The England prediction Lee Blackett has made about Alfie Barbeary

Lee Blackett has tipped Alfie Barbeary to make a breakthrough with Steve Borthwick’s England this season. Test head coach Borthwick and Richard Hill were at The Rec last Saturday to scout the Bath No8, the RPA’s U23 player of the month for November, and he went on to impress in his team’s 37-14 Investec Champions Cup win over Bath.

The recently-turned 23-year-old has had a difficult run in his fledgling career, with serious injuries hampering his progress as well as the trauma of seeing Wasps go bust 14 months ago and fall out of the Gallagher Premiership.

Barbeary was soon snapped by Johann van Grann and he has since been joined at Bath by Blackett, his former Wasps boss who spent the remainder of the 2022/23 season at Scarlets before linking up at The Rec with a side that is now flying in the league, reaching second place before the current two-week break for the opening Champions Cup rounds.

That campaign will see Bath travel to Cardiff on Saturday night and ahead of that fixture, Blackett has sung the praises of Barbeary, the No8 who has scored three tries in his eight appearances this term.

Appearing on The Evening Standard Rugby Podcast, the Bath assistant told Lawrence Dallaglio and co: “I’m really happy (for Alfie). He is someone who I have known since he was like 16.

“With the amount of highs and lows he has had already within his career and the injuries, there has never been a doubt about his potential. Alfie is going to get better and better each week. He looks sharper and sharper. He is finally getting over that knee injury.

“He is an outstanding ball carrier. He really is. He is quicker than people think. He is really powerful. If he had been fit now since he had come through him and played regularly, he 100 percent would have played for his country. It is injuries that probably held him back.

“The big challenge for players is making sure they play really well, and especially in the big games. And there’s nothing bigger than the Champions Cup at the moment,” continued Blackett, who claimed that head coach van Grann was keen on having as many England-qualified player as possible in the Bath starting XV.

“If you look at the Bath team (that started) last weekend 13 out of the 15 were English-qualified and the other two were Finn Russell and Cam Redpath. That's the big thing for this club, for the coaches that are working here. If you look at the World Cup, we obviously had a few away there, but how many consistently started every single game for the club? We probably had five.

“For us to be successful as a club, obviously, it is what we do on the field for Bath, but also seeing our guys and having that many people that are English qualified. How many people can we get starting regularly (for England)?

“If you want to try and achieve things and win things, if you look at history you probably need six starting internationals within your side.

"And if you want to do it like Saracens did for years, Leicester did before them and Wasps, of those dynasties, you probably need 10 or so starting internationals within your side. So, we have got loads of potential, loads of guys on the fringes.”