LONG READ Jimmy Roots: 'I had 36 stitches in my ear, the boys were calling me Vincent van Gogh'

Jimmy Roots is panting, a grin spreading from one rosy cheek to the other as he plonks himself down on a chair and wipes sweat from his brow. Roots has just been subjected to an Exeter Chiefs ‘top-up’ running session generally reserved for the front-row union. “They don’t treat the fatties nicely down here,” he chuckles.

Roots, younger brother of Exeter’s mighty flank Ethan, is a precious character. The squad’s beacon of vitality, toting the boom box, noising up his team-mates, and breathing colour and zest into every corner of the Chiefs environment. He adores this rugby life. He has found a place where his loud, eccentric personality is not shunned but treasured. He prods the coaches like an impish schoolchild banters with their favourite teacher. He’s no stranger to some training-ground biff. Back home in New Zealand, playing for North Harbour, he blew his first pay packet on a NZ$3,000 bed. “I couldn’t afford to eat,” he says, “but I had a f***ing sick bed.”

But there’s iron in Roots too, no question. A steel beneath the smile. Nothing in his voyage to Exeter and the Prem was straightforward. His parents, Cara, a proud Maori woman, and Karl, whose English heritage qualifies the boys to wear the red rose, raised sons unafraid to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty. Roots was on building sites in his late teens and happy to graft. He’d have been a Junior All Black were it not for the covid-19 pandemic and did his hard yards in the Champ with Ealing before Rob Baxter picked up the phone.

“I left school a little early, started pursuing a career in construction like my brother,” he says. “I was a bit of out of shape – that’s an understatement, I might have been 137kg – working during the week and playing club footie on the weekend, playing colts with my mates.

“My brother was playing for North Harbour and asked if I could come along to their development pre-season just to get fit. They seemed to like what I had about me. I wasn’t scared of working hard. They asked if I wanted to stay. I thought, ‘what an opportunity, they’ve obviously seen something in me’.

“I did three years in the NPC. There were no Super Rugby contracts available but my agent was aware I was a dual citizen. Ealing contacted him a couple of times and we just said ‘why not?’.”

Roots arrived in England four years ago. In his room in West London, he pinned a whiteboard to the wall and wrote down his targets. With time, some of those aims were erased and updated. One remained inked indelibly.

“All of my goals were written in whiteboard pen, but ‘make it to the Prem’ was in vivid, permanent marker. That was always the goal to play here. I wanted to make that happen.

“If I was going to come to England, I was going to be all-in. I couldn’t be half-arsed. A lot of people probably think they can go home if it doesn’t work out. I had to make it work no matter what.”

Much of this drive can be traced back to the Roots’ childhood. This rural upbringing in the Dairy Flat region, a patchwork of farmland and smallholdings 40 minutes north of Auckland, was no place for slackers. Roots worshipped his elder brother and admired how he attacked his burgeoning sports career. Like Ethan, Jimmy had a flair for martial arts. He tried jiu-jitsu, Muay Thai, boxing and wrestling. Cara warned him his ‘big f***ing mouth’ might get him in trouble and he’d best be able to fight his way out of it. Karl built a set of rugby posts on the family patch and the boys spent hours taking shots at goal.

Pardon my French, but Mum was like ‘I’m not gonna drive you to and from trainings if you’re going to f**k around on the weekend and be useless’.

“I wouldn’t say we ever wanted for anything, but we didn’t have a hell of a lot,” Roots reflects. “Dad would do two or three jobs, selling cars on the weekend and working 50-plus hours during the week. Mum would be doing side bits while also managing us.

“From a very early age, me and Ethan were lucky to see work ethic. Our parents were pretty tough on us; they never gave us a cruisy upbringing. Pardon my French, but Mum was like ‘I’m not gonna drive you to and from trainings if you’re going to f**k around on the weekend and be useless’. People probably think that’s harsh but it was straight-talking and it was all we knew. That’s probably where a lot of my personality has stemmed from. I grew up in a straight-shooting household. I’m not afraid to say what’s on my mind because I don’t think that’s a negative thing.”

The Roots parents also instilled in their sons the importance of being true to themselves. Jimmy could never be accused of acting like a sheep.

“Mum said ‘if people don’t like you, they’re missing out, not you’. I’m a bit like Marmite. Like me or don’t, I’ll just enjoy being me.

“I was a bit of a different taste at Ealing to what they were used to. I was pretty hot-headed as well, used to having a few scraps at training. That was the way I saw competitive edge, and they weren’t the fondest of it when I first got there. Once they realised that’s just me, I’m just that loud guy who’s always up to no good, they really embraced that as well. Ethan probably warned them.”

The brothers’ closeness is almost tangible. Jimmy daubs the initials of Ethan, his wife and children on his wrist tape before each match. With those bonds comes friction. Not in an existential sense, but when training boils over, the Rootses are invariably drawing the battle lines.

“When I first came into Harbour, Ethan said ‘if anyone gives you s**t, give them a whack – don’t take any backward steps.’ He was the first one to give me s**t. So me and him ended up having a little go. Maybe two weeks after that we had another go because I messed up a lineout on a walkthrough day and he slapped me, I went back at him, and they just let it happen.

“Even last year we had a few goes in training. Rob Baxter’s pretty funny, he just lets it happen, stops everyone from stopping it. We are brothers at the end of the day. We are throwing punches then laughing at each other two seconds later.”

Roots carries the wounds of life in the trenches as a tighthead prop. He brandishes a finger which was dislocated in a game last season. Against fervent medical advice from the sideline, he tried to replace the digit himself and tore its ligaments. It now bends grotesquely sideways like a piece of rubber.

The boys were calling me Vincent, after Van Gogh, for the first two weeks. They were saying, ‘you need to start painting, bro – you’re going to be worth millions once you’re dead.’

Then there was the left ear, literally, hanging off his head after an overzealous tackle. Roots felt the pain, reached up to where the ear should be and found a hole instead. The green faces and wide eyes all around him offered little reassurance. In these moments, rugby players can typically be relied upon for some fine gallows humour.

“The boys were calling me Vincent, after Van Gogh, for the first two weeks,” Roots says. “They were saying, ‘you need to start painting, bro – you’re going to be worth millions once you’re dead.’

“I went to A&E and I think I had about 36 stitches. They had to reattach my cartilage internally, stitch it down, then stitch it back over the top. It was cauliflowered as well so it had heaps of pressure in it. I actually tore it again last weekend, so that added another eight stitches onto the tally. I had headgear, Vaseline and somehow managed to do it again. Hopefully Gilbert will come on board with a headgear sponsorship now. I needed to listen more in school, man. I only learned to play the game one way and that’s flat-out.”

This is Roots’ second season with the Chiefs. How he has seized his opportunity to step up to the Prem. Baxter has a near-unparalleled capacity to polish rough diamonds and sculpt teams without breaking the bank.

“I’m a prime example of that,” Roots says. “Rob sees characteristics in people beyond just the rugby; people who are hard-working, gritty, have those ethics. He believes this group can teach you how to play rugby, but he is very good at picking the characters. We have good relationships with Nat One and Champ players. That is Rob’s superpower.”

Baxter has a spring in his step this year. The horrors of their worst-ever Prem campaign have driven the Chiefs through a brutal pre-season and a transformed set of results. Roots has played 22 times and earned cult-hero status. His numbers on the carry and in the tackle indicate a prop with a serious engine. Despite narrow losses to Northampton and Gloucester, Exeter are firmly in the Prem play-off mix and go to Ulster on Saturday one match from the EPRC Challenge Cup final.

“Boys played a lot of games last season who had never played Prem before. We’re seeing an accumulation of boys being set on not letting last season happen again, not letting our club badge get dragged through the mud. You could feel it on day one of pre-season, there was a difference, an edge, and the boys were willing to work tenfold harder than my first pre-season here.

“It was tough, bro. Every morning we started on the bike and finished every afternoon with top-up running. We are so fit now and our ability to just get on with things has become our super-strength. Our group is built on the integrity of working hard and putting your body on the line for the guy next to you. We don’t want to just shy away and get pushed to the back of the room, we want these big games. That’s what really excites me.”

To be in this environment where it’s so accepting for me to be a loud f***wit, I can say s**t nobody thinks I should say, has really allowed me to be more comfortable in my own skin.

Baxter adopted Bruce Springsteen’s Promised Land as the squad’s anthem for the year. Some players identified with the earthy 70s lyrics and the working man’s quest for the American dream. Roots, initially – and perhaps predictably – did not.

“I’m not afraid to take the piss a bit. I was playing it all the time on the boom box as a piss-take. Now I love it. So we get a bit of Springsteen on, that normally gets Rob on his feet. I wheel the boom box into the coaches’ room and let it blast until he stands up, then I laugh and walk off with it.

“I try to bring the energy because I actually love this place, there are not too many days I don’t show up with a smile on my face. Energy is the least I can give to the environment after they’ve been so welcoming.

“Whether I’m playing or not, this team is truly important to me. In very few jobs, for example if I was in an office, would I get to be myself. To be in this environment where it’s so accepting for me to be a loud f***wit, I can say s**t nobody thinks I should say, has really allowed me to be more comfortable in my own skin and that’s translating to my rugby as well.”

Despite the self-deprecation, rugby is infinitely richer for Jimmy Roots; original, effervescent and unashamedly authentic.