Ben Earl is in Ireland, along with his Lions teammates, following a training camp in Portugal where golf and bonding was as much to the fore as putting in the hard yards.
The flanker has played 26 games this season for Saracens and England, but the Algarve warmth and the changed vibe has whetted his appetite for more.
It is the first time he has been in a Lions camp. Ten years ago, he couldn’t have imagined it was possible. Earl’s first step towards becoming a professional rugby player was during a cricket trip to Yorkshire more than a decade ago.
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A talented teenager across sports, he played cricket with the England schools team and was an underage player at Kent.
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As the England backrow tells it, the team travelled north and he went into bat but was out “pretty soon”. He spent the next two days fielding, during which time the realisation hit him that maybe rugby was a better option.
Now 27, he has more than 40 Test rugby internationals with England under his belt. But before all of that, he rubbed shoulders with current cricket professionals such as England top order batsman Zak Crawley and Sam Curran. He also came into the orbit of Ollie Pope, the current vice-captain of the England team.
“I don’t think I’d have been as good at cricket as I am at this sport but yeah, there was a decision to be made at some point,” says Earl.
“So, rugby, the training’s hard but you’re not put through the mill in terms of mental stuff and some of the stuff those guys have to go through – travelling and whatnot.
“I’ve not really looked back. I loved my cricket and I love my golf, but rugby is my true calling and I’m glad it worked out.
“Zak Crawley, Sam Curran, Ollie Pope, those are guys I had the privilege of playing with and against . . . English schools, Kent County stuff but now I just enjoy playing golf against those guys.”
Earl doesn’t want to talk about preferred numbers on his back. He is happy to let Lions coach Andy Farrell select him anywhere across the backrow.
Nor does he carry animosity from an often-fiery Six Nations, despite the main rivals for his positions coming from Wales and Ireland as well as his teammate Tom Curry.
The Lions’ first game, against Argentina on Friday, will give some indication of how Farrell is thinking, although it’s early days yet. There are six matches to play before the first Test match against Australia in Brisbane on July 19th.
“If there’s any animosity, I haven’t felt it,” says Earl. “In terms of mutual respect, my respect is unlimited for some of the guys that I’m going to have the privilege to play alongside and to compete with for spots.
He namechecks Jac Morgan, Jack Conan, Josh van der Flier, Curry and Henry Pollock, and says of them: “People I have a huge amount of respect for, some who I know extremely well, some who I know not very well at all. My respect for them has no limit. Animosity, no; respect, yes.”
For Earl and others, it is almost like stepping into an Irish camp with Farrell, Johnny Sexton, John Fogarty, Simon Easterby and Andrew Goodman flavouring the landscape.
While England coach Steve Borthwick comes across in public as a more intense figure than Farrell, Earl sees similarities between the two. The common denominator is that they both demand high-level performances.
“Both do things slightly differently, but I don’t think there is any right or wrong way,” he says. “It’s however you get the best out of the group. There’s many ways to skin a cat in this regard.
“Obviously rugby is rugby, so everyone has similar principles. It’s more just like wording and a different way of looking at things and that’s probably been the most exciting thing for me. I’m now going into my 10th season of professional rugby and some of the stuff I’ve learnt over the past seven or eight days has been awesome.
“I probably haven’t learned as much in such a short space of time for a very long time, so it’s been great – rubbing shoulders with people that I’ve looked up to for a very long time. It’s been awesome.”
Leicester’s Ollie Chessum and Bath’s Finn Russell, who played in the Premiership final, as well as all of the Leinster players involved in Saturday’s URC final, joined up with the Lions squad in Dublin on Monday.
