'Completely nuts' Premiership Immortals XV named by Austin Healey

Ex-Leicester utility Austin Healey has named his Premiership Immortals XV in a very Austin Healey-like way – only selecting players that he played with at Tigers. Healey had 20 years’ worth of players from across the league to choose from, but he opted to keep things in-house at Welford Road, an approach that is sure to fire up English top-flight supporters.

After fans had selected their Immortals XV via a series of online polls, Healey was the second of four BT Sport pundits to name his own XV ahead of a round-table debate show on May 27 featuring Lawrence Dallaglio, Ugo Monye, Ben Kay and Healey.

“This is a real opportunity,” he began. “Obviously, you have got to have a criteria to pick it and my main criteria was players that I played with. You don’t get to do this very often, it’s hypothetical. Most people would have shot my team down anyway. I was on a hiding to nothing, so what I did was I just picked the whole Leicester team that I played with.

Wilkinson vs Farrell

Wilkinson vs Farrell

“It makes perfect sense. They won four titles, most of them are great blokes and I understand everything about them… there will be criticisms for this, but my aim was to get as many of my mates into that Immortals team as possible and almost all have got a valid case.

“People will realise what a great team I have selected. You only get one chance to pick the Immortals team, so why would I want to pick a load of people I never played with? They’re very versatile, dynamic, strong, fast!”

Healey went on to steadfastly defend his selection approach, naming a team that included usual suspects such as Martin Johnson, Neil Back and Geordan Murphy. But he will surely raise eyebrows regarding how he picked himself at No9, chose Andy Goode as his No10 and included a largely unrecognisable name at No11 instead of Alesana Tuilagi.

Here is how he explained some of his choices, beginning with loosehead. “I have picked Graham Rowntree because he was probably ahead of his time. He was completely nuts, ran around the field just hitting ruck after ruck. I used to call him Shaun Edwards because in training he thought he was Shaun Edwards, the rugby league star, playing first receiver, distributing the ball, but he was an absolute rock in the pack.

“Didn’t go to the World Cup, probably wrongly so, but lots of appearances and wins. That is the key thing here, this team’s win ratio is better than every other hypothetical Immortals team that will be selected over the course of these TV shows.”

Darren Garforth was Healey’s tighthead prop, with good reason. “In my first game for Leicester, his job was always to ruck and I went into a ruck and he came in and stamped on me and told me, ‘That is my job, get out of the ruck, I’ll look after you out there’, so I listened to him for the rest of my career and didn’t go near any of those areas.”

As regards Johnson at No4, Healey reckoned: “One of his key attributes was his ability to run. His mum was an ultra-marathon runner, he used to go training with her. He had a phenomenal engine. He had one pace, it was average speed, but he didn’t stop. He’d start the game running at that speed, and he would finish the game running at that pace and that is why he had so many impacts on the game, both physical and mental in a lot of ways.

“He was very pragmatic, very sarcastic, less so in the changing room, but he just dealt with black and white. He eliminated all the grey which is what great leaders do and he enabled the team to focus on what was really important, which was getting the ball to me.”

Healey went on to tell an amusing in-between-pubs story about Martin Corry, his No8. “Nobody knows but he was the England captain and an absolute rock. Mentally one of the strongest individuals you will ever come across. On my stag-do, we arrived back at Newcastle train station after being out on an afternoon at Whitley Bay and I bet him a pound that he couldn’t do a forward roll all the way to the Quayside.

“He did 400 forward rolls to the Quayside, put his hand out and went, ‘Where’s my pound?’ I gave him his pound, he went thanks and we went into the pub. So mentally, very, very strong. Never took a backward step ever. I remember a little bit of a punch-up with another guy I could have picked, Lawrence Dallaglio, and Martin won that fight.

“He just stood in and just hit him repeatedly and we all stood back because he didn’t need any help. That is the reason why I didn’t pick Lawrence because if it came down to a scrap, he didn’t really have it in his locker.”

Healey had no issues naming himself as his Immortals XV scrum-half. “A lot of people say, ‘I’m not going to pick myself’ but if you are the best player you should pick yourself and I was the best player in any one of those positions and we got four titles two Heineken Cups off the back of it. You will admit if you look at that pack, it’s a great pack but without the magic behind it it’s not winning titles… modesty is largely overrated. That is why I went for myself.”

Next came Goode at out-half. “I actually loved playing nine and 10 with him. He was a very intuitive player, fantastic right foot, he controlled proceedings, he attacked the line, he never took a backward step physically, people commented on his shape but he did what he needed to do every time you put it in front of him…

“I used to know I would get to the breakdown and fling out a pass and he would always be there. He would know where the ball was going to. He has got a brilliant rugby brain and he knew how to use it.”

Healey went on to reveal the menace of the bed-flipping Leon Lloyd, his No13, a habit that at one stage injured Healey and ruled him out of a Leicester match against Leinster. “You’d go in for a little afternoon nap on top of the bed and then he would come in and basically flip the bed and you would end up awake with the bed on top of you.”

The most eye-raising Healey selection, however, was left wing Winston Stanley. “A lot of people won’t know this guy. I only played with him for a couple of seasons… this guy came out of nowhere and whenever you got the ball to him, he scored. He was unbelievably quick and really elusive quick. You could argue this team by itself won two titles and then he arrived and we won two more and two European Cups. He might have been the missing link that took us to the next stage.”

Austin Healey’s Immortals XV: 15. Tim Stimpson; 14. Geordan Murphy; 13. Leon Lloyd, 12. Will Greenwood, 11. Winston Stanley; 10. Andy Goode, 9. Austin Healey; 1. Graham Rowntree, 2. Dorian West, 3. Darren Garforth, 4. Martin Johnson, 5. Ben Kay, 6. Lewis Moody, 7. Neil Back, 8. Martin Corry.

• Watch BT Sport’s Premiership Immortals on BT Sport 1 from 1pm on Saturday, May 27, to see who makes the greatest Premiership XV of all time. The final episode will be followed by BT Sport’s exclusive live coverage of the Gallagher Premiership final from 2pm on BT Sport 1 btsport.com/immortals