When he emerges from the Allianz Stadium tunnel on Saturday afternoon for his first start as England fly-half, Fin Smith will have countless well-wishers. Already, at 22, he has had a positive influence on many people. Indeed, testimonies of his character read like an advert for the ideal son-in-law.

“A calm, composed, quality player” was how Maro Itoje described Smith on Thursday afternoon. The England captain spoke of “assertiveness” and sound decision-making too, then paused a moment. “He’s just a performer,” Itoje said with a shrug, emanating an easy confidence in his new number 10.

If you find out most about a man when they are in adversity, it is worth rewinding two and a half years. Barely out of his teens, Smith was part of a Worcester Warriors squad wracked by uncertainty and distress as the club’s financial problems were biting. Multiple sources remain in awe of his leadership during those dark days.

The “young pup” sat in on meetings with director of rugby Steve Diamond and other senior players, asking proactive questions before relaying matters to his colleagues. “While going through the mess, he wanted to help others,” remembers one insider. “He appreciated the bigger picture of how it affected staff, fans – everyone.”

“For him to speak passionately and logically to the group at different times in the roller coaster of weeks leading to the end, as a 20-year-old, was really impressive,” adds Joe Batley, the former Worcester lock who subsequently relocated to Bristol Bears.

The self-effacing Smith would probably affirm that he was merely protecting his home. After giving up rugby union between eight and 11 to focus on tennis, with the realistic aim of eventually turning professional, he joined the Worcester academy at 13. There, former Scotland international Gordon Ross was among his coaches and encountered an assiduous prospect.

“Not a lot of youngsters watch full games, which helped with his understanding,” Ross says. “He’d come to me and ask ‘can we try this?’ or ‘can we try that?’ because he’d seen it on television.

“A lot of it was around attack shape, and I’d explain that first-team forwards were more skilful and more physical than ours. I was just trying to get him and [Gloucester centre] Seb Atkinson, who were our best players, more time on the ball rather than just going to a structure that he’d seen on TV.”

Maturity, self-awareness and toughness are three more recurring themes proposed by those who witnessed Smith’s earlier days. When, as an under-16, he first joined a Worcester Under-18s session, most thought he had been there two years already.

“In his first year with Worcester Under-18s, we kept losing and struggled. He’d come from Warwick School and Worcester Under-16s, where he’d won every game. We’d be getting beat 50-0 but he’d still be getting stuck in, being physical. He never gave up. He always had fight in him. All the while, his core skills were miles above anything we came across,” Ross says.

In January 2022, having arrived at Worcester, Diamond delivered an inimitable zinger. Six months previously, Smith had started all five matches of a Grand Slam for England Under-20s. “How Eddie Jones hasn’t looked at Fin Smith is beyond me,” Diamond said. “What’s the kid called with the fancy name from Bath? He has a shout, but Fin Smith is way in front of him.”

Orlando Bailey, a left-field inclusion in Jones’ senior Six Nations squad of that season, was “the kid” from Bath. And, to Diamond’s credit, he has been proven right.

As well as a “great team man”, Diamond regards Smith as “the best passer I’d ever seen”, likening him to Charlie Hodgson. No wonder, then, that Northampton were eyeing him up.

Sam Vesty was familiar with Smith from coaching at Warriors and Paul Shields, the Saints head of recruitment and retention, had watched him play for Warwick School. Northampton had Dan Biggar, yet wanted to move in a different direction and future-proof the fly-half position.

“We’d seen how he’d played for Worcester,” Shields says. “The thing that really jumped out, as well as him going forward, was his defence. We watched back a game where we played Worcester and Teimana Harrison, who’s an absolute dog of a player and a proper carrier, came off the base. Fin hit him with a great shot, and we thought: ‘Flip’. He was a kid at the time, only 18.

“Whenever he came into the environment, he was very comfortable. Fin is an incredibly polite young man, he’s very level-headed, his parents are great people. He’s very bright. He was head boy of Warwick School and is still studying [for a degree in economics and mathematical sciences from The Open University]. He wasn’t overawed by the whole thing and the lads took to him.”

Worcester unravelling allowed Saints to swoop more quickly and Smith moved across the Midlands in October 2022. Biggar, who had comforted Smith on the pitch after Northampton thrashed Worcester 66-10 a year previously, was allowed to take up an opportunity with Toulon within weeks. That left Smith and James Grayson as the two front-line pivots at Saints.

By the end of that 2022-23 campaign, Smith had made a Champions Cup debut – a 46-12 mauling by La Rochelle – and played in a Premiership semi-final for the first time. Saracens triumphed 38-15 at StoneX on their way to another domestic title, yet Smith enjoyed bright moments.

Fly-half spurned Scotland for the red rose

All the while, curiosity over Smith’s international future grew. The grandson of Tom Elliot, a Scotland prop who toured with the 1955 British and Irish Lions, Smith chatted with Gregor Townsend over a couple of Zooms before ringing on the verge of the 2023 Six Nations to explain that he would be opting for the red rose. There was a high likelihood that Smith would become an understudy to Finn Russell that tournament.

Ross laughs at the suggestion that he could have persuaded his protégé to don navy blue: “I’ll send Fin messages every now and then to say: ‘Well done… you could be playing for Scotland, though!’”

Steve Borthwick is understood to have made it abundantly clear that Smith was viewed as a long-term England player. Smith’s first caps were awarded over the course of 2024, a year in which Saints won the Premiership, and the award of an enhanced Elite Player Squad (EPS) contract has underlined his value.

Vesty, the Northampton head coach, views the stirring victory over Munster at Thomond Park 13 months ago as a seminal milestone. Smith “took the game by the scruff of its neck and dominated it with his presence”, dropping a goal from 45 metres as Saints defied a red card to prevail 26-23.

Cramp forced Smith off in the dying stages of the Premiership final, prior to Alex Mitchell’s winning try, but a more recent defeat of Bath demonstrated his capacity to push through tricky patches.

Itoje stressed this week that “no one can win the game on their own”. Happily for England, Smith brings teams closer to the sum of their parts by pulling the strings and organising the attack to break open a defence; using structure to escape structure. Biggar, an astute analyst, labels him as a fly-half who remains “connected” to his forwards.

“He’ll bring the best out in other players,” Vesty says. “He’ll find space for others to get on the front foot. He perhaps doesn’t run through the holes that some do, but he creates that for other people. He gives everyone else an extra 10 per cent. That makes the team function. Then you create more of those destructured moments.”

Those qualities sound intangible. How exactly does a fly-half facilitate others? “It’s spatial awareness,” Vesty continues. “[Smith] is not the biggest or the quickest, so he’s never had the ability to run over someone or run around someone.

“If you’re not amazing at those things, the way you impact the game is by manipulating defenders and giving the ball to someone who is big and who is quick and allowing them to use their skills after you have created that little bit of space to help them be the best they can be. When you’re not blessed with size or speed, you find different ways. It’s often a real positive.”

The Fin-Marcus selection dilemma could run for the best part of a decade. As they did with George Ford and Owen Farrell, England are uniting two playmakers in the same back line for this mighty challenge against France.

Should the going become tough for Smith squared – and with Antoine Dupont among the opposition, there is every chance – Fin will lean upon his considerable resolve. In his first full pre-season as a Northampton player, he emulated Biggar by winning the club’s Blakiston Challenge. This comprises two 2.5km runs either side of a separate 2km course of carrying sandbags weighing 30kg and 50kg. Smith admitted that he had been spurred by Biggar’s feat. “I surprised myself with how deep a place I managed to take my brain to keep pushing on,” he said afterwards.

“It’s a fitness challenge, but it’s more of an ‘I’m going to see you in Hell before I lose this’ mentality you need,” Vesty says. “I think Fin’s got a Test-match attitude. He wants to compete in everything.”

The personable economics student with more than a touch of inner steel; Fin Smith has certainly earned an opportunity to direct this England side.