LONG READ Anthony Watson: 'I see Noah Caluori having a real impact with England in the coming years.'

I’ve just been on the Algarve perfecting my golf swing – and believe me, it needs perfecting – and it got me thinking ahead of a bumper weekend of Investec Champions Cup, which is live on Premier Sports, just how much my position has changed since I was a fresh-faced kid coming out of university in 2011 and into the world of professional rugby.

Sure, the fundamentals are the same, you need to be big and fast, but I think the expectations have grown significantly. I’d argue that when I started out, you could get away with not being the most aerially complete winger. You could get away with not chasing kicks at maximum speed. You could also just about get away with being a weaker defender, given that most systems back in the day were drift-orientated, so you could rely on your inside defender more, but these days you have to offer so much more. You have to read plays. You have to know when to jump out of the line to make a stop tackle. You have to know when the right time is to connect to your 13, or your full-back. There’s so much more to wing play now. Traditionally the 13 was always seen as the toughest channel to defend but I’d argue that’s now the wing. It is so easy to get exposed.

The variance of wingers skillsets are so vast. Take Mack Hansen. He may not be the fastest top-line speed merchant, but as a ball player, he can slot in anywhere across the backline and make things happen. Or Jack Nowell. He picks and goes and does mad stuff you don’t expect from a guy with a No 14 on his back. Then you get the Joe Cokanasigas of this world. They were a rare breed back in 2011 but now they seem to be on the flank in every Top 14 team, where French sides seem to have a steady conveyor belt coming from Suva or Apia.

Of course, you will always get wings whose sole raison d’etre is to score tries. Guys like Bryan Habana, Shane Williams and Chris Ashton. In the modern day, it’s Louis Bielle-Biarrey or Will Jordan, but it’s a broad church. You have the all-rounders and I’d put Tommy Freeman and Damien Penaud in that bracket. Guys who are just as happy to set up tries as score them with a piece of individual brilliance. Then you have the more physical wings, like Joe [Cokanasiga] or Bristol’s Kalaveti Ravouvou who will just run over you or around you and the x-factor game-breakers like Darcy Graham, Cheslin Kolbe or Manny Feyi-Waboso.

It depends how you see yourself as a wing and how you want to impose yourself on the game. Personally, I never went into games thinking I wanted to score a hat-trick and it was probably to my detriment. I preferred to make a 90m break and pass it to someone else to score rather than run in a try after someone else has done all the leg work but I what I did want to do is impose myself on the game in attack, defence or aerially.

Despite England’s travails in the Six Nations, I still think their strength in depth is still in the top two or three in the world, especially in the back row and back three.

Despite England’s travails in the Six Nations, I still think their strength in depth is still in the top two or three in the world, especially in the back row and back three. There are the incumbents like Tommy Freeman, Henry Arundell, Feyi-Waboso, Tom Roebuck, Cadan Murley who are in and around the squad but beyond that you had Adam Radwan, Will Muir, Ollie Hassell-Collins and Joe [Cokanasiga], who can’t even get in the squad. It’s not too outlandish to say Radwan and Hassell-Collins would be starting in plenty of other international teams.

Ultimately, the selection comes down to the style of play and what Steve Borthwick wants. That’s why I see the youngest of the crop Noah [Caluori] having a real impact with England in the coming years. Why? Because of the importance of the aerial game in creating unstructured attack from a defensive position. With the current state of the game, his ability to retain the ball in the air stops opposition side’s creating unstructured attack and leaves him well placed. The way we’ve already seen teams having had to adapt to defend against him and the way Saracens have manipulated opportunities for him has been super smart. Are there areas of Noah’s game that need fine-tuning? Course there is, but it would be crazy to think a 19-year-old would be the finished article at that age. He’s some prospect.

As for the crunch match between my old club and Saracens, despite what you’ll read, I think it’s a very even match up. Against Saints, Saracens selected Rotimi Segun, Elliot Daly and Tobias Elliot, so they may go same again, while you’d expect Bath to go with Joe, Henry, and either Santiago Carreras or Tom de Glanville at full-back. Each one of those individuals has a supreme skillset in one specific area. Tobias Elliot is the only one I’d tag as an all-rounder. With Joe, you can’t underestimate his immense size and speed. You simply can’t build that in the gym or prepare for facing that raw athletic ability head on. With Arundell, you’re talking absolute jet-shoes. They say ‘speed kills’ and he’s got that. He reminds me of Damien Penaud. You almost need hit him with a shoulder because if you try and snag him with an arm, he builds up too much velocity and you can’t hang onto him. Rotimi (Segun) gets his hands on the ball a bit more than Henry and he gets involved in the nitty-gritty, like the breakdown, which is an underrated skill for a winger.

I’m a massive fan of Elliot Daly. He can play as first receiver, second receiver, spot space in behind. He’s probably as complete a rugby player as I’ve seen.

At full-back, I’m a massive fan of Elliot Daly. He can play as first receiver, second receiver, spot space in behind. He’s probably as complete a rugby player as I’ve seen and leadership skills to match. When it comes to orchestrating back three play you want a conductor at 15 who knows where he wants everyone to be, puts them in the right spot. That’s Elliot. At then at the other end, you have Santi [Carreras] and Tom de Glanville, so you’re spoilt for choice.

A few fans have asked me but if I’d like to have like to have played with this current crop but my answer is not at the expense of playing with the group I played with at Bath and latterly Leicester. I’ll put my neck on the line by saying I think the 2014-15 Bath side would have beaten today’s side. The difference between the two was that this Bath have got a more multi-faceted way of playing. For example, if it’s wet, as we saw against Castres in Round 2, they can grind you down up front through Beno Obano and Thomas du Toit but after 60 minutes they can blow you away. They can throw it about with the likes of Finn Russell, Ollie Lawrence and that back three. We were pretty rigid in the way that we tried to play in that expansive Mike Ford style that I loved with every bone of my body, but maybe it wasn’t flexible enough when we got to the Premiership Final against Saracens in 2015. It saw us overplay and we played into their hands. The net result was they won the final.

Credit has to go to Johann van Graan and the recruitment team. You have to remember it was only a couple of years ago that they were at bottom of the league and struggling. To get to where they are now is some turnaround and for that, Bruce Craig deserves credit. You wouldn’t have blamed him for throwing in the towel and cutting his losses, but he doubled down and is now reaping the rewards. I’m expecting a belter of a game.

As for where rugby is going, I really expect it to be an amazing weekend of Investec Champions Cup rugby. The game is venturing into a new era with a new generation of stars. You look at Henry Pollock’s deal with Matchroom, which is getting a lot of debate in some quarters. Personally, I haven’t got a problem with it. I think the ‘team-first ethos’ often gets misconstrued. It leads to players not wanting to express themselves, which in my opinion comes to the detriment of the game’s growth. If you look at the biggest sports in the world, they have massive personalities who draw casual fans into the game and when you combine that with the way youngsters consume their sport through highlights and bite-sized clips, you can see a pathway to keeping the sport relevant. Some of the values that built rugby need to be relaxed in some capacity in order for this game to keep momentum. If we’re honest, the rugby fanbase is ageing and unless we get youngsters watching the game, we will all suffer. I’m not saying rugby will fizzle out but if it misses a beat, it will become more niche and more marginalised. We have to innovate and be open-minded. We’re in the entertainment business and you can expect to be entertained this weekend!

All the action from the big weekend of knock-out Investec Champions Cup and EPCR Challenge Cup rugby action is live on Premier Sports this Easter weekend with quarter final places at stake. Anthony Watson is part of the Premier Sports team bringing every minute of the drama from the biggest international club rugby games live across the UK and Ireland. Visit premiersports.com to join in from just £11.99 a month @PremSports.tv