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Powerful schoolboy prodigy filmed training with England in France

George Timmins

Bath and England U18 flanker George Timmins has been spotted training with England this week in Le Touquet-Paris-Plage as Steve Borthwick’s side prepare to face Samoa on Saturday in Lille.

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The teenager has enjoyed a whirlwind few months having only finished playing schoolboy rugby for Millfield just a matter of months ago, where his powerful ball carrying gained him attention online. Since then, he has starred for England U18 in the Six Nations Festival, signed a senior academy contract with Bath alongside school teammates Ioan Emanuel and Ieuan Davies, and has now trained alongside England’s senior team at the World Cup.

An image surfaced on Monday of the flanker holding a tackle pad alongside England No8 Billy Vunipola, although no details have been provided as to why he has linked up with the World Cup squad.

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Timmins will balance his time playing rugby with studying at Bath University. After signing for the club, he said: “It felt great to get the news about the contract offer from Bath as it’s something I’ve wanted to achieve for a long time. I’m really looking forward to moving into the senior environment, which will be a great new experience and challenge for me. I joined Millfield for the incredible facilities on campus and the detailed feedback you receive from the coaches; the school has really helped me develop as a player.”

Bath Rugby Academy Director Sean Lilley said “We have been fortunate to have such a fantastic group of players to work with throughout the years and we’re delighted to be bringing through extremely talented boys from this year’s cohort. The Under-18s campaign was great for their progression as players and people and we can’t wait to help them on the next stage of their journey. We are extremely proud of them and if they work hard, they all have the potential to develop their game positively over the next couple of seasons.”

Here are some of the images of Timmins training:

George Timmins
George Timmins
George Timmins
George Timmins
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J
JW 51 minutes ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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