Inside Northampton Saints ‘scrum suite’ where they mould England’s props of the future

At the announcement of the long-awaited Professional Game Partnership on Wednesday, one journalist asked Bill Sweeney, the Rugby Football Union chief executive, for clarification around the Enhanced Elite Player Squad; the group of up to 25 players who will receive RFU funding and contracts. Could England head coach Steve Borthwick, for instance, pick 22 tightheads if he so wished?

After a smattering of sniggering, Sweeney replied: “It would be nice to have 22 tightheads!”

A joke, of course, but the more disheartening subtext is that England barely have two tightheads, let alone 22.

On the summer tour of New Zealand, Joe Marler, 34, and Will Stuart, 28, started the first Test at loosehead and tighthead prop respectively. Dan Cole, 37, was on the bench alongside Fin Baxter, 22. When Marler injured his foot, the uncapped Baxter had to play more than an hour on debut against the All Blacks. The tyro did a sterling job but there is 12 years between Marler and Baxter and the only regular loosehead, who was not available to tour, was Ellis Genge. When Marler was ruled out of the series, the uncapped 23-year-old, Emmanuel Iyogun, was called up but never had time to fight for a spot in the match-day 23.

There are nine years between Stuart and Cole and then another three between the latter and Joe Heyes, England’s 25-year-old third-choice tighthead who never featured on tour. In both Tests against New Zealand, England struggled at the scrum. When Borthwick took over as head coach in late 2022, he identified the scrum as a weakness, recalling both Cole and Marler. Even with that duo’s supreme efforts in the World Cup, it was the scrum where England crumbled.

For props in English rugby, there is a pathway issue. But there is optimism in the corridors of power in Twickenham that those days are gone. And that is where Northampton come in.

The Saints’ front-row contingent currently comprises 15 players, 13 of whom are English-qualified. From the 18-year-old Sonny Tonga’uiha – son of Northampton legend Soane, and already almost as big – up to 32-year-old Trevor Davison, Northampton have focused on nurturing English front-row talent which, by definition, includes scrummaging.

Under the tutelage of Matt Ferguson, last season Northampton won the most scrum free-kicks in the Premiership and had the fewest resets of any side in English rugby’s top flight. Those statistics have caught the eye of the England management and, as luck would have it, when Telegraph Sport witnesses the Saints’ scrummaging first-hand, both Borthwick and his scrum lieutenant, Tom Harrison, are in attendance. Curtis Langdon, Iyogun and Davison – “one of the best tightheads in the league last year,” according to Ferguson – all had individual development-plan meetings with Borthwick, while the likes of Tarek Haffar, 22, and Luke Green, 23, are highly regarded.

Saints’ day of scrummaging is split thematically. The morning indoor “lighter” session focuses on control, stability and organisation. This does involve live scrummaging, two packs of eight against each other, but the contest finishes at the point of engagement. Ferguson screams his calls of “crouch, bind, set” but they are deliberately drawn out, so as to demand as much control as possible on the eight men leaning forward. “The set-up is the most important,” Iyogun tells his team-mates. “Invest in that.”

The full-throttle scrummaging will come in the afternoon. After the morning session, Ferguson explains why control and organisation are just as important as strength and power.

“Scrum coaching is about three units: individual, sub-units, collective,” Ferguson tells Telegraph Sport. “People think those sub-units are front row, second row, back row – as lines – but they’re not, it’s about triangles. One sub-unit is loosehead, hooker, left-hand lock, and then the tighthead would be the point of another triangle with the right-hand lock and flanker. Then there’s the left flanker and No 8 on each side. Having those two triangles working together and seamlessly knitting together is a massive part. We work on SAS: set-up, action, snap points. If you don’t get the first bit... Manny spoke about that this morning: if you don’t lay the concrete then the first brick is going to be wobbly.

“Set-up is paramount to what we do. We won more free-kicks than any other team in the Premiership last season. Most of that is what happens pre-ball. That’s discipline and an ability to be balanced.

“My job is to produce Sam [Vesty, head coach] usable ball for us to strike from. If the ball ends up in Tommy Freeman’s hands on the wing from a free-kick at a scrum, that’s a win. Mitch [Alex Mitchell, scrum-half] tapped the 17 free-kicks we won at the scrum last year and 15 times we got over the gain line. Ultimately, that’s what our scrum is about, allowing us to get beyond the gain line.”

We walk to the scrum suite, in the bowels of the Church’s Stand. The room is not luxurious – a suite in name only – but it is a bespoke hub of Saints’ scrummaging. Later, Northampton’s front-rowers will do scrum-specific work in the gym – complete with one-man scrum machine – but in this dank, daylight-free room, individual techniques – more ballerina than brawler – are honed.

The most intriguing contraption comes in the form of yachting bands, attached to a harness, dangling from wall mounts. The players strap in and lean fully forward, gripping a wooden staff to keep their “binding” arm high. “There is 100kg of resistance in each band,” Ferguson says. “The beauty of these is that I can adjust the resistance on each side. If we were playing a certain loosehead who comes across at a particular angle, we can make it so that all the resistance is trying to lift a tighthead’s right shoulder up – and he has to keep it down.”

The scrum suite is also where Saints’ front-row union holds its weekly meeting.

“If Trev [Davison] is looking at something, then Tom Dye, who is 18, is part of that conversation,” Ferguson adds. “That’s how we work. Experience is so important. You cannot microwave a prop, you have to slow-cooker them.

“Our scrummaging emblem is an anchor. There’s an anchor on the wall over there. If we win and have a good scrum performance, each player gets a miniature anchor. The player with the most at the end of the season gets taken out to dinner by me. We do what front-rowers do best: eat!

“People say that we’re strange, but we want to be the tightest group at this club. When we have our scrum meetings, we want to be tied together. We love being in each other’s company and we enjoy spending time together. When you put your arm around someone, with two tonnes of force coming at you, that ‘band of brothers’ mentality, that ability to go to the next uncomfortable place... I put my arm around you in the front row and you have to be able to trust that I’m going to look after you.”

Outside in the September showers, the live scrummaging begins. Eight scrums, each as brutal as the next, with four full front rows hitting two each – no holds barred. Harrison and Borthwick look on as the Northampton forwards alternate between savage scrum and demanding maul. Out of the eight scrums, only one collapses, a quality which has also piqued Borthwick’s interest owing to his new, adventurous England.

“This is the best crop of English props we’ve had,” Ferguson says. “The conveyor belt that we talk about... this is my strongest in the six years here. To be able to watch four front rows, scrummaging at the intensity of today, going from a 32-year-old down to an 18-year-old, that is what this club can be about: promoting through a pathway.”

If every club were to follow Northampton’s lead, Sweeney’s 22 might turn from punchline to prophecy.