Tommy Freeman

Rejected by Leicester as a teenager, even the slightly longer route he took to professionalism, still saw Tommy Freeman break into Eddie Jones’ England squad aged just 21. Now, all his coaches have to do, is not coach him too much.

We arrive expecting to meet one Saints favourite, but are greeted by another. In our search for Tommy Freeman, we must first get past George Furbank. They must operate in pairs. ‘Furbs’ smiles graciously, entertains some banal pre-season questions and shrugs ruefully when a large TV screen behind him announces his arrival at the talent agency. Tommy is in one of the rooms already and as far as England superstars go, we are doing quite well. 

Tommy is relaxed and at ease, a bit taller and wider than you might think, but this game’s physicality demands that you need to be. He stretches out on the sofa, smart-casual from head to toe with a brand new pair of shoes: he’s expecting to have his photo taken. We talk briefly about his summer holidays and jaunts to Mallorca and Croatia: how he couldn’t really stop doing stuff and how it takes him a while to fully shut off. It has been a summer of activity, Australia and international debuts. It must take a bit of time to get those sorts of things out of your system. 

He is still young: not 22 years old until next March, yet he speaks with the tone of a man who has already learned a lot. And it isn’t a surprise. He had to get to where he is the hard way. Cut loose by Leicester Tigers at sixteen, he felt the ignominy of rejection and had to work out a way to go again, through Moulton College and then the Saints Academy. But this summer he realised a dream and pulled on the England shirt proper in the second and third Tests of a victorious series in Australia. “Jamie George and Danny Care were our hosts on tour,” begins Tommy, a huge smile spreading across his face. “‘Ant and Dec’, we called them. They set up all the things we did off the pitch: deep-sea fishing, golf, koala sanctuaries, segwaying, things like that: you’d get a list, put your name down for a few. There was fifteen of us that went deep-sea fishing…”

Fun? “It wasn’t.”

The laughter bounces off the far wall as Tommy shifts in his seat, uneasy at remembering all that nausea.

The topic of Ellis Genge comes up, an incredible player, who appeared, from the outside, to grow that little bit taller on the international stage during that tour. His smashing of Michael Hooper after about thirty seconds of the second Test, seemed to be the moment that changed the course of the series. “He’s in that senior leadership group and very important off the pitch,” explains Tommy. “He was the first one over to me when I arrived in camp and even though what he said to me wasn’t too complimentary, (he said I looked like the trainspotter guy off TikTok, Francis Bourgeois) it was huge for me to have that interaction. He’s a huge force of good for England. And that moment against Hooper: moments like that change the game and it can lift everyone up; it can make someone else do something magical and play out of their skin. Most importantly I suppose, it sent a message right into Australian minds. Having won the first Test, it made them realise that things weren’t going to go the same way again.”

Tommy’s family is a huge part of what he does: he’s the youngest of three busy brothers and a son of parents who will do anything to allow their boys to dream. As an RAF family that moved a great deal to follow Dad’s job, they were pretty used to travelling but hadn’t originally planned to come out to Australia to watch the series. “You shouldn’t really tell anyone that you’ve been picked until the squad is announced,” says Tommy. “You should keep it all under wraps but I’m afraid I didn’t. I phoned them straight after training, I think it was about 4.30 in the morning for them. I woke them up and was on the phone saying I hadn’t made the bench. And they were like, ‘oh no’, not really understanding what I meant because they were still asleep. And then the penny dropped and they were like, ‘you absolute bastard!’: it was pretty funny. And they weren’t going to come out because it is so far and so expensive but I told them I was bringing them out; I’d book the flights, that I would cover everything.

“I remember tears from my dad after my debut,” he continues. “And I don’t remember seeing them before from him: maybe when his dad passed but he isn’t a crier. It was emotional for him, and for mum obviously, but I am much more used to her crying. It was amazing to have them there.

“My mum only watches me playing when I’m playing, my dad watches the whole game but my mum only watches what I do. And she’s getting better at feeding back, I’m probably more my harshest critic than she is now. 

“She was pretty happy with the way I played,” he adds. “Many people think that doing what you’re supposed to do out on the field is a good game but I’m a bit different. If I look back on a game and I haven’t done something spectacular then I’m not happy. The first Test I played I think I did my job but, in my eyes, that’s not quite good enough. In the second (the third Test), I got my hands on the ball a few times, made a few breaks. It was better.”

This is a fascinating sub-topic. Watching Tommy play over the past couple of years, we have all seen the kind of player he is: one able to conjure something when others couldn’t; a player exhibiting skill and a reading of the game that seems other-worldly. How does he do it? “Playing with the same people helps,” he responds. “At Saints I love to get on the same page as Biggs (Dan Biggar), Hutch (Rory Hutchinson), Matt Proctor: being an option off them is what I want, so I have to really watch the way they do things. You pick up on their quirks. And there is also something about me, I don’t wanna come across as big headed, but it is something that I can just do. That cross-field kick from Biggs against Bristol: that was instinctive. I’ll change my line because I can just feel like it needs to be done: I’m not sure if you can coach it, it just is within me.

“Other people have it in different ways,” he continues. “Tiny things that most people would miss: Dingers (Fraser Dingwall) with his defensive reads, he sees things almost before they happen. But you can’t think about it; when you do it you haven’t got time to think, it happens too fast; you’ve just gotta read it, trust your instincts. If I think about shooting up to intercept or whether I’ll sit back in the defensive line, if you think about it, the moment will have gone. Thinking about it isn’t very useful to me.”

It’s a topic coaches for club and country have agreed on. “That’s what Sam Vesty and Eddie have both said to me. ‘The less you’re coached the better’,” explains Tommy. “It comes down to me having to think about stuff on the pitch. Vesty said to me that I make the easy things look hard and the hard things look easy. My catch and pass, when I have to concentrate on what I’m doing, looks almost difficult. But the spin out of the tackle, the grubber and gathering the cross-field kick, which is ridiculously hard, I make it look simple. When I started in England camp, in training especially, I was so focused on doing what I was told and I don’t think I stood out. Outside of set plays, it is just rugby, and I had forgotten that. That’s why my second Test match was better, because I had started to relax and stopped thinking about what I was doing. I just started to become me and I started to make breaks.”

And Vesty is so keen on keeping Tommy’s natural instincts exactly that, he does everything to unclutter his rugby brain. “Sam (Vesty) tells me not to come to some Saints attack meetings,” says Tommy. “He doesn’t want to overcomplicate things for me. He says that he just wants me to see space and run into it. Just play rugby. It’s an incredible thing, a lot of players would dream about having that freedom. But the best coaches are the ones that understand their players best. Vesty and Vassy (Ian Vass) know how best we attack and defend. That’s the difference. And that’s what you have to be as a coach: you can have the best ideas,  drills and plans, but if you don’t understand your players and what skills they have, then you’ll be playing a different game-plan to the one that actually suits you.”

As Tommy goes into a new season, there’s a changing of the guard at Saints: Phil Dowson replaces Chris Boyd as director of rugby. Will these changes be felt at the club? “I don’t think so,” responds Tommy. “Responsibilities will change, priorities. Dowse (Phil Dowson) will still take a lot of advice from Boydy (Chris Boyd continues at the club as a consultant from New Zealand) so I don’t think much will change. He (Dowson) will still allow everyone to do what they do. The team is changing a little, a few new signings, that’s exciting, but in terms of goals and aims, I don’t think it will be too dissimilar.”

What did Chris Boyd give Tommy Freeman? “We didn’t directly communicate a huge amount,” he says. “He will have told Sam (Vesty) to tell me to do this and Vassy to tell me to do that. That was what he was like. He gave me an opportunity, a chance, allowed me to play the way that was best for me. I owe him a great deal.”

And are Saints going to benefit from the exposure he’s given a good percentage of the squad at a young age? “Hugely. I don’t know what the long-term plans are for the club, but we’ve always been a set-up that relied on its academy. We don’t tend to buy big, we like to make sure the talent is coming through. And having played at the highest level when you’re eighteen and then continued to grow with the club, you are always going to be better off. You have played the same style with the same people; it’s ingrained in you from an early age; it makes it so much easier for everyone.”

And what about the growing talent on the wing in the Premiership? How does the emergence of someone like Henry Arundell make you feel – do you pay any attention to other players in your position? “Yes, I do look at what others are doing,” he admits. “Henry is a lovely guy by the way, it’s a bit weird but we watched a fair amount of Love Island together in Australia and I got on really well with him – but I want to be the best that I can be, I want to be the best in the world, and I will do everything I can to get there. But I am not a player who has to be bitter or salty because someone is being picked over me. Growing up through school, I wasn’t viewed as the best player, I wasn’t captain, but I knew in myself that I was the best.

“I had to work hard,” he says. “When I moved over to Moulton College (having been cut from the Tigers Academy), I started on the bench but I just worked hard to prove them wrong. But I won’t get bitter if I’m not involved. I remember I was playing well last year at Saints and Vesty called me for a chat and said that they weren’t taking me to Newport. And my reaction was not, ‘Oh, why?’, which most coaches would probably like it to be, my reaction was ‘okay’. I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. Maybe as a coach you want to see a reaction. But me being that age, I was just taking every step as it came. I don’t want to put coaches in uncomfortable positions, maybe sometimes you need to, but I don’t like that sort of conflict. I was just thinking about the next training session and how I was going to be on absolute top form. Training really hard, playing as best as I can. That’s all you can control.”

We discuss positions, and where he would play himself if he had the chance. Wing? Full-back, somewhere else? “I think I can probably play anywhere in the backline but with the players Saints have, I’m not going to get in most positions! With the full-back and wing stuff, it’s tricky: if I have some consistency on the wing, then I really like playing on the wing. Chopping and changing does make things difficult. I don’t mind covering during games, if Furbs goes to fly-half then of course I will drop back, but last-minute changes before a match are trickier. Because then I have to start thinking about my positioning a bit more, learn the move from a different perspective. But I don’t really have any
preference at the moment.

“I used to worry about that versatility. A coach at school said that if I could play all these positions, I wouldn’t be able to nail down one and I would just be a 23, coming off the bench all the time to fill in. But I think now, in today’s game, it’s completely different. To have those skills sets for each of those positions is advantageous and it’s more likely to get you picked.”

And what about his relationship with Dan Biggar. As a winger, you need to be on the same wavelength as your fly-half don’t you? How do you go about doing that? “Myself and Dan have a good relationship,” he says. “It’s funny; he says to me that, during a game, I should do the opposite of what he says. He knows he talks a lot and says things to me, tries to get me to do things the way he sees them but then I will do them my way, the opposite way, and they work out.

“I expect the ball a lot earlier from Biggs, I’ll be in more space. It’s different with James (Grayson), he will take the ball to the line a lot more and I will either have to run hard off him or wait for the pullback. Slightly different ways of playing but all focused on the same goal.

“When I’m fed lots of information, it doesn’t really work, I think Dan knows that now. I am always looking for a cross-field kick, if there’s a bit of space I will back myself nine times out of ten. I have learnt to read his game quite well and I think he knows the way I do things. He’s incredibly driven, a great leader, great vision and that’s what you want from your ten. But not everyone needs shouting at and maybe he recognises that about me!”

Sat up high in swanky offices on Aldwych, London sprawls around us and we conclude by talking about the capital and his relationship with it. “I love London; come down quite a bit,” he muses. “My missus is developing my fashion sense, which is lovely, but not so good for the bank account. But as a city, I think we’ve completed it! Done all the sights, visited the whole Monopoly board… although not jail, I hasten to add! We love going to Shoreditch, big fan of the Aviary, round the corner, Old Town, gingery beer type of thing, love that. I’m not sure I could live in London but it’s a fantastic place to visit.”

And visit it we do. The next hour is spent on foot, down and around in Soho and Trafalgar Square. We watch the performers in Covent Garden and confuse tourists on the Strand; Tommy revels in the novelty of having his photo taken by professionals on London’s famous streets. We talk about fame, how he likes it but won’t chase it, how he could probably see himself on Dancing on Ice and how he cooks his own food. He is effortlessly good company, talking to everyone,
smiling and enjoying life. 

Having been escorted off Nelson’s Column by security, we head back to the offices; Tommy’s new shoes starting to rub. He is thinking of taking his girlfriend to a restaurant tonight, as it’s the right thing to do, given the way he has left her on her own all afternoon. He has spied an Asian place he’d like to try but on our return, he takes a closer look at the menu and its prices. Despite the blisters, his pace quickens to catch up and he smiles a knowing grin, suggesting they might head elsewhere tonight. He is a successful young man with a bit of money, but he hasn’t lost any of his sense. 

We leave them to London and the excitement that a night in the smoke will bring. The potential is huge and you can’t help but think that here is a young man who appears to have it all sorted. Wherever Tommy Freeman is headed, you get the impression that everything will be okay.

Story by Sam Roberts

Pictures by Ben McDade

This extract was taken from issue 19 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.