How Ben Loader 'took it on the chin' at Irish and came back better

London Irish Declan Kidney had lauded the impressive reminder that one-time England prospect Ben Loader gave to him about his talent when scoring a hat-trick a fortnight ago versus Bath in the Gallagher Premiership. With other back three players such as Henry Arundell, Will Joseph and Ollie Hassell-Collins having jumped ahead of him in the selection queue at the Exiles and with Eddie Jones’ England, the soon-to-be 24-year-old has had limited exposure in recent times.

Injuries and non-selection restricted him to just eight Gallagher Premiership appearances last season but an 80-minute try-scoring effort at the start of October was a deserved reward for Loader’s patience and he will now start again this Friday night when Irish visit Sale in the latest round of league fixtures.

“He was very positive. He took it [not playing] on the chin and said, ‘Right, I need to get better’. He did and when he got his opportunity he took it,” enthused Kidney when asked by RugbyPass what Loader was like while waiting in the wings over the past year.

“Like a lot of young players, he has grown into it and got more confident in it as well. He has had a few experiences in the England camp and all those have been good for him. They [players at Irish with England ambitions] have had a good taste for it, they have a hunger to get themselves back in but they know they can only expect that if they are performing week in and week out.

“The match against Bath was a good day for Ben, we had a fallow week last week and Friday night is a TV match. A lot of a winger’s job is what goes on in front of them. The tighthead rarely gets the headlines but sometimes it’s a tighthead’s work that allows the winger to do their job. How has Ben responded? He responded in the way that you would have wanted anybody to respond.

“He was very good. He just put his head down and said okay. No player is going to absolutely agree with you when you leave them out unless there were in a bad vein of form. He wasn’t – there was a lot of competition for places. It looked like earlier in the Bath week that he wasn’t going to do it but he trained very well and when the opportunity came up we put him in and he took it with aplomb.

“How he responded to the challenge for his place is a credit to him. That is how we talked to him, that it could make him, and it was a real positive contribution to the team on the day… What I liked about Ben is the way he responded to the challenge for his place and then also the assists that he made.

“In the first couple of minutes Bath had a really good spell on the ball, there were there for a long time and Ben had a chase back, He made a poach and that had a big influence on the game, took a bit of the steam out of Bath. To me, that was just as pivotal as some of the touch downs that he got.”