58 1GM Monday July 27 2020 | the timesSportRugby union
5This is an(other) interview on Zoom,
but with not one player but two. And
after talking to these rising stars of
English rugby, I am wondering if there
can be many better moves in the trans-
fer market than this double steal by
Bristol Bears taking Ben Earl and Max
Malins on loan from Saracens for a
year.
For Bristol, it clearly boosts their title
challenge. For Saracens, Earl and
Malins will return in 2021, having
absorbed a year’s worth of lessons in a
new environment. As Earl says: “We
joke about it a lot, but from the age of 14
you could argue we’ve been brain-
washed as to how to play rugby with the
Saracens badge. That is one way of play-
ing the game and it has been unbelieva-
bly successful. But there are many
different ways to play the game and dif-
ferent ways to prepare, all these things
are just another string to our bow.”
Thus will Malins get to learn the full
back’s art from his new team-mate
Charles Piutau, one of the best in the
world. And Earl will soak up all he can
on back-row play from the All Black
Steven Luatua. They will both benefit
hugely; somewhere down the line,
England may do too.
Earl, 22, and Malins, 23, are the latest
outstanding products of the Saracens
academy. They have played all their
club rugby together there, they played
for England Under-20 together; Earl
got three senior England caps this year,
though he may not have got a headstart
on Malins had the latter not suffered a
break and then a re-break of the same
metatarsal.
They both have vast potential. On
our Zoom chat, though, it is clear they
are having fun working out how to fulfil
it. They are happy discussing the
washing-up rota in the flat they are
sharing in Clifton, the rights and
wrongs of Earl’s statement haircut and
what it is like training with Semi Radra-
dra, the 15st 10lb Fiji wing.It was a strange business leaving
Saracens with their relegation pending,
and stranger still with the limitations
imposed by lockdown and the suspend-
ed season. They weren’t officially due to
join Bristol until August 1, but this has
been a friendly transfer, and both clubs
agreed that it was best if they both
arrived in the West Country as soon as
possible.
They then had one day to findaccommodation. And then
joining the new club was especial-
ly weird. “Going into a team room for
the first time with 40 to 50 lads and lit-
erally knowing no one — that would be
a tough one,” Earl said. Instead, because
of the guidelines, they had the opposite
extreme: they started training in
bubbles of six.
It didn’t help that Malins tore his
hamstring on the second day. Never-theless, Earl says: “We have definitely
settled. We are loving the group.” It has
got to the point where they can joke
about the pros and cons of their “two”
clubs: “We can constantly be like, ‘I love
the way Bristol do this.’ ”
As fate would have it, their two clubs
come face to face on August 15, the first
weekend of the restarting season. You
wonder if playing their other club isn’t
the last thing they would want to do.‘We’re loving new style at Bristol
after our Saracens brainwashing’
“I’m not too sure,” Malins said,
though he knows he may have it easier
in the backs. “But Ben is going to be
having to run into brick walls and get
lined up by every single player on the
pitch.”
“I guarantee my head will be on a
whiteboard sometime that week at
training,” Earl said with a smile. “We’ve
talked about this quite a bit and it’s a bit
of a weird one. But at the end of the day,
Bristol are paying us to play rugby; we
can’t decide if we are playing or not and
we can only put our best foot forward.”
What are the differences between
one club and the other? “Bristol’s better
years are ahead of them,” Malins said.
In other words, Pat Lam, the director of
rugby, is chasing the pattern of success
that Saracens have already established.
“Pat goes on about making that lower
bar higher, raising that lower standard.
It’s a massive team thing for Bristol, get-
ting everyone up to a standard where
they can now compete for trophies.”
There is therefore a difference in
ownership, Earl says. “At Bristol, it is
quite coach-led, whereas we’ve come
from a Saracens environment where it’s
quite player-led, with the likes of Owen
[Farrell], Maro [Itoje] and the Vunipo-
las. They’ve been evolving that system
over the last ten years, Whereas this
Bristol system is still pretty fresh, so it’s
quite hands-on with the coaches.”
No one system is better than the
other. “It’s a different environment
and one that we’ve both found quite
refreshing,” Earl says. For instance:
“Watching the way that Steve Luatua
trains; compared to Maro it is massively
different. Which is right or wrong I can’t
say, but it’s another perspective on the
way to play the game.”
Watching Radrada, the Fijian super-
star, has clearly been interesting too.
“Very impressive” has been the consen-
sus of his approach in training. “He’s
been real nice to us,” Earl said.
The news on Earl’s haircut is that
“My mum is close to disowning me,”
and “I just thought I’d embrace the
West Country and see how I fit in.”
He describes it as “business in the
front, party in the back”.
“But there’s been no party,” Malins
said. Indeed, this is still just the start.
6 A longer version of this interview can
be heard on The Ruck, The Times’s
rugby podcast‘T
he one thing we know
about Warren, he’s a
winner.” So said Eddie
Jones last week. On
Sunday morning, UK
time, Warren Gatland became a
record-breaking loser.
The Waikato Chiefs lost a seventh
straight game of rugby; with the
former Wales and current British &
Irish Lions head coach at the helm.
It is their worst run since they
became a franchise in 1996. The last
head coach to lose six on the trot was
Ian Foster. He is now head coach of
the All Blacks.‘Winner’ Warren on losing run that hints he’s suffering
Sunday’s defeat at the hands of the
Blues in Auckland made it six losses
from six in the desperately difficult
New Zealand Super Rugby Aotearoa
competition. Gatland had previously
won three from four in Super Rugby
before the world changed.
His is not the most powerful of the
New Zealand quintet of teams. The
Chiefs entered the national
tournament with quite an injury list,
but Gatland’s homeland churns out
high-quality replacements. His
captain is Sam Cane, the All Blacks’
appointed skipper. Anton Lienert-
Brown is an assertive hard-running
All Black centre. He would have fitted
perfectly into Gatland’s Welsh
template. Then there is Damian
McKenzie, the floating full back; the
antithesis of the Gatland type.
McKenzie has produced moments of
pure magic throughout the New
Zealand series without ever quite
making any match his own.As four of the six defeats have been
by five points or fewer, it’s fair to
think that a little more McKenzie and
the table could look a lot less gloomy
from Gatland’s perspective. Warren
the winner. Yet Jones also said
something else that was even more
interesting. Eddie described his rival
not just as a winner but a great
northern hemisphere coach. And
that maybe he was still employing
“northern hemisphere techniques”.
Certainly, on Sunday, only blades of
grass separated Gatland from victory.
In the first round of fixtures they lost
28-27. In round five they were on the
wrong end of an epic 33-31 game. The
“winner” might be having a wobble up
against some of the best non-Test
teams on the planet but there is no
sense of despair or capitulation within
the Chiefs’ camp.
There is truth in Jones’s comments
comparing the nature of the rugby
hemispheres. Against theHighlanders, Gatland’s team managed
to throw away leads of 24-0 and 31-7,
the Highlanders winning the game in
the 82nd minute.
Brad Weber, the sparky third-
choice All Black scrum half, reckons
Gatland’s team “got bored”. He
elaborated. The Chiefs carried hard
and cleaned out the breakdown
quickly as they built their seemingly
unassailable lead. In the second half,
according to Weber, they “went
away from that” and “tried some
different things, rather than
just sticking to what was
working well”.
When you have a
wondrous wizard in
acres of space at
full back, there’s
always the
temptation tostart throwing it around; have a bit of
fun with the ball. When you are
playing for Wales under Gatland, the
pleasure comes in the result. The
ability to run hard and dominate
breakdown was the essence of his
Wales sides. There were few frills.
Now he is coaching a team who get
“bored” with the basics.
Of the five Kiwi teams, the Chiefs
have been by far the least
accurate in contact. The
number of speculative
offloads in the first few rounds
was as un-Gatland as rugby
can be imagined: misguided
prettiness pushing the
percentages off the
coaching page.
Is it the players’ fault?
That is the easy place
to lay the blame. But
New Zealand rugby
players are coached
to be positive in aStuart Barnes
DAVID ROGERS; TONY MARSHALL/GETTY IMAGESBarnes
Gatland’s Chiefs
are strugglingOwen Slot talks
to English duo
making loan
return to top
division
THE RUCK
Listen to a longer version
of Owen Slot’s interview
on The Ruck podcast
Download from your podcast providerBen Earl
Age: 22
Birthday: Jan 7
Position: No 8
Premiership
appearances: 34
England caps: 3
Max Malins
Age: 23
Birthday: Jan 7
Position: Full-back
Premiership
appearances: 29
England caps: 0