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How 'really coachable' 19-year-old produced a 20-minute MOTM cameo

(Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

Last Sunday presented an incredible situation for the 19-year-old London Irish rookie Henry Arundell to capture the imagination and become the latest taxi off the academy ranks to get spoken about in glowing terms in the Gallagher Premiership. The Exiles were facing a heavy defeat when the youngster entered the fray at Brentford, Declan Kidney’s team trailing by 25-points and looking like a badly beaten side. 

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However, an extraordinary turnaround was to take place and when the match came to a conclusion, London Irish had amazingly secured a 42-all draw and Arundell was awarded the man of the match by BT Sport for a 20-minute contribution that included a chip, chase and collect try and an assist. 

It was only the sixth ever Premiership appearance so far in the young full-back career of Arundell at the Irish, with whom he won an academy league title and was also involved with the England U18s and U20s. He will now take a spot on the club’s bench for this Sunday’s Challenge Cup quarter-final away to Toulon and head coach Les Kiss couldn’t be happier for the kid.

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“He has got a good sense of humour, he is deliberate in terms of how he goes about his conversations, I want to improve this, I want to work on that, how do I do this. He is very attentive to all his detail and is very deliberate with his work,” explained Kiss when asked by RugbyPass what sort of a character Arundell is in the Irish set-up.

“Away from that he works hard and smart to be able to say where do my strengths come through and where are my one or two things I have got to work on, and when you give him something to work on he just takes it and eats it up. The same with Will Joseph, they are both really coachable boys.

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“I’m really pleased that those young guys, even Tom Pearson earlier in the year and Juan Gonzalez, they haven’t just gone out there and played conservative. They need to find out how good they can be. The reason I’m pleased is we are giving bandwidth to find out who they are and that bandwidth means they may make a mistake. 

Even Henry said he dropped the first ball (against Wasps). He could have stopped there and said I’ll make sure I don’t make another mistake, but he backs what he is… I’m really pleased those young guys are saying I will try to play my hand, challenge my skill set and see what comes out of it. That is a really pleasing thing. 

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“It doesn’t mean we don’t expect errors, it means I’d rather look on the positive things you can do rather than take away what you are good at and be error-free. If you are error-free you are going to get nowhere, so that is really pleasing from a coaching perspective, from a club perspective. We want these young guys to find out how good they can be and the environment I hope allows them to do that

“But the biggest thing for the likes of Henry and Will Joseph, Juan, Tom Pearson and the other youngsters, Chunya (Munga), they work hard, they are humble but they don’t subjugate themselves to any greater power. They still want to be who they are and we explicitly say stretch your skillset and find out how good you can be. 

“Don’t sit underneath everyone, make sure you put your head above the parapet and see how good you can be, and that is a really big thing for us. That was part of the reason when we built the squad we brought a lot of good experience in, some internationals, so that is a bit of a safety net for them where they can express themselves with good experience around them.”

LONDON IRISH (vs Toulon, Sunday): 15. Tom Parton; 14. Kyle Rowe, 13. Curtis Rona, 12. Benhard van Rensburg, 11. Ollie Hassell-Collins; 10. Paddy Jackson, 9. Ben White; 1. Facundo Gigena, 2. Agustin Creevy, 3. Marcel van der Merwe, 4. Adam Coleman, 5. Rob Simmons, 6. Matt Rogerson (capt), 7. Juan Martin Gonzalez, 8. Albert Tuisue. Reps: 16. Matt Cornish, 17. Will Goodrick-Clarke, 18. Ollie Hoskins, 19. Steve Mafi, 20. Tom Pearson, 21. Nick Phipps, 22. Will Joseph, 23. Henry Arundell.

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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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