A back-row battler in blue, black and white, Sam Underhill’s brilliant form for Bath has led to a recent test career revival within the England set-up. Despite missing the cut for last year’s Rugby World Cup squad, Underhill was drafted in for the final fixture, and has not since taken a backwards step.
An untimely neck injury to Jack Willis opened the door for Underhill’s return, who has since emerged as the long-term replacement following Willis’ extended stay with Toulouse. Underhill impressed all onlookers in England’s Bronze Medal Final win against Argentina, and gave head coach Steve Borthwick a fresh reminder of his talents on the flank.
Following an England hiatus of 20 test matches which spanned the Eddie Jones and Borthwick handover, Underhill is firmly back in the fold and relishing his opportunities to star for his country once again. Speaking in an England media session ahead of the Ireland test match, Underhill discussed his return to the international stage.
“Yeah it’s been class. All I wanted to do was to get back into this team, and if I’m perfectly honest I was doubtful that that would happen. This is the first time I’ve done a full campaign with Steve, under him as a coach. I think I played the Aussie tour, then I don’t think I played again until the third-fourth play-off, which was 18 months.
“So, my aim personally was to get back here, and now that I am, as a player you’re constantly looking for challenges, or things to go wrong or not be going that well. Whereas actually now, I am where I want to be, and I obviously want to keep on improving, but I have taken a moment to say to myself, ‘hey, you’re doing it, well done’.
“Again, on a personal note this is exactly where I want to be. And now you’re not just content to be here, I want to win with this team, and help, and perform as well as I can for them. But it’s been class, it’s a very good environment. It’s a very caring sort of team. There’s a lot of emotional investment from a lot of people, I can certainly see it, and I think ultimately that will only bode well for us on the pitch.
As Underhill alluded to, his last feature for England before the Rugby World Cup was on the 2022 Summer Tour to Australia. Running out for just one cap in the three match series, the back-row was understandably frustrated with his 57 minute outing on the other side of the world. The 27-year-old continued to ply his trade at the Recreation Ground, yet would be left out of the fold for the entirety of England’s 2022/23 campaign, in what spelled the end of the Eddie Jones era.
The hard-hitting back-row pressed on week to week in the West Country, and earned himself a spot in Borthwick’s wider training group for the 2023 Rugby World Cup. Having grafted for the six-week Summer camp, Underhill looked to be a sure-fire name amongst the back-row ranks, yet the former Leicester Tigers head coach left him out of the trip over to France. Underhill explained how this was quite the shocking omission amongst Pennyhill Park, and the impact which it had upon his mentality, and of that of his teammates.
“I think it would be remiss of me, certainly any player, to think that they have to be in any team. There were 10 back-rowers in Verona, and of that 10, there were six spots, so four of us were going to go home. I respect the other players too much to say ‘ I Should be there’.
“A decision’s going to have to be made at some point, someone’s going to miss out. Someone missing out doesn’t mean they are a bad player. I’m no better as a player than if I hadn’t been picked to be here. That’s the hard thing to get your head around sometimes. A lot of people talk about being process-driven, but that’s easier said than done.
“When you aren’t picked, the ability to go, that isn’t actually a reflection of where I am, is important but tough. You’re not a better player for being picked than not being picked, or for getting a contract or not getting a contract. Whatever the external thing might be.
“But that might be way easier to say sat here in the squad again, but that was something I tried to tell myself anyway, after that call was made in the summer. You’ve got to allow yourself to and it’s normal to feel the emotion of it. But then it’s like, the more you deal with the emotion of it, the easier it becomes. You’re allowed to be disappointed if you’re not selected, you’re allowed to be upset.
“What isn’t great for you is if you then let that affect your behaviour, and let that affect your actions that come afterwards. Massively easier said than done. In the summer I was just lucky that the domestic season started so quickly. I went back to the club and then the games started two weeks later, so I could start playing and have less to think about and less time to dwell on it.
“It’s why injury is so frustrating, you don’t have an action you can carry out, you can’t just get on the pitch and start playing again. You’ve got to allow yourself to feel whatever you’re going to feel, that’s natural, then try to make the behaviours positive.”
England come into this weekend’s match with the opportunity to level out the Six Nations playing field. Borthwick’s side take on Ireland this Saturday at Twickenham, who are the only undefeated side left in the competition. Sitting comfortably atop of the table following a trio of bonus point wins, Ireland are eyeing up a history making first as they look to become the first side to win back-to-back Grand Slams of the modern Six Nations era.
France were the last side to achieve this astounding feat, yet the 1997-1998 accomplishments took place towards the end of the Five Nations’ timeline. An England win would open up the competition, as both England and Scotland have achieved two wins from the first three rounds of matches. England took their first defeat of the competition in the latest round, when they were handed a 30-21 defeat by Gregor Townsend’s Scots up in Edinburgh.
Underhill was reunited with some of his Bath teammates for that game, as he took on the likes of Scotland’s talismanic fly half Finn Russell at Murrayfield. Underhill explained how it is certainly a different scenario this weekend, as he rarely gets the opportunity to take on the Ireland players, given how the entire squad is situated in the United Rugby Championship.
“I play with Finn (Russell), Cam (Redpath) and Josh (Bayliss), but you’re still playing a team of pretty different players. You don’t get too many opportunities to play against them. I see your point. You’ll come up against Leinster and the other sides in Europe but it’s cool, as a player, it’s enjoyable playing against teams and players that you don’t get to too often.
“It creates a completely different challenge. I don’t know if it’s beneficial or not to know the players you’re playing against. You know them, they also know you and you’re playing in different teams with different styles. As players, you tend to be adaptable. Finn’s probably, pardon the pun, a marquee example.
“He’s got the ability to still run the game. Most other players would play differently at their club depending on what they want. But it’s want you want. It’s cool. It’s an exciting opportunity. It’s like when you play in Europe or you get to play the South African teams or whatever. You want to play teams that you don’t play regularly.”
Casting his mind back to the Scotland defeat, Underhill explained how the side has been reviewing the match. Handling errors played a critical role in the fixture, as such unforced mistakes literally played the ball into Scotland hands, as the likes of Duhan van der Merwe ran roughshod on England. Underhill explained how his side are looking to learn from their mistakes, but admitted how things are often far easier to see retrospectively through a monitor than in the heat of the action.
“It’s hard to gauge cause and effect when you’re in the game, I guess. Everything’s so obvious when you’re watching a game on a TV screen or on a laptop screen in a review. I say that, what makes goo coaches is the ability to spot and explain why things have happened.
“We’ve just had our review of the training session there, and there are things that I saw happening, and I saw the outcome, but I wouldn’t have known that it was because someone was a metre out of position or someone had worked a little bit slowly into position or someone else had done a great job running a blocking line or a lead line or something else that the coaches spot and explain.
“Good coaches help you understand why things are happening. That’s the challenge of leadership roles and being decision-makers, is that they’ve got to try and have that understanding of ‘OK, this isn’t working, why not?’ There’s always going to be a reason. No one goes into a Test match trying to make mistakes or trying to put themselves into positions that aren’t effective. There has to be a reason why.
“Most of our review process was ‘this didn’t work, but why didn’t it work?’ It can’t just be someone saying ‘you did a bad job there’. It’s about how we improve it. I think we came out of it with a decent amount of clarity. It’s obvious really easy, so it’s about training it. We’ve had the fallow week in York and then today; which is two decent cracks at training it.”
Pivoting back to Ireland, Underhill expressed how this weekend’s visitors bring a different attacking style than that of their Celtic cousins from Scotland. The Bath man anticipates an intense occasion at Twickenham, and recognises the areas of defence that his side needs to be switched on and alert about.
“They (Ireland) have clearly developed a game they have been able to impose on teams and been able to do it for a while now, so I am excited at the potential for that challenge. There are certain things they do consistently very, very well that put them in good positions, if not winning then to be very competitive in games.”
“It does sound stupid but the defensive stuff felt pretty good (against Scotland). Apart from that first phase try, they all came off turnovers. So ball retention, how often we gave them the ball back, especially against a team like Scotland, who are probably one of the best attacking teams out there, you are giving them exactly what they want, we just gave them way too much turnover ball to counter attack with.
“I think we gave them 22 turnover balls and we won 18. Normally if you win 18 turnover balls in a game you have done pretty well but obviously not if you are the wrong side of that split. There are always things to review, you are always going to do a defence review and there are always going to be things to get better at but for me that probably wasn’t where that game was won or lost.”
“They are probably a bit more of a phase attacking team, hold the ball more and play more maybe in the middle of the pitch. Scotland kick long and quite a lot and invite you back and get their counter-attack going off that.
“Probably more of a phase team, I would say, in terms of what we are expecting and in terms of looking at that in, in terms of Scotland. Within that that, they have got a lot of structure in their phases, which you wouldn’t know unless you were in their meetings but you can see it in the way they play. They have obviously got some decent structure.”