After one 'Great Escape', England U20s coach Kev Sorrell wants another

Having helped to oversee England U20s comeback vs Wales on Friday night, staunch West Ham fan Kevin Sorrell is hoping for more than one Great Escape this season.

England’s elite age-grade team salvaged a 19-16 win at a rain-sodden cinch Franklin’s Gardens, after a car-crash of a first half in which they trailed 16-0.

Meanwhile, West Ham claimed another precious point, although it should have been three, in a 1-1 draw at home to Man Utd on Tuesday, as they look to play their way out of the Premier League’s relegation zone.

Essex-born Sorrell has spent the best part of four decades following the Hammers, and is in good company in that respect in rugby circles, with the likes of fellow former Saracen, Jackson Wray, England scrum-half Alex Mitchell and Harlequins coach Nick Evans, also supporting the East End’s finest.

“I remember it was my first time, it was either ’84 or ’85, and my Dad took me to the Chicken Run (the area of West Ham’s old ground which was notorious for its hooligans) and he just shoved me to the front. We played Watford and won 2-1. Frank McAvennie and Mark Ward, my favourite player, scored.”

England’s get-out-jail card was played late against Wales, with the winning try coming five minutes before the end of the match. But a reprieve for West Ham would be straight from the script of the Shawshank Redemption in terms of escapology.

Even with just one defeat in their last five league games, West Ham are still a couple of points from safety, on 24 points, having played a game more than their nearest rivals Nottingham Forest.

“They’re playing a lot better but we can’t seem to close it out, that’s the frustrating thing, and the games are ticking by. Before it was 18 games and now it’s 12 games, and it’s still a big gap,” said Sorrell.

“I wish Spurs hadn’t sacked Thomas Frank because they were in freefall. The fact they have sacked him, they might get out of it now.

“Everyone says 40 points every year (to survive), but it’s normally like 33/34 points. But I think this year it is definitely going to be around 40, I would say, because the clubs that have come up have done so well.”

All this talk of 1980s football, and Sorrell’s own 304-game playing career, had Harlequins and England U20 scrum-half Lucas Friday chuckling to one side.

Sharing this week’s media duties with Sorrell, Friday is the son of former Wasps scrum-half and esteemed rugby sevens coach, Mike Friday, and is just one of many reminders to Sorrell that he’s now mixing with people a generation apart.

Giant-sized prop Sonny Tonga’uiha, who starts his first game for England U20s against Scotland this Friday, after coming off the bench and scoring against Wales, is another with a famous rugby surname, his dad Sione having been a bedrock of Northampton’s scrum for years.

“It’s surreal and a little bit strange because it makes you feel very old, that the people you played with you’re now coaching their kids,” he admitted.

“I think the academy lads are getting better and better information at a younger age. And, obviously, if you’re growing up in that environment, you’re able to get that knowledge early on; it’s a great start for them in their careers.”

Having been wedded to Saracens for the best part of 30 years, as a player and then coach, Sorrell was announced as a member of Andy Titterell’s U20s coaching staff in September 2025.

But it had been a long wait for the former centre to pull on the red rose tracksuit on a matchday until the moment arrived at Northampton last weekend.

“There’s a completely different flow to your week and the pace of the job. I reckon the first five or six weeks, I was a like, ‘what’s going on, how we doing this?'” he said about the transition from club coaching to international coaching.

“The strangest thing was when I first looked at the schedule, I was going, ‘okay, our first camp is mid-January and then we have got a game at the end of January, and I looked at it and thought, ‘hold on, we have only got six or seven sessions before we actually play a game’. And I was like, ‘wow, that’s tight’.

“It’s then what you can do in the build-up to that in terms of the watching the lads, and the communication with the lads, and aligning with the clubs and how important those relationships are in terms of getting feedback.

“I have got to know what the diary looks like week to week to week, and now this is the competition stage.

“This block that we’ve been doing for the last two to three weeks has been like a Premiership campaign, where you are going week after week after week, and it feels like you are back into that rhythm of things.”

Sorrell first cut his coaching teeth as a backs coach with Barking in 2009/10, when he was still playing. But mostly his coaching education has come under Mark McCall. It’s no surprise that the Northern Irishman has made an indelible impression on Sorrell.

“It’s huge not just because of his rugby intelligence, because that is so vast in terms of how he thinks about the game, and the depth of thinking around his game as well. But then there is another side to him in terms of the empathy side of him, how he goes about making decisions and stuff. There’s different layers to the man.

“I was unbelievably fortunate to be a part of that group, with the coaches that we had there and how we bounced off one another.”

England U20 men’s side to face Scotland (includes current club and previous U20 caps):

15 James Pater (Northampton Saints, 1 cap); 14 Sam Winters (Bath Rugby, uncapped), 13 Nick Lilley (Exeter Chiefs, 9 caps), 12 Victor Worsnip (Bristol Bears, 1 cap), 11 George Pearson (Leicester Tigers, 4 caps); 10 Finn Keylock (Saracens, uncapped), 9 Lucas Friday (Harlequins, 9 caps); 1 Oliver Scola (Northampton Saints, 10 caps), 2 Jimmy Staples (Harlequins, 1 cap), 3 Sonny Tonga’uiha (Northampton Saints, 1 cap), 4 Elliot Williams (Harlequins, 1 cap), 5 Patrick Hogg (Sale Sharks, 1 cap), 6 Aiden Ainsworth-Cave (Northampton Saints, 10 caps), 7 Seb Kelly (Sale Sharks, 3 caps), 8 Connor Treacey (C) (Bath Rugby, 8 caps)

Replacements: 16 Kealan Freeman-Price (Gloucester Rugby, uncapped), 17 Oliver Spencer (Sale Sharks, 1 cap), 18 Harry Wright (Gloucester Rugby), 19 Freddie Ogden-Metherell (Gloucester Rugby, uncapped), 20 George Marsh (Leicester Tigers, 1 cap), 21 Asa Stewart-Harris (Saracens, uncapped), 22 Will Knight (Gloucester Rugby, 5 caps), 23 Tyler Offiah (Bath Rugby, 3 caps)