Tom Curry: School room to Rugby World Cup final
Tom Curry has come a long way in a short time. From watching the World Cup final on television in school to playing in one.
It is curious, indeed, to imagine Tom Curry at the time of the last World Cup. Curry is 21 years old now; four years ago he was still in the sixth form at Oundle School. Fast forward a few years and he has played in a World Cup final in Japan, having also been shortlsted for World Rugby player of the year.
In 2015, when the World Cup was being played out at Twickenham and across the country, Curry would be at school, watching the games on TV with a crowd of other boys.
He didn’t get a chance to go to a single game. “My most vivid memories would be from school when we’d have 50 or 60 boys sitting in one room watching the same telly,” he says. “I was in the sixth form. It was unbelievably exciting.”
Of course, back then, he didn’t have a glimmer of an idea where he would be now. His association with the Rugby World Cup was purely as a (very) interested observer. He doesn’t have much recollection of the 2003 England triumph – he was only five years old at the time, so why would he? The only tale he can tell from 2003 is a recollection that has been handed down like a family heirloom: that when the Jonny drop goal went over and the World Cup was won, his father leaped up in excitement and hit his head on a light.
From there to 2015. The fact that he was still at school at the last World Cup merely emphasises how far he has come and how fast. Of course, he didn’t have an inkling of what might unfold over the next quadrennial. Back then, did he have any thoughts or ambitions as to the next World Cup?
“I’d have been worrying about playing school games against the likes of Bedford and Uppingham,” he says. “What might happen at the World Cup would never have been on my mind.”
A bright future
Back in 2015, though, he had already been identified as a young man who might have a bright future. He was in the Sale Sharks academy and hoping to get a senior academy contract after leaving school. So that 2015 World Cup wasn’t purely a piece of entertainment completely unconnected to where he is now.
His memories are not solely of the camaraderie of watching the tournament unfold in a crowd of schoolmates. He was already looking and learning and he latched quickly onto the impact that the two Australian back-rowers, David Pocock and Michael Hooper, were making as a duo of natural opensides.
“That Pocock-Hooper thing at the 2015 World Cup was major for me in terms of a lot of learning,” he says. “I remember being fascinated with those two and their relationship. That was when I’d start taking analysis more seriously, and looking at games in more detail, watching what they do, talking about it with coaches more. Especially in that World Cup, I remember being fixed on Hooper and Pocock.”
Lightning progress
Hooper and Pocock were swiftly swatted aside by Curry and his backrow partner in crime Sam Underhill, as were Scott Barrett and Ardie Savea in the semis. Curry’s homework has paid off and he has developed into the very kind of player that England were missing in 2015.
When Jones took over, one of his priorities was to try to find a true England openside. Jones was the talent-spotter who saw a young George Smith, back in Australia, and elevated him to Test level en route to becoming, ultimately, one of the greatest opensides of all time. Jones backed himself to do the same in England.
When Jones started, it had become a tired moan in the England game that, for some reason, the English club system was no longer producing genuine opensides. Jones wasn’t to be put off, though. He was soon appraised of a student at Cardiff University who was turning heads playing for Ospreys. This was Underhill. Jones followed him closely and encouraged him from afar.
Big break
Curry was a long way off at that stage: still at school, still worrying about school fixtures. His own break came a year later when he was selected for the England U20s squad, winning the U20 Six Nations Grand Slam. Jones liked what he saw and decided to take the gamble, at the end of that season, of inviting him on the England senior tour to Argentina.
At the time, it seemed an enormous leap of faith. However, Jones capped Curry when he was still a few days short of his 19th birthday, on this day in 2017, thus becoming the youngest forward to play for England since 1912. And Curry did not let the England coach down.
A year later, Curry was back in the mix again and won three more caps on the England tour to South Africa. By the time that tour was done, Curry had proven that the fast-track scheme had worked.
Jones had started out with no genuine open-side flankers. With a year to go to Japan, it seemed clear that he had a choice of two: Curry and Underhill. A third emerged - the late bolter is Lewis Ludlam of Northampton Saints who was a surprise selection in Jones’ 31-man squad having impressed in the pre-tournament training camps.
Curry and Underhill have since made the backrow their own, helping power England to a Rugby World Cup final in 2019, and completing his own rapid rise. From the schoolroom to the England team in four years; it has been quite a journey for Curry.
Version of interview first published on 1 November 2019.
