Bounding around a wet and wintry Rec for England A, Emmanuel Iyogun emptied the tank. He hit anything that moved in a black shirt for 68 minutes on the field, before departing. In the end, Mark Mapletoft’s young team succumbed to a 31-14 loss against a fully-loaded New Zealand A side.
The grandeur of that Georgian setting was certainly a departure from his infancy in sun-drenched Madrid, where his parents, Florence and Frank, who had emigrated from Nigeria for work, resided. They might have expected their bonny baby’s sporting dreams to centre around playing at The Bernabeu for Los Blancos. Instead, fate had it that he would be spirited to the hard-bitten Govan area of Glasgow, before moving to London and finally settling in Basildon, Essex.
Any aspirations of becoming the next free-scoring Jay-Jay Okocha were dented by his prodigious size. More often than not he was positioned in central defence, where he was given one job. Stop the centre forward at all costs. This was before an odd-shaped ball caught his attention at 14.
Speaking to Iyogun in England camp a decade on, with a Red Rose on his chest, it’s hard not to marvel at his circuitous route to the cusp of full international honours. Looking back, he says, “I was a bit of nomad growing up. I was born in a place called Mostales, just outside Madrid.” So does he still speak Spanish? ‘Un poquito’. I still go back now and visit my cousins, who teach me bits and bobs.”
The problem with his country-hopping childhood was that his diction and command of the King’s English needed work to cope in an unforgiving school playground. “I had to have speech therapy lessons because my parents were teaching me English in a Spanish accent and in Glasgow, nobody could understood me,” he chuckles. “Hopefully I speak a bit more clearly now.”
Like so many plus-sized youngsters, the acceptance of all shapes and sizes within the rugby community chimed with his effervescent personality and when his head of PE at Woodlands school, Andy Badger, spotted him, he was corralled into playing at Basildon RFC to pick up the vagaries of a game that was a mystery to his parents. “If you grow up in a Nigerian household, there is a bit of a misunderstanding of what rugby really is. To outsiders, it looks like controlled violence and is seen as barbaric. My parents weren’t keen at the start but I was a bit of an unruly kid, so it kept me in order doing my work in school and kept me busy on the weekends because I was burning energy. I was just one of those kids who didn’t get away with anything at school. It was always me. I was impossible to miss!”
If you didn’t love rugby, you’d tap out after a rainy Tuesday scrummaging session, but my parents always taught me nothing in life comes easy. As long as you work at it, you’ll be successful. I’ve taken that mindset and run with it.
Indeed, standing at 6ft 3ins and weighing in at 121.5kgs (19st 2lbs in old money), Iyogun, a former ball-carrying No 8, accepts he’s been gifted with the West African super-size gene, alongside fellow England players of Nigerian heritage, Maro Itoje and Beno Obano. With MMA superstar Francis Ngannou Cameroonian and the Congolese Kpoku brothers Joel and Junior, the France-based former England U20s locks, does he feel he has an advantage? “Yes, I guess we are very blessed genetically but there’s a lot of hard work that goes in as well. I’m sure Maro works incredibly hard to be where he is today.”
Turning 25 later this month, Iyogun says the only way you can reach a sporting pinnacle is by taking an almost obsessive interest in your chosen sport. “If you didn’t love it, you’d tap out after a rainy Tuesday scrummaging session, but my parents always taught me nothing in life comes easy. As long as you work at it, you’ll be successful. I’ve taken that mindset and run with it. At 17 or 18, all I wanted to do was to play sport, but I don’t think I really understood what professional sport entailed – I didn’t understand the opportunity that lay in front of me. I just enjoyed playing it on the weekend. That organic progression worked for me. I think if I’d framed it as, ‘this has to work out’, it may have just put too much pressure on me.”
After applying himself, he was fast-tracked into the Saints senior squad, yet Iyogun says he wouldn’t be sitting where he is today were it not for the steadfast support of his parents. “From a values and logistics point of view, they were immense. I know you hear it all the time, but it was the hours driving me to training. The emotional help when things weren’t going my way. They would say, ‘you can’t control the coach’s selection, all you can do is be better than the person that’s been selected’, so I doubled down.”
With a Premiership winners medal sitting proudly at home and mixing on a daily basis with a quartet of British & Irish Lions, Iyogun doesn’t regret that he has ended up at Franklin’s Gardens. Indeed, a series of re-signings is proof that Phil Dowson has built on the foundations laid by Chris Boyd to cultivate a compelling culture at the club. “We have a special sauce at Saints. The connection we have can’t be faked. We spend so much time together that we joke we almost have no other friends. Every day it’s, ‘who wants a coffee, who wants to go for brekkie?’ We’re a proper band of brothers. When your backs are against the wall, you know they’ll do anything for you. That bond keeps us tight but what’s special about this squad is we know we need to be accountable and receptive to criticism.”
To my mind, God is never going to put me in a position I’m not ready for. It’s simply an opportunity to improve so that when I get to where I want to, I’m comfortable and excelling, rather than just surviving.
Unbeaten, and sitting atop the Gallagher Prem table, Northampton Saints are well-placed to kick on, even with a steady turnover of players, but Iyogun thinks they have recruited shrewdly and kept that loyal core. JJ van der Mescht, in particular, has made a sizeable impression on the pack. “What is it they say, ‘you can’t coach someone to be 150kgs, you’re either built like that or not’. JJ is a freak of a man and the amazing thing is how quick he is for his weight. He moves so well and will be a huge player for us. On the flipside, we have someone like Dingers (Fraser Dingwall), who is one of those players who can go unnoticed, but is the spine of our team. He works so hard and is a proper captain. No-one has a bad word to say about him.”
Speaking to Iyogun, his maturity and pragmatism belies his modest years and he is already au fait with the ups and downs of life as a professional rugby player. “Sure, I’ve had injuries at unfortunate times, but this is where I use my faith. To my mind, God is never going to put me in a position I’m not ready for. It’s simply an opportunity to improve so that when I get to where I want to, I’m comfortable and excelling, rather than just surviving.”
When it comes to his S&C, Iyogun takes his gym work and nutrition seriously and he recently reached out to a World Cup-winning loosehead for tips on one-percenters to improve. “I DM’d Ox (Nche), and we had an interesting conversation in London before the Japan game. It’s the first time we’ve met and I really appreciate him giving up time for me during Test week. We talked about how strong you need to be, what weight you need to be. He basically said, ‘it’s what works for you’. The cornerstones are being powerful, being explosive and being able to get around the park but above all it’s the set-piece and you can build the rest of your game around that.”
While props are generally considered to mature much later than outside backs, in the England A camp, Iyogun says he can already see youngsters bursting through. “I feel old now. You have Asher (Opoku-Fordjour) coming through, who can play on both sides. Afa (Fasogbon) is impressing at tighthead, and Billy Sela is only 20 but a great prospect. As far as my ceiling, hopefully the sky’s the limit, but it’s about incremental improvements from season to season. Hopefully by World Cup year in 2027, I will be approaching the complete game.”
I just want to improve and make my game so robust I become impossible not to pick.
While there is always an intense battle for the No 1 shirt, with form and injury, England need depth and it allowed Joe Marler (95 caps), Mako Vunipola (79 caps) and Ellis Genge (73 caps and counting) to carve out impressive Test careers within a few years of one another. Iyogun declares a desire to be a part of the next wave, fronted by 23-year-old Fin Baxter. “I absolutely want to be part of the next generation of England loosehead props; however, I don’t want to peg myself next to rivals and say, ‘I’m better than him at this part of the game, or he’s better than me at this part,’ because I feel you’re on a slippery slope doing that. I just want to improve and make my game so robust I become impossible not to pick. If you can stand the test of time, you can put yourself in the same bracket as Mako and Joe, who did it for so long at the top level.”
Away from rugby, Iyogun, a thoughtful and engaged interviewee, has kept the grey matter ticking over. His Law and Criminology degree at the nearby Northampton University is on hold, while he prioritises his rugby, but he expects to return to it in good time. “I am incredibly passionate about the law and crime. I love watching crime dramas, documentaries and even police dashcam shows to wind down after training. I’m a bit weird, I guess. Another thing I’m doing is a mechanics course and I’m part of the RPA (Rugby Players Association) board. I’m a big believer in doing stuff that’s as wide and varied as possible. If I like something, I’ll pursue it and if I don’t, at least I’ll have learnt something along the way.”
For now, he’ll have to put all his energies into bouncing back with England A as they travel to the land of his birth to play an up and coming Spain side in Valladolid, after also playing against Australia A 12 months ago. “It’s been fantastic being with the boys over the last week or so. In camp, you’re doing everything 10 per cent quicker. You have to think quicker. You have to be stronger. You’re playing with people at the very top of their game, so it’s been an eye-opener. Let’s see where it takes me.”
He us only happy until he meets the Springboks pack,then he will cry