Rugby World Cup

“The for high ball stuff is actually the AFL in Australia,” says England's Freddie Steward. We've barely begun talking and already the gravity-snubbing star is ...

I try to let the actions do that in terms of ‘effort areas’ like kick sprints or working hard in the backfield. You want to be around people that are working hard and want to be a better team by working hard. After a summer tour to Australia and a brilliant season with the Tigers, Steward was given a prolonged rest by his club coaches. The 15 is in the final year of an economics degree, a discipline that Steward says: “I’m grateful for but I’m at the stage where I just want to get it done!” With even the briefest of explanations on the calculations needed for macroeconomics, we can sympathise. I think the key was to get the skill and the technique sorted first – and there’s still a load of work to be done on that – and then having the confidence to trust that skill. Is the beauty and the curse of experience there though, that the higher the stakes, the more pressure there is? Then focusing on the personal playing checklist for 2023, he says: “I want to keep developing those skills, out on the edge. So I’m not thinking about that error for the duration of the game. “When that ball goes up and you know you’ve got someone running at you and going up in the air, it can be quite scary, so I suppose it’s something I’ve just had to develop over the years. “The nature of their sport means that when the ball goes up there’s six or seven going for it, so there’s a bit more contest compared to rugby, where I suppose it’s often just a one-on-one. Later he tells us that he wants to be “the best in the world under the high ball” but his appetite for improvement there is already fully understood. But then he lets us in on what he has been doing off the park on this aspect of his game.