Harlequins lock heading to the Championship to kick-start career

Harlequins lock John Okafor is set to join Yorkshire Carnegie for the 2018/19 season, RugbyPass understands.

A late sporting convert from basketball, the 19-year-old second-row plans to combine his playing career at Yorkshire Carnegie with studying at Leeds Beckett University, a BUCS Super Rugby member.

There was plenty of interest from Aviva Premiership clubs, too, with three sides, including Bath, trying to snap him up next season, but the opportunity to combine his playing career with his studies and a chance for regular playing time was too much for Okafor to pass up.

Okafor was a prominent member of the title-winning Harlequins U18 side in the 2016/17 season, alongside Marcus Smith, but will leave the club’s senior academy after just a solitary season involved.

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He joins locks Charlie Matthews and Sam Twomey in leaving the Stoop this summer, with Alex Dombrandt arriving from Cardiff Met and the pair of Hugh Tizard and George Hammond earning professional contracts after leaving the junior academy.

The basketball-to-rugby pathway is a rarely trod but potentially very beneficial route into the game and if Okafor can push his claim for more playing time at Headingley, it could encourage more players to make the same transition.

He is an athletically-gifted lock, the likes of which are prized highly in the modern game, and should benefit from working with incoming Yorkshire director of rugby Chris Stirling, who has helped oversee the rises of Michael Fatialofa and Vaea Fifita in his role as high performance manager at the Hurricanes, as well as the highly promising Isaia Walker-Leawere.