Ellis Genge enters Bristol record books after feisty Argentina Test

From the very first, Wallace Jarman in 1900, 288 different players have gained a full international cap whilst playing for Bristol. This includes six who were retrospectively awarded a cap earlier this year, including club legend Nigel Pomphrey.

George Kloska became the most recent addition to the list when he made his England debut against Fiji at the Hill Dickinson Stadium in Liverpool on 11 July.

In his second cap against Argentina a week later, Kloska momentarily packed down with his club teammate, Ellis Genge, who eagle-eyed club statistician Neil Williams says, has become the most-capped international as a Bristol player. with that appearance in Santiago del Estero.

While Jarman and Genge share the fact they’ve captained Bristol and come from a place called Knowle – one a village in the Midlands and Knowle West, a suburb of Bristol, their international careers took very different paths.

Jarman featured regularly on England’s 1899 tour to Australia but it wasn’t until the following January that he officially won his one and only cap against Wales at Kingsholm.

Whereas Jarman, a Fry’s Chocolate manager, according to English Rugby’s Who’s Who, was forever stuck in the one-cap club, to date Genge has won 86 caps – 83 for England and three for the Lions – over a decade at the top.

A good portion of his England caps came during a six-year spell at Leicester, but the controversial clash with the Pumas was his 50th cap whilst a Bristol player, seeing him overtake the late, great former England captain and Bristol hooker, John Pullin, who won 42 for England seven for the Lions.

Genge and Kloska weren’t the only Bristol players on the pitch at Estadio Único Madre de Ciudades, as Benhard Janse van Rensburg briefly joined the fray before being stretchered off, and Matias Moroni started at centre and played the full 80 minutes for the Pumas.

If selected for Argentina’s Tests against South Africa and Australia in August and September, Moroni will become the second caps centurion after Wallaby legend George Smith to play for the club. Smith had a six-month spell at Bristol as injury cover in 2018 at the tailend of his career, which included 111 caps for Australia.