Nathan Michelow: 'It's one that we all want to smash them in really'

The lobby of the England team hotel in Cape Town was as busy as a railway station concourse when RugbyPass dropped by in midweek to shoot the breeze with Nathan Michelow, the No8 who has brewed up a storm with his performances at the World Rugby U20 Championship.

Head coach Mark Mapletoft was seated at a high table with a fellow staff member, sifting through the fallout from the previous night’s 86th minute, 17-12 win over South Africa in the wind, rain and mud of the puddled Athlone.

RFU chief Conor O’Shea was sat in the lower down seats, his headset on and working through a series of scheduled online calls to keep on top of his bulging in-tray.

Meantime, there were a plethora of players scattered about the place, cracking a joke or two during a break from the recovery programme which clicked into gear immediately following their clinching of top spot in Pool C.

Much has been made about brotherhood nurtured amongst Mapletoft’s class of 2024, a camaraderie showcased in the Embedded documentary series currently showing on RugbyPass TV, but Sunday’s semi-final is a litmus test for this strong bond.

Whereas England had to exhaustingly go to the well to finally clinch their W over the Junior Boks, Ireland, their last four opponents at the DHL Stadium, had gotten the day off as their pool decider versus Australia was cancelled due to the Athlone pitch being deemed unplayable earlier in the day.

It means that the Irish will have had a 10-day lay-off in between games at the Championship compared to England having just a five-day turnaround to prepare for the semi-final against an opposition they have drawn against in their last two meetings, the most recent coming 18 weeks ago in a 32-all Six Nations thriller at The Rec.

Getting rested and recharged ASAP was the hurdle confronting Michelow and he was optimistic the challenge would be overcome. “Five-day turnarounds are tough,” he told RugbyPass, taking up a stool near the window looking out onto the Victoria Junction road.

“The S&C, physios, everyone here, they are absolutely brilliant with us keeping us on top of ourselves. It’s the nature of the competition, you have got to be prepared to not feel 100 per cent all the time when you play.

“That is something that really highlights our character, that boys will jump at the chance to do 80, 80 if they can – or whatever they can – to contribute to the team. It’s good. The brotherhood is everything. First thing we spoke about after the game was how important it is now what our next steps are, how we recover, and the boys have really taken that well.

“A lot of boys have touched on how the brotherhood is not a buzzword for us, it genuinely is something that we live and breathe in camp. That’s all we really play for. We don’t really chase an outcome, we are just chasing how tight we can be and how well we can perform for each other as opposed to ‘we need to win this’. Everything is tailored towards doing it for each other.”

Beating the Junior Boks with a try six minutes into added time was helping tired bodies to re-energize more than they would if the match had been drawn 12-all. “Those kind of experiences as a group are things that make you so much tighter and the first thing that I personally wanted to do was just tell the boys, ‘Thank you for being there with me’.

“It’s a good feeling when you are in a game like that. It’s awful conditions, a big Saffer team, and you do 12-all for however long, but there are 14 other boys on the pitch, eight on the bench all there with you trying to push you along and take you with them. Yeah, it’s a great feeling and I just want to thank them for what they did. That’s why at the end it’s all hugs really. Everyone enjoyed that.”

When it comes to who has done what for England, Michelow is a standout with 42 carries and 35 tackles in his outings versus South Africa and Argentina. There were also three turnovers wins the last night. It’s an overall relentless work rate he credits his upbringing for.

“I guess that is a credit to where I grew up from and where I started my rugby, especially at Saracens. Work rate is everything so for me, it is how much can I contribute to the team.  If it means those are the stats and they are good contributions, then I am happy… I want to do as much as I can for the team and get through as much work for them really.”

It was at the semi-final stage last year when Michelow and co came unstuck against eventual champions France, losing the thread after a bright start had them dreaming of making the final. A year on, can they now go one round better and make the July 19 final versus the French or New Zealand?

“It’s tricky. Obviously, it’s a different group (of players). With us, the main thing, going back to it again, is just how tight we are. There is definitely a belief in this group that we can be world champions and with that comes a lot of expectation between each other about what we expect from ourselves and how we expect to be as a team. That is something that never really gets spoken too much but it’s there. Just belief in how tight we are.

“Games like that (against Ireland in the Six Nations) are an emotional roller coaster. It was a great game for us, couldn’t quite finish it. I think there is a little bit left in us that wants to go and beat them now and you can tell that is starting to build to Sunday’s game. Playing Ireland is always a big game for England. After the Six Nations one, this is definitely going to be a personal game for a lot of boys, myself included, and one that we all want to smash them in really.”

A lovely touch in the organised way the RFU publishes the England U20 team list is that it includes each player’s grassroots club of origin, a nod to the past that Michelow appreciates. “Brentwood was the first real rugby club that went to,” he explained, his face lighting up.

“It was a lovely club. They were really nice, really helped me fall in love with the game. As you slowly work through the counties and into Saracens, these attributes of work rate, how to be disciplined and whatnot are all put at the forefront before rugby.

“That is something I really took on and saw something that is almost more important than rugby, how you are mentally, and that is something I wanted to mould myself around and I’d like to think I’m making good steps. There is still more to get out of myself but as it goes it has built quite nicely.”

Michelow has good genes when it comes to sports. Mum Amanda Brown was on the pro tennis circuit in the early 1980s, uncle Kenny was a West Ham United footballer around the same time, while famed granddad Ken won the 1964 FA Cup for the Hammers with Bobby Moore and Geoff Hurst. It was partly why the back-rower was a late-comer to rugby.

“Year eight so I would have been 12 or 13. I wanted to be a football player. My granddad used to play football for West Ham, my uncle as well. I convinced myself I could be a football player, but I wasn’t very good.

“I started at my local club in Basildon at centre-mid and then went to goalkeeper. Clearly, skills weren’t as good as I thought they were. And then I had a little dabble in tennis but not a chance I was going to get into that programme.”

It was age 15 when Michelow became attached to Saracens, the likes of Juan Figallo taking him under his wing, and a message from back then still resonates. “Saracens is notoriously known for how much it has achieved. The best thing that highlighted that to me was when I was 15; they sat us down and just told us that the reason they achieved it was stuff not to do with rugby.

“That surprised me, but it is very similar to what I was saying earlier about how your mindset needs to be properly switched on. My year, we had a tough year. We had covid where we had pretty much a whole season scrapped. You were on your own to go and train and you didn’t really have help or guidance around you.

“But I did what I could, got as fit as possible in the few months we had off, came back in, and then it just took off from there really and they have been brilliant. What I really like is they always want more of you. That kind of never settling for where you are at is something that has definitely motivated me.

“My parents really share that similar mindset about never being content with where you are at, always pushing further. They were also the drivers, especially when I was younger, and when times get tough and I am struggling or things get in my way, I fall back on them and get back on track. So I would say the influence of the coaches around Saracens and my parents were the big things when I was younger.”

His apprenticeship has been rapid, National League 2 East action for Old Albanians in 2022/23 followed by a clatter of 2023/24 Championship appearances for Ampthill which sandwiched his Saracens first-team breakthrough, two Gallagher Premiership runs that included a May 2023 start away to Bath.

“It would have been National 2 when I realised men’s rugby is a completely different ball game. I can’t remember who we were playing but I got absolutely lined up and then they dropped a shoulder on me. It was a little bit dirty and I was like, ‘Right, this is proper men’s rugby, this is what men’s rugby is going to be. You have got to toughen up a bit’.

“That was probably a turning point, realising that it’s not a pretty game all the time. You have got to have a bit of bite about you,” he explained, going on to big-up his more recent level two exposure. “The Champ is the best place to find a lot out about yourself.

“There are really gnarly and nasty teams that you have to come across, and then you have teams like Ealing… For me it’s brilliant as a young player having that kind of game where you are playing games where not everything goes your way, you don’t have the best game, you have to learn from it, you have to adapt to it and towards the back-end I started to get into the swing of it and it really moulded me into proper men’s rugby.

“The Championship is brilliant and it is a proper test, especially for us young boys to go in and try and make a name for yourself in a tough competition.”

There has been no indication yet of any loan plan for him next season. “We’re integrated with the first-team squad, it’s nice to be in that squad and to start properly competing with back row they have got around them,” he said.

“I have just got my own flat now with Louie Johnson, who has just signed at Saracens (from Newcastle). That has been a stressful couple of months moving into that, but we are all settled in now in St Albans and loving it.

“It will be straight back to Saracens after the U20s. I get a few weeks of rest and downtime and then into pre-season. We haven’t really spoken too much; the emphasis has been about this competition and finishing my season well.

“I have full trust in the coaches, I know they will do whatever is best for me and anything that comes my way I will throw myself into it.”

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