1
Ojo asks one thing of England after Feyi-Waboso’s call-up
By Chris Jones
Former England wing Topsy Ojo is calling on head coach Steve Borthwick to give Immanuel Feyi-Waboso a chance to showcase his raw talent in the Guinness Six Nations championship to ensure he can be a force at the 2027 Rugby World Cup in Australia.
ADVERTISEMENT
Uncapped Feyi-Waboso, who is also qualified for Wales, has been drafted into Borthwick’s Six Nations squad after a series of sensational performances for Exeter Chiefs, but there will be concerns the wing could suffer the same fate as Adam Radwan, the Newcastle Falcons speedster, who was picked and then quickly discarded by Eddie Jones in favour of more established options.
Ojo, who is now a leading television pundit, accepts that Feyi-Waboso will need to prove himself in England’s training camp in the build-up to the Six Nations opener with Italy on February 3, but said: “If Feyi-Waboso is going to be there in Australia in 2027 then his journey is starting now and it is a case of what do we need to see and how do we expose him. All you want is for him to be given a fair opportunity to showcase what when he can do and then it is a case of how he matures and keeps adding to his game.
“The first thing will be to see what he looks like in an England camp, being coached by the England coaches working with other players from different clubs. Then it is about how Steve (Borthwick) exposes Feyi-Waboso to Test rugby. He has played just 15 senior games and shown that he is a player with potential who we can work with and if he is ready to be selected then you have to give him the opportunity to learn, to develop and fail I guess, but also back him.
“It may be a case then of we have had a look at you in camp and don’t feel you are quite ready and so go back to Exeter and work on these things and get yourself ready for the summer tour. That may be his development. The priority is to get a team to win against Italy in Rome and long term there will be a vision and the aim will be to get the majority of these guys ready for the next Rugby World Cup.”
Radwan is not of international standard, he wasn’t hard done by.
Watch a Falcons game in full and it’s easy to see
That’s a load or rubbish. Most players aren’t ‘international standard’ (which means nothing by the way) when they first start out. There’s nearly always a bedding in period. Players like Radwan haven’t been given that chance. So we will never know what he could have been as an international wing.
There is a really weird culture of overhyping exciting players and then claiming that any failure to perform is a product of them not being coddled enough.
We see this in the case of Radwan, but also in the protection demanded for Marcus Smith in comparison with players like Steward and JVP.