March date looms large for out of work scrum half

Former Italian scrum-half Callum Braley completes his 36-month international stand-down period and becomes eligible for the World Rugby birthright transfer ruling on March 19th.

The 30-year-old is realistic enough to know that Steve Borthwick or Conor O’Shea at England Rugby are unlikely to come knocking at his door when, technically, he becomes available for selection. However, it could work positively in his favour regarding securing EQP status.

Once he is qualified to play for England in the eyes of World Rugby, Braley has two routes to gaining EQP status, which could be his passport back into the Premiership or Championship. EQP status makes a player more attractive in the eyes of a club because central funding is in part related to EQP credits.

One route is if Braley is deemed a player of ‘national interest’, which is unlikely given the stock of top-quality English-qualified nines available to England’s senior and A team. However, a club interested in signing him can also apply for EQP status through the official RFU registration process if they think he is EQP-qualified. A department within the RFU will then review the information submitted and decide if the player meets the requirements to be considered an EQP.

Bron and bred in England, Gloucestershire-based Braley qualified for the Azzurri through his Italian grandfather but bowed out of international rugby straight after his 15th cap – Italy’s famous, last-gasp 22-21 win over Wales in Cardiff on March 19th, 2022.

Since retiring from international duty with Italy and leaving Treviso, where he was playing his club rugby at the time, Braley spent two seasons at Northampton before being released last summer.

Braley had a brief spell at Saracens in November, playing in a couple of Premiership Rugby Cup games, but is still searching for a full-time contract. He believes he still has a lot to offer the English game – if he can work around one last bit of red tape.

“Being able to work in my dream profession is still my goal. I feel that I have so much to offer the English game still,” he told RugbyPass.

“One of the things I have loved doing in my career is helping young players come through, and I feel I can still do that if I was at a club.

“I am not saying that it (English-qualified status) would guarantee me a job but it probably opens up a conversation that might not be there.

“Although I haven’t played for six weeks I still feel I can step into that environment, and be able to perform.”

Father to three English-born kids, Braley has been training at the University of Gloucestershire, where he coaches, alongside managing the Air B&B business that he and his wife established whilst he was playing over in Italy.

The former Gloucester and Bristol player admits he thought long and hard about retiring from all forms of rugby when he was out of a job last summer. But the brief time spent at Saracens has reignited his desire to continue playing. However, the demise of Wasps, Worcester, London Irish and Jersey Reds has made the job market a lot harder.

“I’d love to carry on playing. In truth, after finishing at Northampton I was probably in a bit of a predicament about if I wanted to carry on playing,” he said.

“I was finding the nature of professional quite hard, the stresses on the family and the contract cycles so I spent the summer wondering if it was still for me or not.

“And then I had a phone call from Saracens and I went there for three months and absolutely loved it and I realised I definitely didn’t want to finish at the moment.

“But unfortunately with the nature of the market at the moment there’s a lack of jobs so to speak. There are smaller squad sizes and there’s three or four less clubs now.”

Braley will be an interested spectator when the Six Nations starts this weekend, with Italy taking on Scotland at Murrayfield in the Saturday afternoon kick-off.

Italy go into this year’s tournament having enjoyed their best-ever Six Nations campaign in 2024, winning two and drawing one of their five matches.

After opening up with two defeats to England and Ireland, Gonzalo Quesada’s side drew 13-13 with France before finishing with wins against Scotland at home (31-29) and Wales away (24-21).

Italy didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory in the Autumn Nations Series, losing heavily to Argentina (50-18) before scraping home against Georgia (20-17) and then closing out with a creditable defeat to the All Blacks (29-11).

“I think they will probably be disappointed with some of the Autumn Series but I think they are going to bounce back from that and hopefully build on such a successful campaign last Six Nations,” Braley conceded.

“It’s not an individual sport but when you think of the growth of certain individuals within that team and how young they are, you just hope that with the experience they gained last year, they can be propelled on to do even better.

“It is a really exciting group. For them to have a little bit of pressure, to be honest, is probably new, that expectation to perform, and I think that is a good thing. They have got an unbelievable backline and great players across the board now.

“The good thing is the game will never be gone from them because they have improved that much and when they go 10-15 points down now they have the confidence and belief to still think they can win it, whereas when I was involved and we’d fall behind you were sometimes left thinking, ‘here we go again’.”

As for predictions, Braley expects Italy to avoid the wooden spoon that was in their possession for such a long time before the current renaissance took place, first under Kieran Crowley and now under Quesada.

“I think they will beat Wales at home and I think it will be similar to last year in that they’ve got a chance to beat Scotland and I also think they could test France again.

“At the moment, Ireland is a stretch, Ireland are performing to another level, but it’ll be interesting. You look across the tournament and it is definitely as tight as it has ever been, the last few years anyway.”