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The Springboks great that England have likened Alex Dombrandt to
By Liam Heagney
England coach Eddie Jones has claimed that Alex Dombrandt, his team’s No8 for Sunday’s Guinness Six Nations match away to Italy, reminds him greatly of Bobby Skinstad, the famed Springboks back-rower who retired as a World Cup winner in 2007.
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Jones was part of the backroom staff when Jake White’s South Africans went all the way in France 15 years ago, a campaign that brought the curtain down on the stellar 42-cap career of Skinstad, who burst onto the Test rugby scene with a win over England in November 1997.
The 24-year-old Dombrandt made his England Test debut when starting versus Canada last July and has since added four more caps as a replacement coming off the bench in the Autumn Series wins over Tonga, Australia and South Africa and again in last weekend’s Six Nations lost to Scotland.
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Dombrant is now one of six players from the England bench at Murrayfield to earn promotion into the starting XV that will take the field at Stadio Olimpico, getting the jump on last week’s No8 Sam Simmonds to start his first-ever Six Nations match.
It is an exciting development given that he will line out with Harlequins teammate Marcus Smith pulling the England strings from the No10 position and head coach Jones is expecting Dombrandt to thrive against an opposition that is on a 33-game losing streak in the championship that stretches back to 2015.
ICYMI: "It was two incidents that should never have happened on a rugby pitch and rarely happens on a rugby pitch"
– It was January when new England No8 Alex Dombrandt told RugbyPass his compelling story from uni rugby to the pro ranks #ENGvUSAhttps://t.co/PxmwYDAJOx
— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) July 8, 2021
“He is not an orthodox eight,” said Jones when asked to explain what type of player Dombrandt is. “He is a free-running eight who reminds me a lot of Bobby Skinstad the way he used to play. Gets himself in good positions to attack but he needs space and this game is going to have a fair bit of space so it will really suit him.”
Jones added that he hasn’t had to put any added emphasis on the Dombrandt-Smith combination on the England training ground this past week, outlining that their link play is something that already comes naturally to them having been a part of last year’s Premiership title-winning Harlequins side.
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“They naturally do it on the field. I don’t think we need to do it tap into it. We see that certain styles of players suit each other and they have certainly got that understanding of Alex runs very good inside balls from Marcus. He has got that understanding of when to do it and they will do it on the field. At training on Friday, they did it again and I’m sure that is going to happen on Sunday.”
The inclusion of Dombrandt as a first-time England Six Nations starter will be seen as a feather in the cap for the universities pathway into professional rugby as opposed to coming through a Premiership club academy. The Londoner earned his stripes on the BUCS rugby circuit with Cardiff Metropolitan before getting signed by Harlequins in 2018 and Jones believes the more diversity in rugby the better.
“That is the great thing about rugby. When I first started playing rugby I was a physical education teacher and I remember my tighthead prop was a chartered accountant and the loosehead prop was a doctor and then both the second rows were labourers.
“The beauty of rugby has been the diversity of the people that play the game, the size and the shape, and I still think there is even more of a need for great diversity for players to go through the academic stream first and then go into professional rugby or for some players it is better to go into the professional stream first.
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“I don’t think there is one right or wrong way but I think you should encourage diversity and encourage young men who want to study and go down the academic stream not to be discouraged by the fact that they can’t make it to play top-level rugby.”
But isn’t that the way Simmonds plays? Free running rugby which led him to break records and score so many tries at club level? Does Jones bench players that he is pressured into using until he can’t bench them anymore? (E.g. Smith)