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Vesty: 'I’m probably not a great example of it, I only got a couple'

Sam Vesty with England in 2009 (Photo by Getty Images)

Sam Vesty has claimed he isn’t a good example of a player who used England A representation to go and win Test caps with his country. The Northampton head coach only made two senior international appearances – versus Argentina in 2009 under Martin Johnson.

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He instead suggested that the playing career of Phil Dowson, his Saints’ director of rugby who made seven appearances in 2012 under Stuart Lancaster, was a better illustration of what the A team pathway can achieve high up the chain.

England will assemble next Tuesday at Loughborough University to prepare for their first A international since they toured South Africa as the Saxons in 2016. A squad of 27 has been named for the February 25 match versus Portugal at Leicester where Vesty will act as attack coach under George Skivington.

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Asked for an insight into his own playing career and whether exposure at A team level was important in him going to be capped at Test level by England, Vesty said: “I’ve done a few, I’ve got a lot of England A caps. I dunno, probably 10-plus I guess… (but) I’m probably not a great example of it, I only got a couple.

“Phil Dowson, who is DoR at Northampton, we talk about it a lot – he had a lot of Saxons and England A caps back then and Phil went on to have a bit more of an international career than I did. Just going away together as a group, learning how to play with suddenly having combinations that are all different and you have all got to get on the same page within a week.

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“It’s a great challenge and a great window to what Test rugby is about. The game on the pitch is the same game but there are lots of challenges in and around that, so it really helps in that respect.”

Vesty’s previous experience of coaching at international level was seven years ago when he assisted Eddie Jones’ England on their 2017 tour to Argentina. A vacancy for Vesty was created by Jones having a number of his regular staff away working with the British and Irish Lions in New Zealand.

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“I learned an awful lot on that tour,” he recalled. “It was a fantastic opportunity and that group played fantastic rugby and a lot of those guys went on to have really good England careers. I took a lot back from that tour and put it into my coaching at Northampton.”

Now, with England bringing back their A team for the first time in eight years, Vesty has another opportunity to coach at representative level. “It’s different to what I do with a very consistent group here at Northampton.

“It takes you out of your comfort zone, asks different questions of myself and lots of different challenges. To go and work with some really talented, young future England players is really exciting. I’m looking forward to it and I know I am going to learn a lot.

“I’ll be asking the boys to get their heads up and look and see what is in front of them and they will probably get bored with me saying that. I hope that that sticks with them from an attack point of view.

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“Getting your heads up, playing the game that is in front of you would hopefully be the big take home that we can get across. You can’t reinvent the wheel, it has got to be simple in a week. But that would certainly be my starting position.”

The England A squad of 27 will be supplemented on Tuesday evening by a number of players dropping down from Steve Borthwick’s Guinness Six Nations squad. England are currently two wins from two in the championship for the first time since 2019, but what has Vesty made of their attack so far?

“You can see they struggled to get across the line but you can see there are development bits. They are trying to do things in a certain way and you can see the buds of that growing, although perhaps it’s not smooth.

“But you do see the ball moving into the spaces a little bit more and you can see people looking for the spaces a little bit more. Time is always your friend in (developing) those bits.”

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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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