Ben White: WhatsApp messages that inspired me to choose Scotland over England

For a scrum-half with a quintessentially spiky persona on the pitch, Ben White is exceptionally polite when it comes to disagreeing.

Already, at the age of 25, he has navigated awkward obstacles. In 2021, having come through the ranks at Leicester Tigers and made a Premiership debut as a 17-year-old, he was deemed surplus to requirements and cut loose with two years left on his contract.

Two years later, London Irish fell into financial ruin. White, who had forced his way to the top of the pecking order, was made redundant and joined Toulon. Channel-hopping during the Six Nations can be “tedious”, as White knows from losing his baggage on the way back from Scotland’s last-gasp loss to France. To deal with such stress, he must be a laid-back character who rolls with the punches. Right? Wrong, apparently.

“Erm. No,” laughs White, who will be at Toulon until 2026 after announcing a new deal last week, in an interview for The Telegraph Rugby Podcast. “I think the people that know me would say that I’m the opposite to that.

“It has been tough, at times. There has been a lot of change, but no career is a straight line. One thing it has done is help me become a more rounded player and person.”

White was born in Stoke-on-Trent and captained England Under-20. As recently as 2019, he came off the bench for England against the Barbarians at Twickenham, replacing Alex Mitchell to link up with Marcus Smith. Then, during the 2021 autumn internationals, while White was in his first year at Irish, he received a text from Gavin Vaughan.

Vaughan is Gregor Townsend’s lead analyst and a prolific researcher of Scotland-qualified talent. It was he who famously scouted Huw Jones while the latter was playing for University of Cape Town. White’s eligibility was more obvious, given he had been part of the Scottish Exiles programme in his mid-teens, qualifying through his grandfather. Even so, that ice-breaker would give way to exciting WhatsApp exchanges.

“I had a call with Gregor and he spoke about what his vision was for the team,” White remembers. “He also spoke about how I was playing, what I was doing well and what he thought I could do better.

“Then, for the next couple of weeks, he’d send me clips from games on WhatsApp. I thought, ‘Wow, this is brilliant. He’s clearly watching every minute of my matches’. It’d be things like, ‘These three phases were good but why did you wait at this ruck? What are you seeing?’

“The level of coaching, in terms of developing me as an individual, was brilliant. I was probably taken aback by it. I remember thinking, ‘God… I need to be good every phase here! Every pass, every kick, every movement off the ball.’”

Since then, Townsend’s investment has been recompensed heavily. Put simply, White has played precisely as though he is aiming for accuracy on every phase. There have been fairytale moments, too. White was brought into the Scotland fold for the 2022 Six Nations and promptly scored five minutes into a “crazy” Test bow against England, after taking the field as a head-injury replacement for Ali Price.

The following year, with his team trailing 20-12 at Twickenham, he scurried through for a pivotal solo try, propelling Scotland to another Calcutta Cup win. Underpinned by tidy skills, White’s game exudes tenacity. He is a snappy scrapper of a scrum-half.

“I’m not somebody who exudes confidence or whatever,” shrugs White when asked whether this demeanour is deliberate. “I just sort of try to do my job. I know that if I play with speed, I play with passion and aggression and work hard off the ball, I’ll do my job well. I’m playing in an international match. Why would I not work hard off the ball? Why would I not try to win every moment? That’s what you’re here to do.”

What about when coming up against England? Does White lean more heavily into his competitive instincts?

“I’ll be honest – not really,” he says. “The emotion has to be there for every Test match. If you walk out there and you look out at the crowd and up at the big lights and think, ‘What am I doing here?’, you’re lost at sea. Yes, England are a very good team with brilliant individuals and I’ve played with and against those players for a long time, so you know how good they can be.

“One thing that has really helped me over the years is that with Scotland, we have [mental skills coach] Aaron Walsh. I worked with someone at London Irish, Mike Roberts, as well and these guys have helped me to get where I am, to find the balance between, they call it, the red and the blue.

“It’s just finding that balance between being calm and controlled in these moments, being on the edge with your aggression but also being clear. In my job, you need to think clearly. To play at speed, you need to be clear in your mind and with the game plan. That’s really helped me with a couple of things. In matches, if I make mistakes or things aren’t going right, I have a couple of things to anchor upon and improve my game.

“When I’m in those big matches, I know that if I’ve done my prep right, and all the little things going into the game, I can just go out there and play.”

Scotland’s current campaign has been difficult to condense. In the words of White, they were “close to perfect” upon building a 27-0 lead over Wales, before conceding a deluge of penalties. Against France, they responded well. One aim for this season has been to exert control. White, who is third for kicking metres across the entire tournament (821m), with Finn Russell leading the way (1,583m), finished a gorgeous move that began when his own box-kick was recovered.

The ending, however, was gut-wrenching. White was closer than most, and recalls the confidence of Sam Skinner in the huddle; usually a sure-fire sign that a try has been scored. But it did not stand, and Scotland must haul their Championship back on track. White has seen the photos of that last attack, with questions over why the ball was not moved wider. He remains phlegmatic.

“Look, once the referee makes the decision, we have to live with that,” White says. “As fans, you can be upset and angry but as players, it’s parked. If anything, it makes you look at the situation and how we could have controlled it better for next time. I’ve seen the stills of the whole field and people going ‘you could have just passed it one more time’. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, and it’s something we can work on in terms of scanning that space… but if it’s a try, you don’t talk about that. That’s sport sometimes.”

Over the past two years, White has gradually asserted himself as Scotland’s front-line scrum-half and a complementary foil for Finn Russell. While taking nothing for granted, he is thriving on an “inner confidence” that has developed with time in the saddle.

“Gregor’s brilliant and playing with Finn is fantastic because he takes the pressure away from these matches,” White finishes. “The players you have around you at Scotland are amazing. You feel relaxed enough on the pitch that if you want to try something, you can try something. If it doesn’t work, someone will graft their arse off to cover for you. That’s a fantastic environment to be in.”

He seems far too modest to say, but White’s craft and his consistency make him exactly the kind of player who emboldens others in turn.