LONG READ James Pater: 'Teams want to play England - we should take respect and confidence from that'

James Pater was still at school when he made his Gallagher Prem debut. The venue was a sold-out Kingsholm. Pater was still five weeks from turning 18. The tall, willowy playmaker had yet to partake in a senior game at any level, never mind turn out in the country’s elite division. Yet status and experience matter little to Phil Dowson and Sam Vesty, the coaching brains trust who have just taken Northampton Saints to a second Prem crown in three years. To them, Pater was ready.

Watch Super Rugby LIVE on RugbyPass TV

Tune in to every Super Rugby Pacific 2026 match live and on-demand on RugbyPass TV and via the RugbyPass app.

Watch Live

Streaming available in the USA only.

“It was in the middle of my A-levels, during half-term,” the teenager says. “We were training Tuesday and Thursday, and found out on the Thursday I was on the bench. It all happened so quickly it didn’t even register. I didn’t have time to overthink it.

“We’d just become academy league winners and the calls were exactly the same, the system was the same so it was pretty easy coming into that environment and performing.

“It was Gloucester’s last home game of the season and they had a good side out trying to make top four. Ollie Sleightholme presented me with my shirt. The whole backline told me ‘you’re here for a reason, back yourself and boys will join you’. That’s a massive thing Sam Vesty drives, bringing boys with you, bringing people on the same page as you. They want you to back yourself and everyone will react off it. There is no animosity, no-one is preying on your downfall.

“It wasn’t until a week afterwards it sunk in that was my first ever men’s game of rugby coming straight from school.”

Thirteen months on from his Prem bow, Pater has made a further eight Northampton appearances and played every minute of England’s Under-20 Six Nations campaign. He will start Saturday’s World Rugby U20 Championship opener against Ireland as the tournament begins in Georgia.

Pater has a vast skillset, compelling enough for Dowson and Vesty to trust him so young. He’s quick across the ground, distributes and kicks beautifully, and at 6ft 3ins, is a weapon in the air. Dowson says Pater “always looks like he has time on the ball… he finds gaps you don’t think are there”. Much like Saints’ departing skipper George Furbank, he can play fly-half as well as full-back, the comparison aided further by their roots in the same Cambridgeshire town of Huntingdon.

Pater was a relative latecomer to rugby, only taking up the sport as he began secondary school. He was passed over for higher honours for much of his teens, hampered by the dreaded tag of ‘too small’. His nickname at Saints is ‘The Slim Reaper’, a nod to that slender torso.

When lads are getting in academies at 14 or 15, it’s always about size. I felt like I was never going to get picked.

Instead of worrying about his modest poundage, Pater attacked the technical parts of the game and waited for a growth spurt. That would take him beyond the bigger, heftier athletes picked ahead of him, with inferior ability, but whose bulk caught the hungry eyes of Prem scouts.

“I was always fast growing up so used that as a super-strength when I first started playing. A couple of years later, everyone had caught up with me. I wasn’t that tall, wasn’t that fast. I played fly-half at school so levelled up my skills, kicking, decision-making while other lads were bigger and stronger.

“When lads are getting in academies at 14 or 15, it’s always about size. I felt like I was never going to get picked. Boys at my school got picked because they were big and quick, but never really developed from then and when it gets to U17 and U18 you really see skill development. Especially at Saints, we weren’t the biggest side but skill-wise we were being drilled in the Northampton way, our hands were the reason we won the academy league. Coming up against a Bath pack in the final who were a lot bigger and stronger and had set-piece dominance, we outplayed them through phases.

“When you’re 15 or 16 size does make a massive difference but as soon as you get to U18, boys can make tackles, the size levels out. Saints are not picking boys based on gym stats or how much you weigh – they are watching you play.”

Pater has never been afraid to try things on a rugby pitch nor been crestfallen when they don’t go to plan. He spent two formative hours with Jonny Wilkinson when local club, Shelford, won a competition for a kicking clinic with the great man. For some of the young forwards, this was a bit of a laugh. Pater was only 16 but hoovered up every nugget of Wilkinson wisdom.

“He was speaking to all of us equally, all on mindset, and I took those things quite personally and tried to carry them through. That was before I’d played any academy rugby. His thing was, can you control your mistakes? Move onto the next thing. Don’t dwell on things that don’t matter. How can you get better every single day?

“Obviously I don’t like making mistakes but I don’t like dwelling on them. At Saints, we play too quick to dwell on mistakes. I take that into everyday life. If something doesn’t go my way, it doesn’t help to sulk or waste time thinking about it.

“That’s also something I see with Sam Vesty, he’s always onto the future. It’s never what you’ve done, it’s always who’s the best now and the most important session or game is the next one. You can have all the credit of being an England player or a Lion, but people coming in with no record knowing the next session is the most important one, there’s no hierarchy with age, it’s never holding too much significance on the past, it’s always about what you can do.”

James O’Connor made his professional debut in 2008 – I was born in 2007. I researched him before the game.

This is no empty rhetoric. Edo Todaro, the exhilarating young Italian, was playing U20 rugby last year but began the season as one of the Prem’s stand-out players. Todaro made his senior Test debut before a serious knee injury cut him down. Twenty-one-year-old Archie McParland started the league final at scrum-half and has been touted for an England cap. Toby Thame, one year older, made 18 outings at centre this term. George Hendy is only 23 but has been one of the finest backs in England over the past two years. And we haven’t mentioned a certain Henry Pollock. Northampton did not get the chequebook out to keep Furbank knowing the brilliance of Hendy and the emergence of Pater would soften the captain’s departure for Harlequins.

Pater missed the raucous, beer-soaked title celebrations because England flew to Georgia on the day Northampton clinched the league. But there have been milestone days for him to savour. A first Prem start against Newcastle. Inclusion in Champions Cup squads. And an outing at fly-half opposite the iconic James O’Connor. Pater had a fine game and helped Saints beat their old rivals in the Prem Cup affair.

“James O’Connor made his professional debut in 2008 – I was born in 2007,” Pater says. “I researched him before the game, saw he had something like 60 Australian caps, and I was just excited to play against him. I didn’t think about the match-up between me and him, more the derby, what it means to play for Saints against Leicester. I’d never lost to them in the academy, I sadly lost to them away in the Prem Cup this year, but at home we wanted to do a job on them, especially in our own back garden. We were buzzing because they sent a serious side down and that was our team talk before the game.

“I definitely thought after the game, Jesus, that’s James O’Connor, I’ve watched his highlights, my game and his game are pretty similar. Mountains of respect for him. But I was glad to win that day.”

Though at ease in the 10 shirt or on the wing, Pater is happiest at full-back where he has more time to see the game, more space to bring his running threat to bear and more freedom to roam where he might make an impact. Versatility is an increasingly prized trait by elite coaches.

Pater is still a pup. He will turn 19 on 2^nd July, the same day England play USA in their second World Championship fixture. He reflects on the Six Nations with some disappointment. The loss to Ireland dented English hopes of winning back the trophy, though they came within 10 minutes of denying France a Grand Slam on the final day in La Rochelle. The transient nature of U20s rugby makes fostering unity, quickly a precious goal.

“There’s a massive point about connections,” Pater says. “How much of a team can we be? We talk about a brotherhood. We’ve spoken about out-teaming teams. We’ve seen videos of other teams talking about the Six Nations where they’ve said their best win was against England. Teams want to play us. We should take respect and get confidence from that.

“We’ve all come from different clubs, so how quickly can we bond and become a team who can actually win this competition. A massive theme has been growing the rose. We grew the rose in the Six Nations and we are willing to fight for each other during this World Championship.”