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Hype around England's fullback prospect enters overdrive after Barrett comparisons
By Online Editors
The stock in Saracens' 22-year-old fullback Max Malins is heating up after boss Mark McCall said his performance against Bristol reminded him of a young Beauden Barrett.
The stand-in 15 clocked up nearly 100 running metres whilst scoring a second-half double against Bristol on Saturday to earn comparisons to the All Black superstar from his boss.
“He reminds me a little bit of a young Beauden Barrett who wanted to be a fly-half but played 15 in his early years for the Hurricanes and the All Blacks,” McCall said.
Malins, who has only eight starts for Saracens since his debut in 2017, looked every bit a star surrounded by seasoned internationals in Owen Farrell, Mako Vunipola, Billy Vunipola, Sean Maitland, and Maro Itoje.
Pundits on Twitter immediately dialed up the hype on his prospects of becoming England's next star, with one Saracens' fan calling for the fullback to be offered a 'lifetime contract' at the club.
With reports this week that Wales' fullback Liam Williams will take up an offer to join Scarlets, the door at Saracens for Malins to earn more game time is open.
However, Saracens already have England's current fullback Elliot Daly on the books, who transferred this year from Wasps, and club legend and former England international Andy Goode.
If Malins has to sit awhile longer to become a regular starter, he is in good company to learn a few tricks of the trade.
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Latest Comments
You’ve got to look forward to next weekend more than anything too.
They really use this sorta system? Much smaller pool of bonus points available, that would mean they have far less impact. Interestingly you must be withen winning range/chance in France’s Top 14 league, rather that just draw territory, so 6 points instead of 7. Fairly arbitrary and pointless (something the NRL would do to try and look cool), but kinda cool.
I said it Nick’s and other articles, I’m not sure about the fixed nature of matchups in these opening rounds. For instance, I would be interested in seeing an improved ranking/prediction/reflection ladder to what we had last year, were some author here game so rejigged list of teams purely based of ‘who had played who’ so far in the competition. It was designed to analyze the ladder and better predict what the real order would be after the full round robin had completed. It needed some improvement, like factoring in historical data as well, as it was a bit skiwif, but it is the sort of thing that would give a better depiction of what sort of contests weve had so far, because just using my intuition, the matchups have been very ‘level appropriate’ so far, and were jet to get the other end of the spectrum, season ranked bottom sides v top sides etc.
Go to commentsAs a former rugby player, I spent 20 years as a specialist tackling coach in the AFL, SANFL, and Southern Football League. During this time, I was fortunate to be part of teams winning seven premierships. I believe there is a valuable place for cross-code coaching in these sports. I made many lifelong friends and enjoyed sharing knowledge and skills from different sporting backgrounds, which is encouraged at many elite levels.
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