after a bit of banter with the All Black's he no longer wanted one of their jersey's after the game. One of those talks was an eye to eye chat with Tamaiti Williams, there appear to be nothing between the lock and prop, just a lot of give and take. I thought TW angled in and caused Taylor to pop a few times, and that NZ were lucky to be rewarded.

f you have a forward of 6ft 8ins and 145kg, and he is not at all disturbed by a dysfunctional set-piece, you are in business.

He talked about the clarity of the leadership that helped alleviate any need for anxiety at the predicaments unfolding before him. The same cannot be said for New Zealand when they had 5 minutes left to retrieve a match winning penalty, I don't believe. Did the team in black have much of a plan at any point in the game? I don't really call an autonomous 10 vehicle they had as innovative. I think Razor needs to go back to the dealer and get a new game driver on that one.

Vaa’i is no match for his power on the ground. Even in reverse, Meafou is like a tractor motoring backwards in low gear, trampling all in its path.

Vaa'i actually stops him in his tracks. He gets what could have been a dubious 'tackle' on him?

A high-level offence will often try to identify and exploit big forwards who can be slower to reload, and therefore vulnerable to two quick plays run at them consecutively.

Yes he was just standing on his haunches wasn't he? He mentioned that in the interview, saying that not only did you just get up and back into the line to find the opposition was already set and running at you they also hit harder than anything he'd experienced in the Top 14. He was referring to New Zealands ultra-physical, burst-based Super style of course, which he was more than a bit surprised about. I don't blame him for being caught out.


He still sent the obstruction back to the repair yard though!

What wouldn’t the New Zealand rugby public give to see the likes of Mauvaka and Meafou up front..

Common now Nick, don't go there! Meafou showed his Toulouse shirt and promptly got his citizenship, New Zealand can't have him, surely?!?


As I have said before with these subjects, really enjoy your enthusiasm for their contribution on the field and I'd love to see more of their shapes running out for Vern Cotter and the like styled teams.

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