And the Times :
Jack Willis: Return to England camp only made me more motivated to earn next cap
Alex Lowe, Rugby Correspondent
Tuesday March 29 2022, 12.01am, The Times
Jack Willis had just played his first full club game in more than a year when the invitation arrived to link up again with the England squad — a small taste of big things to come if all goes to plan for the Wasps flanker.
Willis won his first three England caps during lockdown, his family forced to watch on television as he made a tryscoring debut, against Georgia, and then bench appearances against Wales in Llanelli and Italy at Twickenham.
The Italy game in last year’s Six Nations ended only minutes after he had scored a try, when a clearout from Sebastian Negri resulted in Willis suffering a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament, torn posterior cruciate ligament and cartilage damage.
Willis made his comeback for Wasps 53 weeks later, but there were dark periods along the way, when he questioned whether he would make it back or even whether he wanted to, doubts he articulated in a series of columns for The Times.
But now he has four games under his belt, plus the boost of a two-day stint in the England camp, Willis is desperate to force his way back into the national team — and this time to win a cap in front of his family and his new son, Enzo.
“I absolutely love being back playing. I feel very, very grateful and very fortunate for every minute I’m able to spend out there. It’s class,” Willis, 25, said.
“It was always an aspiration to play for England. It’s been a dream of mine ever since I was a young lad. I think about it a lot.
“In the three games I did play for England they were obviously behind closed doors and I didn’t have my family there. It’s a massive motivation of mine to get an opportunity with England one day and be able to have my family there. I use that as motivation on a daily basis.”
England head to Australia this summer on a three-Test tour and they have a growing collection of young back-row options, with Alfie Barbeary an explosive ball carrier and Ollie Chessum a powerful blind-side flanker or lock.
But Willis is an open-side specialist, a flanker who will apply breakdown pressure and win turnovers in defence but who is also developing his ball-carrying in attack. He was drafted into the England squad in the final week of the Six Nations as England were preparing for their trip to France.
“It was really nice to get into camp. It just makes that fire burn even more fiercely. I know how desperate I am to be part of that group,” he said.
“The intensity and detail that goes into everything is still there and it is certainly a step up, the international stuff. It is incredible the work they do. It was nice to be in amongst it and it certainly got me excited to push for Wasps and see what can be done.”
Willis was apprehensive heading into his comeback game. He had completed breakdown drills with team-mates to build his confidence, but it was only doing it in the “chaos” of a match that allowed him to feel like a rugby player again. A mental hurdle had been crossed.
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There has been nothing tentative from Willis in training, especially when he teams up with his brother, Tom, the Wasps No 8.
“I like his character. He is a competitor,” Lee Blackett, the Wasps head coach, said of Willis.
“He is physical. When he is in training, the standard goes up. He can change a training session. He brings more intensity. He leads from the front.”
Topic: Jack and Fatherhood (Read 525 times)
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