Ollie Hoskins interview: Scrum lessons from part-timers put to good use in London Irish play-off push

Ollie Hoskins did not spend a season getting schooled in scrums by Championship semi-professionals to waste his first big Premiership play-off drive with London Irish.

The Exiles host Northampton in the annual St Patrick’s Party tomorrow, where the winner will claim a vital top-four foothold.

Australia prop Hoskins believes Irish have a genuine play-off shot for the first time in his seven years in west London – and the 30-year-old has vowed the Brentford outfit will leave everything out there in that league quest.

Perth-born Hoskins traded Super Rugby for England’s second tier when joining Irish in 2016, and promptly found himself turned inside-out at set-piece time.

But just as Irish have built steadily towards this potential play-off tilt, so too has Hoskins developed his tight game to flourish with Declan Kidney’s side.

“I’ve been here for a long time and it’s the first time I can confidently say that we’re in the play-off hunt, and it’s exciting,” Hoskins told Standard Sport. “We’ve built connections year on year, so we understand innately now how we want to play.

“The player I am now compared to the player I was when I first rocked up at Irish, or even the player I was two years ago, they are chalk and cheese.

“That’s due to a lot of people putting in a lot of work with me around areas of the game that I initially struggled with, and they’ve taken me on as one of their own and put in a lot of work, and I’m really, really grateful.

“When I first came over to the UK I definitely wasn’t up to the standard set-piece wise. It was a massive shock to me. My first pre-season here I was just getting battered in scrum sessions, and coming from playing Super Rugby then going to the Championship, I thought I was a lot better than I was.

“It was a very humbling experience getting outscrummaged by mostly part-timers. But Irish didn’t give up on me, they saw potential and worked with me for years and years with me.

“It’s really only been the last two or three seasons that I’ve started to get my head around it and churn out consistent scrummaging performances that match up with stuff that comes more naturally to me around the park.

“It would have been really easy for them to have this Aussie who came over who can be good around the park, but couldn’t really scrum, and for them to just let me go. But they stuck with me, saw the potential and it’s my individual success is just a product of the environment and the people I’ve worked with along the way.”

Irish hosting Saints is fifth versus fourth at the Gtech Community Stadium tomorrow, with Hoskins pulling no punches on the size of the occasion.

“The ramifications are huge, it’s fifth against fourth. The league is so tight if we slip up we know we could drop down, but if we win a couple we could go up to third,” said Hoskins.

“We understand the monumental nature of this game. But we’ve proven to everybody that we can beat anybody in the league and we deserve to be where we are.

“Declan Kidney and Les Kiss and the crew took over just before we got relegated in my second year at the club. We’ve seen some of the fruits of our labour but still we haven’t won anything yet. It’s all about tackling the moment in front of us.

“The core’s been building, the players have played together for multiple years under the same sort of style. We can play a good brand of rugby but also express ourselves outside of the systems that they give us.

“It’s exciting. We’ve put in a lot of work over a lot of years to be in this position this deep in a season with a realistic play-off shot.”

Hoskins aims to live in England long after his rugby career, but for the foreseeable future he wants to keep on extending his stay at Irish.

A Test debut he thought had eluded him came as an injury addition to Australia’s northern hemisphere tour in 2021. Such milestones leave the accomplished prop with a deep regard for his club.

“I’m very settled here, I met my wife here and I’m very settled down,” said Hoskins. “After rugby I’ll still be living in the UK, I’ve got most of my family here, I’ve got a passport and stuff, so I’ll be staying in the UK long-term.

“It’s such a family vibe at the club and they were so supportive in helping me get settled here when I moved, so I’ve got a real big attachment to the club. It’s an awesome place to be and I’m very lucky to have played 160-odd games for the club now and hopefully I’ll play many more.”

London Irish team to face Northampton: B Loader; L Cinti, B Van Rensburg, R Jennings, O Hassell-Collins; P Jackson, H O’Sullivan; D Fischetti, A Creevy, O Hoskins; A Ratuniyarawa, R Simmons; M Rogerson (capt), T Pearson, S Fa’aso’o. Replacements: M Willemse, T Haffar, L Chawatama, C Munga, JM Gonzalez, C Cunningham-South, J Powell, H Arundell.