Owen Farrell exclusive: I watch a lot of sport on TV because I love it... but you can learn from watching games too

New-look back-line: Farrell will start Saturday's Test against South Africa at fly-half
Land Rover
Will Macpherson2 November 2018

It is reassuring to hear Owen Farrell describe his first steps into rugby union. Farrell, son of a league legend and one of the finest inside backs of his generation, started out just like the rest of us.

“I was coming down here, training, playing, messing about with my mates,” he says. “It was exactly the same experience as anyone else down at their local rugby club across the country.”

“Here” is Harpenden RFC in Hertfordshire. The posts on the newly-installed, RFU-funded artificial pitch sway in the wind, while the clubhouse where we talk feels like it might take off. Farrell is back for a photoshoot with some Land Rovers. It is more a day for such vehicles than it is for slick, running rugby.

Farrell has been associated with Harpenden for about 13 of the club’s 99-year existence and it is where he first played union when father Andy switched codes and joined Saracens in 2005. Owen turned 14 that September and they lived a short drive away so, although he admits to being reluctant about the move south, instantly got stuck into a new game.

He has remained in the area since (and returns to the club when he can), but his Wigan accent has never even softened, let alone disappeared. His route to the top was rapid — he was soon with Sarries himself and playing Test rugby within seven years of starting out — but, with the grounding in league that preceded that, it was not necessarily direct.

“I’d maybe played union once or twice at school, but I learnt all about it here,” he says. “I would have been about 14 when I first came down here, and I was just all about league before that. Within a couple of years, I’d been picked in the academy at Sarries, but you don’t play in that every week. I was playing here every weekend and training, then off with them every now and again.

“I definitely owe the place a lot. I spent so much time here that it must have moulded me, shown me the game’s values and how I play it.” Harpenden obviously feels it owes Farrell something, too: on the door to the men’s toilets, there is a full-size cutout of him on the Lions tour to Australia five years ago.

There are other reassuringly normal elements to Farrell’s rugby life. While many sportsmen shun watching games they do not need to, Farrell watches rugby — both codes, and football — for pleasure. While he won’t be drawn on exactly who his favourite rugby players to watch are, he admits that he enjoys watching the Rugby Championship, Super Rugby and Gallagher Premiership whenever he can. “I do watch a lot,” he says. “But only because I love it. It’s not a burden to sit at home and watch sport, is it? I’m a fan and I do what other fans do, watch the game. You look into it as much as you can, take as much from them as you can, but I just enjoy sitting and watching it.”

There he references the helpful offshoot. Watching games allows Farrell to keep tabs on a rapidly-evolving sport’s latest trends and patterns of play, refereeing changes and new kids on the block, meaning there are no surprises when he enters a team meeting, let alone the field of play.

"I owe Harpenden RFC a lot. I spent so much time here it must have shown me the game’s values, how I play it"

Keeping a close eye on the Rugby Championship allowed him to learn more about how the games of South Africa, who he captained England against this summer, New Zealand, who he faced with the Lions last summer, and Australia, their final opponents this month, are developing ahead of their crunch autumn clashes and next year’s World Cup, the final of which, coincidentally, is a year on Friday.

Farrell believes this autumn anyone can beat anyone but “let’s wait and see because we might get to the World Cup in 10 months and everything might have changed again”. He is very good at compartmentalising and playing what is in front of him.

“You take what you can from watching,” he says. “You want to pick up trends, what’s working and what’s not over there. Sometimes you can bring those things back to your team or game. The biggest games are the ones that tell you where the game is headed.

“The game’s changing constantly. Look at the number of tries scored in the early weeks of the Premiership. Something is obviously different.”

It is easy to see why for the final four games of a chastening year, Eddie Jones found it so hard to separate Dylan Hartley and Farrell as captains that he opted for a job-share.

Hartley has the captaincy record, but Farrell the relentless thirst for self-improvement and command of the team’s respect: when he speaks, you listen, and concentrate, because fools are not suffered.

He is certain of his thoughts, but even more certain that he is not going to give too many of those thoughts away lightly.

If England are to get out of their 2018 rut, it will be Farrell driving the standards.

Owen Farrell is a Land Rover ambassador. Land Rover has a heritage in rugby at all levels; sharing the values at the heart of the sport. Follow @LandRoverRugby

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

MORE ABOUT