The buildup to Saturday’s eagerly anticipated opening Nations Championship clash between the Springboks and England could easily be summed up by saying that never in the history of rugby union has so much fuss been made about a player who is only going to be playing a bench role.
The 21-year-old England sensation Henry Pollock, and make no mistake, he is an unbelievable player, and South Africans should trust the praise directed towards the Northampton Saints No 8 by Bok coach Rassie Erasmus, is only going to be playing a bench role at Ellis Park.
Many English scribes would have it differently, and he was in many of the shadow teams published over the past few weeks, but England coach Steve Borthwick has selected him to reprise the impact role he has mostly been confined to at international level so far.
Maybe “confined to” isn’t quite the right phrase to use. In modern rugby, the bench is as important a component of a team as the combinations that make up the starting unit. And since making his debut the season before last as a 20-year-old, Pollock has made his fair share of contributions. He’s been a thorn in the side of many opposing teams late in the game and will be looking to be so against the world champions on Saturday.
CREATED HIS FAIR SHARE OF FLASHPOINTS
Yet he’s also created his fair share of issues, for want of a better description, that have riled up not just the opposition. If you want to reference that, just ask the French club teams, who now appear preoccupied with trying to unsettle him, as well as the opposing crowds.
There’s no better example of that than the last few minutes he played in an England jersey before coming to South Africa. It was the dying minutes of the final Guinness Six Nations game in Paris. Underdogs England scored the try that, against all odds, took them into a 46-45 lead with just two minutes remaining.
It looked like England had won the game when they crossed the line for what in that game was their seventh try. So Pollock, having copped so much abuse from the Paris crowd, reacted as Pollock does. He celebrated in a demonstrative, testosterone-driven fashion, pumping the air and gesticulating towards the crowd.
He was made to look stupid after that, for there was enough time for the French to put in one last push. And sure enough, off the final move of the game, they forced the penalty that France’s fullback Thomas Ramos kicked to secure the win and clinch the Six Nations trophy.
Did that serve as a lesson to Pollock, forcing him to change his ways? Well, it does appear from the recent evidence of the pivotal man-of-the-match-winning role he played for Saints in their winning run at the business end of the Gallagher Premiership season that he has wound his head in a bit. Focusing just on the game might make him a better player.
But if you look at his main body of work since that Paris game in March, he does remain the same animal, as his social media post ahead of the departure for South Africa, where there was some blood dripping near the Bok emblem, would suggest. He would be a boxing promoter’s dream, wouldn’t he? He is like a professional pugilist in the way he goes out to sell the sport he participates in.
MANAGED BY A BOXING PROMOTER
Well, hold that thought, for the identity of his current manager might tell you a lot about Pollock, and also the marketing angle that could make him so valuable to a sport that maybe doesn’t help itself with its core of traditional, old-school “stay in your lane and don’t motivate the opposition” thinking.
He is managed by Eddie Hearn, who is an English sports promoter who is the chairman of Matchroom Sport and the Professional Darts Corporation, but best known for his work with Matchroom Boxing, with which he has promoted multiple world champions, including Anthony Joshua, Canelo Alvarez, Gennady Golovkin, Katie Taylor and Vasyl Lomachenko.
Pollock signed with Hearn’s Matchroom Talent Agency in March, proclaiming, “Their experience and vision in the global sports market make them the perfect partners to help me grow both on and off the field, and I’m looking forward to what we can all achieve together.”
Hearn, in turn, said: “I watched this kid and I immediately thought - superstar. I honestly believe he can singlehandedly ignite this sport and I am delighted to welcome him to the Matchroom family.”
UK MEDIA MAY BE COMPLICIT IN MAKING POLLOCK WHO HE IS
It says quite a lot about where Pollock wants to go and also what Hearn sees in him - this is Hearn’s first dabble in rugby union - that this partnership was formed. Which cues a point - there’s much confusion being expressed in the UK media about the apparent antipathy towards Pollock being expressed by South African fans on social media and in some instances even by mainstream media platforms. But is it really that much different to how they themselves have treated Pollock?
If you read through the commentary on Pollock’s selection, then as a 20-year-old whose experience of playing international rugby amounted to minutes rather than hours or games, to last year’s British and Irish Lions touring party, many respected pundits thought that not only was he too young, he was also too cocky and precocious.
The comments of rugby supporters in the online comments sections of newspapers often tended towards the line that if Pollock was heading with the Lions to New Zealand or South Africa rather than to Australia, he might have to be returned to his home country in a pine box. Dinkum, that was one of the lines. And while they were more polite and less direct, some veteran English journalists peddled a similar view.
The English, at least in rugby, aren’t big on the outlier, the flamboyant poster boy. Danny Cipriani was one of those. He was a wonderfully talented player, but he was different, so he never made it. When it comes to poster boys, players who set themselves on selling the sport, Marcus Smith, the Harlequins flyhalf, is the perfect example. Some love him when he plays in the England jersey, but many hate him.
And if there is hatred towards Pollock from South Africans, they are certainly not alone. Apart from the French and the Irish, he seems to be pretty reviled by a large section of what should be his own support base, largely because he doesn’t fit with the conservative view that, to put it as many rugby people do, there’s “no I in team”. Meaning the individual should be secondary to the team, and flamboyant, braggadocious behaviour is definitely not permitted.
Yet it may sell a sport that needs selling, and maybe in deciding to team up with Hearn, and Hearn with him, there’s a mutual recognition of that.
REACTING TO THE WIND UP PROVIDES HIM WITH HIS FUEL
What is also perhaps important for South Africans to consider is the role that the perception of him, fuelled by the English media coverage of his antics, may have played in making Pollock what he is. And how, in reacting to his attempts to wind them up, opposition fans (and players) are giving Pollock exactly what he wants.
Talking on the Toyota Talking Boks podcast in the buildup to Saturday’s match in Johannesburg, former Springbok coach Nick Mallett, who himself was a more than useful No 8 in his playing days, was effusive in his praise of Pollock and also to the point about what he thinks makes Pollock tick.
“He reminds me a bit of Cameron Hanekom, who is our player who has all the similar skills that Pollock has,” said Mallett.
“But unlike Pollock, Hanekom has a calmness about him. I don’t think I have ever seen him get involved in the kind of situation that Pollock does. And it would certainly surprise me if he ever went up to the opposition and put his finger to his lips after he had scored a try or his team had scored a try. But Pollock does that.
“And he does it because I think he wants to get more people talking about him and talking about rugby. He’s just that type of personality. You get people who like to rev the crowd up and you get others who just keep quiet and go about their business. But it doesn’t detract from his performance on the field.
“It seems that the more he gets up for it, the better he plays. So the more you react to him, the better he plays. I think he is a wonderful player. I think if you complimented him, made a lot of how good he is and praised his play, he might just put his head down and do his job. But the more you say we are going to smash him, the less likely it is that is going to happen. It is what he thrives on.
“Rugby is a 15-man game and there are opportunities all the time. All over the field. Both for Pollock and for our players to confront him when he cleans and tackles. But he’s not going to back off. He won’t. That’s not in his nature. He’s not going to be playing outside centre all day to avoid contact and because he’s worried about a clean-out. That’s not going to happen.”
MALLETT ADMIRES POLLOCK AS A PLAYER
Mallett didn’t leave any doubt about his admiration for Pollock as a player.
“I really liked what Rassie said about him. Rassie said he’s not concerned about what a player does off the field, or whether he’s on TikTok or any social media, whether he’s trying to get more than a million viewers or likes or whatever it is. He said that if he was coaching Pollock, he would just be interested in his output.
“He would only be interested in what he does on the rugby field. And Pollock does a lot on the rugby field. And where he is surprisingly good is in the really tight moments, in the turnover situations. He’s a guy who plays to the ball, but he has tremendous pace so he can do his thing out wide.”
Indeed, watch Pollock closely, and you might spot a synthesis between one of South Africa’s highly-skilled loose-forwards who sometimes attracted criticism for his flamboyance, Bob Skinstad, and the outstanding Wallaby loose-forward David Pocock, who more than did his job at the breakdowns.
SO WHY IS THERE SO MUCH ANTIPATHY?
So why do South Africans, who haven’t yet had the history against Pollock that the French and Irish have had (Saturday will be his first ever game against the Boks), appear to have even more bile building up when they see the name Pollock and associate it with rugby (just to separate it from the quite different emotion it gives us when cricket is the topic) than those nationalities.
The former Ireland and British Lion who set up home in South Africa after the 1980 Lions series and became even more famous as a radio talk show host than he was as a rugby player, John Robbie, was interviewed by The Telegraph and gave an interesting answer.
“He’s absolutely what South Africans hate,” said Robbie to the UK newspaper.
“He embodies that particular English fascination with personality, star quality. That’s precisely what triggers South Africans, particularly Afrikaners. South Africans are supposed to be quiet, dour, stiff-upper-lip, modest, thankful to God. Then you have this kid who is everything they don’t like: he’s outspoken, brash, a bit arrogant.
“Afrikaner society has changed a lot and has got a lot more liberal in many respects, but it still has that in-built conservatism, Dutch Reformed Church, that sort of thing. I find it hugely amusing. But scrape away that, and you will find a deep respect because South Africans recognise talent. Make no mistake, they appreciate what a player he is and his potential genius.”
Robbie continued by likening Pollock to South Africa’s most talked-about generational rugby talent, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu.
“He is very quiet, doesn’t do much off the pitch. All he does is brilliance on it. That’s sort of what South Africans expect of youngsters coming through.”
Robbie might be wrong about Feinberg-Mngomezulu’s personality, for he is not quiet, but it is hard to take issue with the rest of his argument. And he might well have aptly summed up why there is so much fuss about Pollock in this country - he is a talented player who we know won’t back down and shirk the challenge.
As he did in his previous appearance in this country, when he was the star player for Northampton in an epic away Champions Cup win at Loftus when he was just 19.