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'Their eyes lit up': Ben and Tom Curry relishing Jack Willis test
By Jon Newcombe
Sunday’s match between six-time champions Toulouse and Sale Sharks brings the Round of 16 fixtures to a close in the Investec Champions Cup, and the hope is that the fixture schedule has saved the best game for last.
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Internationals adorn both sets of squads, but one player who should have been involved in the Six Nations but wasn’t has been dominating the Sharks’ thoughts as they bid to become the first team to beat Les Rouges et Noirs in the competition since Leinster in the 2023 semi-final.
Jack Willis’s decision to go to France cost him the chance to play with his brother Tom in the England back row, where another pair of siblings – Tom and Ben Curry – have dominated the conversation instead.
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The Curry twins were brilliant in the Six Nations, especially at the breakdown, an area where Willis prides himself as being one of the best, which makes Sunday’s match a Lions trial for the openside position in all but name.
“They’re excited about that. We did show some clips of him (Willis) today,” said Sale Sharks director of rugby, Alex Sanderson, during the club’s media session on Wednesday.
“We had a breakdown meeting and highlighted him, set both Currys on him, and there’s a danger in doing that because if you target one player in a very good team, there’s going to be space for somebody else. That’s the beauty of this Cup.
“Looking at how he’s playing, he would undoubtedly make that England squad. He is a different level around the breakdown, in his attacking play … everything. He is playing really well.
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“The Currys are so competitive they have probably missed the opportunity to play against him this season, in the league, or train against him.
“When we are talking about the threat that he is and the challenge that we face, their eyes light up.
“I am looking forward to seeing both of them go, it is great to have them back on the field.”
You can picture the scene at Carrington, the Sharks’ training base, when the bibs were handed out during the breakdown session, and one unsuspecting academy player is selected to be Jack Willis for the day, with the Currys going at them hell for leather.
In this case, it was 21-year-old flanker Tristan Woodman.
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“Tristan Woodman got battered today. We’ve got a few angry lads when we get the tackle suits out. We don’t do full-on all the time, but we have controlled elements of our breakdown, and we ask them to do certain things, and these guys put the bibs on.
“Whilst he’s getting smoked and getting up and getting his head pushed in the dirt, I just tell him if he is frustrating them, he is doing his job because it is not just the Currys, it’s the South Africans that get really upset. Through some sort of hierarchical, systemic culture, they think the young lads should just keep themselves in their box. But thankfully, they don’t.”
Sanderson likes to provide light and shade to his match-week preparation, and while recognising the enormity of the task awaiting them – Sale are 22/1 underdogs – the former flanker produced a ‘you’ve been framed’ moment from the last time the teams met in France (a 45-19 win for Toulouse in December 2022), that left the team room in stitches.
“We’ve shown Byron McGuigan taking (Thomas) Ramos’ head off the last time we went there, it was a ‘what happened next’ kind of quiz thing, just to set the scene and kind of get a bit of levity in it, I guess, because it can all get too serious, can’t it?
“And then we showed some examples of what worked for us because we did frustrate them for half a game before it blew out in the second half. So we know we have the capability, and a lot of teams do – they push and push, but their (Toulouse’s) quality and consistency of brilliance wins through towards the back end.
“So it won’t just be a first half of fire and brimstone that wins this, it is going to be 80 minutes of engagement, on the back of that physicality that we’ve come to expect, come to prioritise from this group.”
If they do pull off a shock result, the chances are the Currys will have played a blinder and receive the plaudits, but Tristan Woodman will be an unsung hero in Sanderson’s eyes. “We’ve got lads who are pushing the starting 23 this weekend, and I am really grateful for that.”
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