LONG READ Do we need to cut Henry Pollock some slack?

Rugby needs to take a hard look at itself. Why? Well, consider its attitude to Henry Pollock. The peroxide-blond England backrow has had a trajectory matched by few contemporaries and with it has come adulation and ‘social media fame’, but such is sport’s fickle nature, that opprobrium has duly followed.

Indeed, the further Pollock has soared, like Icarus, towards the heat of rugby’s traditional heartlands, with perceived his cock-of-the-walk hubris, the more he has enraged the game’s antediluvian leanings, with critics intent on clipping his wings and bringing him back down to earth.

In the aftermath of a barely believable encounter with France, which was settled by Thomas Ramos’ metronomic right boot, the Pollock hate mob tooled up, pitchforks ready and spat out venom online about what they see as this overindulged, overhyped chancer. Crime No 1 was celebrating provocatively with his club colleague, Tommy Freeman, who ran under the sticks for what looked like the winning try with just over three minutes left on the clock. Catch a freezeframe of Pollock’s last nine Tests, and you’ll routinely see him launching himself on the shoulders of a try-scorer, especially at the Allianz in Twickenham. As a fleet-footed 7, who is routinely a support runner, it’s hardly sacreligious to get lost in the emotion of potentially match-winning score, especially at the riotously febrile Stade de France. After all, isn’t that what young athletes crave? That rush of adrenaline coursing through the veins and to have their competitive instincts sated, if only for a fleeting moment.

It’s not like the French crowd were innocent bystanders, either. They were whistling their dissent long before he’d even entered the field of play, as they did in Bordeaux, with his club side, Northampton, earlier this year. No-one quite knows what he has done to affront the French rugby nation (and you can add the vocal South African fan for good measure), but the assumption is it’s for one flashy celebration too many. On Saturday night, those paysans from the earthy South were telling him where he could stick his chariot. So is he supposed to turn the other cheek like a good boy? Do me a favour. It’s all part of the theatre of elite sport.

Crime No 2 occurred just minutes later, with the young Northampton Saint’s accuracy found wanting as he spilt the ball just 58 seconds before full-time. This after he had already pulled off a match-saving tackle on Antoine Dupont and expertly stolen the ball from Thibaud Flament’s mitts and peeled away to keep it alive. Granted he could have gone to ground and recycled, but he made a hash of it. Yet when reviewing the tape, Cadan Murley may also rue rashly hacking the ball onwards in chaotic scenes, before France reclaimed it and Ramos broke English hearts.

There were mistakes aplenty but the biggest kicking was reserved for Pollock, who was held, arms outstretched for a particularly brutal mauling in the digital stocks.

So was Pollock the only transgressor on a night of rare drama? Of course not. Eighty-cap Ellis Genge had been yellow-carded earlier in the game for pulling down a maul. Seventy-six-cap Elliot Daly had been beaten to the draw by the jet-heeled Louis Bielle-Biarrey down the left flank and 58-cap Luke Cowan-Dickie had been upended with the smell of the tryline in his nostrils. It was a night of imperfection, on both sides.

Lest we forget England have been handed eight yellow cards through the tournament as their discipline resembled a miscreant who had overdone the Kool-Aid. This rogue’s gallery included Maro Itoje, the England captain, yellow carded in Rome. Clearly, there were mistakes aplenty but the biggest kicking was reserved for Pollock, who was held, arms outstretched for a particularly brutal mauling in the digital stocks. He’s young. He will make mistakes. He will learn. Cut him some slack for goodness’ sake.

Pollock, who remember, only turned 21 two months ago, says he is unrepentant about his exuberant ‘pulse check’ celebrations. He says he does it not for himself, but for the greater good. To spread the gospel of the game far and wide.  When the USA, a country that exults individual brilliance, hosts the 2031 World Cup, he will be 26 and at his peak. Similar to Louis Rees-Zammit, another individual unafraid to go off-script, he hopes some showmanship will help rugby transcend its conservative, cosseted, closed-off garden. Should he instead, be congratulated rather than castigated for having the gumption to stand out?

Fans and journalists alike love to bemoan the fact rugby’s stars are muzzled by overly officious media personnel or militarily briefed to churn out bland platitudes in press conferences that force the eyelids to shutter and yet the moment they unearth a gem like Pollock, happy to show off his personality and ruffle feathers, those same nay-sayers, who rail against rugby’s straitjacket, turn into the fun police. They cut him down to size for having the temerity to indulge in, deep breath, football-like behaviour.

Pollock is far from a bad lot. He willingly gives up his time for interviews, clearly cares about his team-mates  and is said by many of those who know him as a likeable energiser and far more thoughtful than the agent provocateur he plays up to inside the four white lines of play.

Courtney Lawes, an insightful, eminently readable columnist with The Times, like a disapproving elder, said pre-game there would be no way he or his team-mates would have been caught filming a TikTok. On viewing the evidence, it seemed like a pretty harmless bit of fun with friends Freddie Steward, Tommy Freeman and Fin Smith. At 37, ‘Big Courts’ is not a TikToker, and that’s fine, but who’s to say he wouldn’t have been indulging in some digital tomfoolery had he been born 15 years later, as part of Gen-Z. He readily admitted he’d been involved in getting his teenage kicks on the mean streets of Northampton, so you’d have thought a goofy viral dance wouldn’t have upset his sensibilities. Would Pollock be considered more ‘rugby’ if he was booting the Calcutta Cup down Princes Street in the early hours with a young Scottish starlet, as John Jeffrey and Dean Richards famously did, or drinking aftershave or worse at a post-match function? Surely a two-minute video from a sober-looking group of players who have grown up as digital natives isn’t too confronting for rugby’s grandees.

The point is Pollock is far from a bad lot. He willingly gives up his time for interviews, clearly cares about his team-mates – as witnessed by him consoling George Ford who endured a difficult day against Ireland – and is said by many of those who know him as a likeable energiser and far more thoughtful than the agent provocateur he plays up to on the field. Clearly, he’s maybe too brash for some, but watch old footage and he was swan-diving after scoring outrageous tries for Stowe, in front of a smattering of supporters. He doesn’t just play to the cameras. Like a labrador puppy, he just loves his rugby.

Rugby likes to champion itself as an inclusive sport. One for all shapes and sizes, but surely this extends to personality-types. Does bashing his carefree nature out of him reflect well on our sport? This writer has his doubts.

While Pollock says the biting criticism doesn’t affect him, he is human, and he will, at some point, be minded to retreat into his shell, fall into line and conform. The upshot is rugby loses another figure who brings eyeballs to a sport fighting an ever tougher battle for shortening attention spans. No-one is saying Pollock shouldn’t pay due deference to the hard-worn traditions of a 200-year-old sport but rugby needs to look ahead and move with the times. It does itself a disservice if it plays curmudgeon every time a wunderkind with oodles of chutzpah dares to stray from the norm and don’t be surprised if the transient sports fan ventures elsewhere for its dopamine hit, bored with rugby’s mundanity.

Rugby can’t have it both ways.