“Earl is a super player, capable of playing any of the back-row positions even if he looks more comfortable on the flank.”

Source: Sunday January 31 2021, 12.01am, The Sunday Times by David Walsh

Latin ‘fan’, chess addict . . . and he can play rugby a bit too

Ben Earl may be quick, powerful and in form but is that enough to sway Eddie Jones?

They each have their memories. Chris Morgan, director of sport at Tonbridge where he went to school, remembers getting defensive when someone once said he could be “a bit like Steffon Armitage”. Jim Hamilton, who coached on midweek evenings at the Saracens academy, watched him run with the ball and thought he had “Brian O’Driscoll-like balance.” And every time Lawrence Dallaglio sees him, he is reminded of a young puppy endlessly bouncing back to his feet.

Ben Earl turned 23 this month. He has been turning heads for some time. Eight appearances for England, he will add to that number in this Six Nations Championship. Eddie Jones came early to this party, selecting Earl for England’s 2018 summer tour to South Africa. Since then, Jones has been quietly asking: “Hey Ben, are you going to be tough enough?”

At Saracens, George Kruis saw a lot of the tyro. “Ben’s a very good player but it’s a tough one, he has a lot of competition,” he says. “He is very quick and very powerful. That’s his difference. He’s physical but Sam Underhill and Tom Curry might be more physical. Eddie will pick the team to beat the next opposition. If he thought there was going to be opportunity at the breakdown, he might go for Jack Willis.”

Earl will go with the flow. A little more than a year ago he walked into a meeting with the Saracens coaches and the former chief executive Edward Griffiths. Saracens were on their way to the Championship. Some players would stay, others would leave. Jones felt Earl needed to remain in the Gallagher Premiership.

“The coaches asked me, ‘What do you want to do?’ ‘Well, what do you want me to do?’ I asked. They said they thought it would be best for me to go on loan. The other thing was Eddie didn’t want me to go down to the Championship and couldn’t guarantee I’d be picked for England if I did. So that was kind of a push in the right direction.”

There were a number of offers. He and Saracens team-mate Max Malins chose Bristol Bears who lead the Premiership. “With all of their superstars, Bristol still became a significantly better side when Earl and Malins joined,” Dallaglio says. “Earl is a super player, capable of playing any of the back-row positions even if he looks more comfortable on the flank.”

Read more: here

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Ben Earl has eclipsed Jack Willis — but not Sam Underhill . . . yet

Source: Monday January 11 2021, 12.01am, The Times by Stuart Barnes

Ben Earl’s bandwagon is on some roll. If the Six Nations navigates its way through this year of chaos and crisis, a growing number of voices are calling on the Bristol Bear to start at No 7. The muscular mayhem of the hour he played against Exeter Chiefs — the English and European champions — will have fuelled a bandwagon that certainly has some set of wheels. The man can shift. He does not so much plot as power his way around the field.

In a Bristol defence that chopped Exeter down at every opportunity the on-loan Saracens man stood out with his speed to the breakdown. He was penalised on a couple of occasions — something he needs to eradicate — but making tackles and hitting tackle zones at his intensity leaves him open to the referee’s whistle.

The England head coach Eddie Jones, watching in a state of exemplary isolation, knows the positives of this athletic performance far outweigh the negatives. This was Earl, 23, at his destructive best. There is another side to him too — a broken-field ball player with a winger’s speed.

Jones is well aware of his qualities. He is an England squad member but yet to seriously threaten the established starting order of Tom Curry, Sam Underhill and Billy Vunipola. England have an incredible depth of back-row talent.

Throughout the tailend of last season the threat of the new came from Jack Willis. Here was a bandwagon of deafening noise. Willis was the only name emanating from pubs, clubs, newspaper headlines and TV studios. A monster at the breakdown, his presence overshadowed all others as Wasps surged to the Gallagher Premiership final. Yet even as the cries for Earl are amplified throughout the land, so the case for the Wasp appears to diminish. Jones was also in the West Country on Friday night, where Willis had one of his worst games of the season, despite Wasps’ win over Bath.

Read more: here

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