5 Fantastic Premiership Players Who Never Quite Made the Grade for England

Some, like Maro Itoje and Owen Farrell, take to test rugby like ducks to water.

Others, like Luke Cowan-Dickie or George Furbank, need a little bit of time to find their feet before they begin to look at home.

But for a number of players, the gulf between the Premiership and international rugby is just too much and they fail to replicate the form that earned themselves a spot in the England squad in the first place. 

Let's take a look at the group of players renowned for being top class in the Premiership, but not quite up to scratch when given the chance to play for England.

The Newcastle and Saracens legend, who made 245 Premiership appearances, won a deserved first, but only England cap against Canada in the Investec Challenge match in 2004 and scored a try as captain. A true Premiership legend who never got a proper shot at international rugby.

DID YOU KNOW: Vyvyan is youngest of seven brothers.

It could be argued that he hasn't been given a fair crack of the whip, having won just 16 caps. Never far from controversy, Cipriani is without a doubt one of the most talented players to play in the Premiership, winning the RPA player of the year in 2019, since its inception but on the international stage it simply didn't work out for him.

Gloucester stalwart Hazell, who made a total of 266 appearances for the Cherry and Whites over 17 years, had the unenviable task of filling the retired Neil Back’s shoes. We can assume that Andy Robinson’s thought process was, “He’s small, he’s aggressive, he’s just like Neil Back”, but unfortunately it didn’t really work out like that.  Making his international appearances exclusively through 2004-05, Hazell became known as a bit of a penalty machine.

The Volcano’ stormed onto the scene for Gloucester, doing something ridiculous like scoring five tries on his debut against Leeds, before qualifying for England on residency grounds. International honours followed, with Vainikolo making his England debut against Wales in 2008. However, he failed to bring his try-scoring form to the international scene and was quickly dropped from Martin Johnston’s squad after winning five caps.

The winger was one of two Sale players to make their international debut in England's final match of their 1999 Five Nations campaign along with Barrie-Jon Mather. Although Hanley scored a try, he also was handed-off by Craig Quinnell and suffered a broken arm as Wales won 32–31 in what proved to be his only cap. Domestically, for Sale he scored 104 tries in 191 games, 75 of which were in the Premiership.