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Turnover king Will Evans one of six Harlequins players to re-sign

By Ian Cameron
(Photo by Steve Bardens/Getty Images for Harlequins)

Flanker Will Evans has become the latest player to re-sign at Gallagher Premiership champions Harlequins.

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He is the sixth player to re-sign in the last week, hot on the heels of Oscar Beard, Alex Dombrandt, Luke Northmore, Sam Riley, and Will Edwards.

The 24-year-old, who signed who moved to Harlequins from Leicester Tigers in 2020, has been a standout performer as one of the side’s best groundhogs. Evans finished his first season with 29 turnovers, 12 more than any other player, despite suffering a season-ending injury in Round 17 of that 2020/21.

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“I’m really excited to re-sign,£ said Evans. “I’ve been in a good few rugby environments before and this is by far the best one. So, in the end it was a fairly easy decision to make.

“I missed the back end of last season with injuries but I’m really excited to get back out there. I’ve really enjoyed watching the lads throw it around and do exactly what we did last year. Hopefully we’ll be back in the hunt for more silverware come May.

“I’ve been in the stands for every home game at The Stoop to far this season and it’s been absolutely packed out. The noise has been incredible.

“It’s well known and well reported in the media how exciting this team is to watch, and I want to continue to be a part of that.”

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Scrum Coach Adam Jones said: “Will is a great character to have at the Club and we’re pleased he’s re-signed here with us. He’s obviously working hard to get back to fitness after a tough injury last season, but he was in incredible form before that and I have no doubt, given the character he is, he’s going to come back and pick up where he left off.

“There are very few players in the Premiership that can do what he can at the breakdown and we’re lucky to have him recommit with the team. We’re looking forward to seeing him back out there.”

A standout performer for England U20s at age grade level, Evans was named in the 2016 U20 World Championship Dream Team before going on to be named in Eddie Jones’ senior England EPS squad later that year aged just 19.

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Flankly 7 hours ago
The AI advantage: How the next two Rugby World Cups will be won

If rugby wants to remain interesting in the AI era then it will need to work on changing the rules. AI will reduce the tactical advantage of smart game plans, will neutralize primary attacking weapons, and will move rugby from a being a game of inches to a game of millimetres. It will be about sheer athleticism and technique,about avoiding mistakes, and about referees. Many fans will find that boring. The answer is to add creative degrees of freedom to the game. The 50-22 is an example. But we can have fun inventing others, like the right to add more players for X minutes per game, or the equivalent of the 2-point conversion in American football, the ability to call a 12-player scrum, etc. Not saying these are great ideas, but making the point that the more of these alternatives you allow, the less AI will be able to lock down high-probability strategies. This is not because AI does not have the compute power, but because it has more choices and has less data, or less-specific data. That will take time and debate, but big, positive and immediate impact could be in the area of ref/TMO assistance. The technology is easily good enough today to detect forward passes, not-straight lineouts, offside at breakdown/scrum/lineout, obstruction, early/late tackles, and a lot of other things. WR should be ultra aggressive in doing this, as it will really help in an area in which the game is really struggling. In the long run there needs to be substantial creativity applied to the rules. Without that AI (along with all of the pro innovations) will turn rugby into a bash fest.

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