England
and you can write own cheque!’ He
fancied himself as fly-half or centre, but
tightheads are worth their weight in gold.
“Kyle has always been driven. He
commits. He prides himself on his
physicality and getting him to work
hard in the gym has never been an
issue because he sees the correlation
between that and physical performance.
“He still has moments when he’s losing
control but if he recognises it, he’ll know
to do something about it. When he
doesn’t recognise it, he gets himself into
trouble. It’s all heat-of-moment stuff. It’s
all very well in calm environments to see
the logic in what people are saying. It’s
doing that when the pressure is on.
“From a coaching point of view, you
look at whether the downside outweighs
the good he brings and the reality is
he does so many good things. He has
wonderful qualities that few others have.”
THE COACH
Graham Rowntree has worked with
Sinckler with England, Harlequins
and the 2017 Lions in New Zealand
“England took him to New Zealand in
2014 and he played well in the midweek
game against the Crusaders before the
third Test. That was my first taste of him.
He then went off the radar for a bit and
came back on the scene after I’d left
England. Eddie Jones got him involved
and took him to Australia in 2016 and
I joined Quins at the end of 2016, so I
was then working with him every day.
“I loved working with him, for Quins,
for England and for the Lions. He’s
incredibly enthusiastic, is very diligent
in the gym and with his prehab. He’s a
sponge for knowledge –
that is one of his greatest
attributes. He’s a bit of
a rugby nause, too,
and would come up
to ask me for stories
about the ABC club
(Leicester’s front row).
He’d tell me what he’d
heard about Darren
Garforth and Richard
Cockerill before.
“He can be too
enthusiastic at
times and that
can creep into
his game, but he’s still a young man and
has only established himself as a starter
for his country over the last season. He
still has a lot to learn tactically and that
comes down to experience. He plays
the game with real energy and with
experience he’ll learn to curb that
sometimes, but you don’t want him to
change that aggression he brings.
“Tighthead is a position where
you have to experience
different props against
you, different pressures
mentally and physically.
You have to experience
those things to learn
how to cope with them.
He does get targeted
but it’s learning how
to deal with it; you
can only do that
through experience
and listening to the
people around you.“He has great mentors in Adam Jones
at Quins and Hats (Neal Hatley) at
England. Joe Marler’s taken him under
his wing too. He’s learning off all three.
“Over the past couple of years his
scrummaging has come on more than
anything. Scrummaging-wise he gets in
an incredibly low position. I noticed that
with the Lions (in 2017). Teams were
trying to attack him and get under him,
but they physically couldn’t because he
was so low. He’s strong, squat, gets
very low and you can’t move him.“His scrummaging has come on
more than anything. He gets very
low and you can’t move him”
Pulling their weight
Rowntree oversees
Sinckler and Marler at
work on the 2017 Lions tourFlashpoint A scuffle with the Wallabies last year