Henry Arundell

When the world shut down, a seventeen-year-old Henry Arundell got to work. Borrowing weights from his neighbours, he made himself 6kg bigger, stronger and fitter. Even though a six-month injury intervened, he’d still paved the way to a try-scoring England debut after just two league starts. 

Rewind the clock from 2022 to the summer of 2021, and life was very different for the then eighteen-year-old Henry Arundell. He’d finished school at Harrow and was awaiting his A-level results, but was also contending with a first major injury that would keep him out for six months. Fast-forward to the present day, and with only his second season of professional rugby about to begin, having made just two Premiership starts for his club, few that follow the English game won’t have heard of him. It’s what happens when you make a late appearance with your country at its lowest ebb, and promptly bump through a couple of Australians, and leave another for dead, on your way to scoring with your first touch in international rugby. “It’s weird because, like, now it’s normal,” says Henry of the instant fame brought about by his England debut. “But when I kind of reflected in the off season, it’s kind of, ‘holy shit, that was insane’. It’s also because, this time last year, I was rehabbing my hamstring just with the intention of making at least one London Irish appearance.

“I’d played an ‘A’ game against Wasps in April [2021],” explains Henry. “I was still at school, but I was coming in to train and play with Irish now and again. I was chasing down Charlie Atkinson and just as I made the tackle, my hamstring ruptured, and it had to be operated on a week later. It was pretty bad. 

“I missed some of the exams at school because I was still in bed recovering, I was off for about six months in the end. I was supposed to be going into my first pre-season, the time you really want to make an impression, so it wasn’t ideal.”

Starting the rugby side of his professional career a month or two behind schedule, left Henry still at London Irish, whereas other senior academy players had been sent on loan. “When you come back, you’re really nervous,” he admits. “I think everyone is; is the injury going to happen again with the first sprint? 

“But I was finding myself training constantly, and eventually it became frustrating, and I was asking Lights [James Lightfoot Brown, the Irish academy backs coach] when I was going to play, because I didn’t go on loan like the other boys, so I just kept thinking ‘there must be a reason they kept me back’.”

How long were you training? “Probably a month, but that was a lot of training sessions, so it felt a long time. I did wonder if I was just going to be holding bags. 

“I know that’s part of being a rookie, but you need to play to improve.”

And he wants to improve, to get ahead, looking for every opportunity to build both his skillset, and physicality. “I wasn’t big growing up,” he says. “I was quite tall, quite lanky, quite slim, but during that first lockdown, I borrowed a set of weights from a neighbour and absolutely smashed it for six months – weights, running, sprinting, just everything.

“It was around the same time as I was watching The Last Dance [the Michael Jordan documentary] and that became an obsession too, I’m a huge Jordan fan,” he explains. “I thought at the time that if nobody else had access to the gym, then it was the perfect time for me to get ahead of my year group, I came back to school 6kg heavier.”

His Jordan-inspired improvement was also down to his previous age-grade experience. “I’d already spent time with the England Under-18s,” he says. “And I was so much lighter than everyone that I knew I had to get heavier. That six-month period of obsession meant I came back quicker, bigger, stronger so that if I did get the chance, I’d be able to take it.

“I was very committed to it, and it helped me a lot,” he adds. “That and having good genetics from my parents.”

Those genetics include an athlete in mum Jane – “I give her the credit for my speed” – and a rugby player in dad Ralph. They met in the military. “Both mum’s and dad’s sides of the family have been through the military, so me and my brother both thought we’d go through it but never did; we almost feel bad about it.

“Mum was a nurse, and she’s still a nurse now with the NHS, and dad was in the Third Battalion the Rifles,” he continues, while showing us the strap of his watch, in the colours of his dad’s regiment. “We moved around a lot – I was born in Cyprus – but it didn’t have an impact on me because I was too young, it was more difficult for my brother [28-year-old Jack] and sister [24-year-old Bella] because they were mid-school.”

The military is still part of the family. “He talks about it a lot, he’s got a lot friends in the army,” says Henry of his dad. “I don’t know how much I can say [of what he did], he’d have to give me the all-clear, but he went to Northern Ireland, Iraq, Afghanistan.

“I did Ireland as part of my A-level history,” explains Henry, “and he ended up coming to school to do a presentation. He talked about a lot of stuff I hadn’t heard before, about how mental and crazy the troubles were at that time.

“There were life-changing moments for him,” continues Henry. “There was the Enniskillen bombing, which was horrific, on Remembrance Day.”

In 1987, while people waited for a parade to begin in the Northern Ireland town, a bomb went off at the war memorial, killing eleven, injuring 63. “Dad had to fly in as first response,” says Henry, repeating, “it was life-changing, seeing the damage, and realising how crazy it all was at the time. I think it’s something that’s underplayed a lot by the general public, people realise it was bad, but many don’t realise how horrific it was.”

Aside from inspiring an interest in history – Henry is still studying history and politics with the Open University – the military life also filtered down into everyday life. “It’s very instilled in all of us,” he says. “The organising side of things, the need to organise – my sister’s a bit of an OCD freak, she’ll plan a year ahead for something that may never happen. I’m less so, but with my rugby, I like everything to be planned, I want to know every detail.

“Mum is a bit more chilled, but she’s a perfectionist too, and she works bloody hard and both of them are intense when they want to get things done.”

His parents divorced when he was younger, but he’s close to both. “Dad is fifteen minutes away from me at London Irish,” he says. “And I try and get home to Bath [where mum lives] once a month. It was tough for her when I was away, especially for Australia; with the training before, I didn’t see her for two months.

“All three of us went to boarding school, so we are used to us being away, but during Covid, I was at home for seven months, mum got quite attached to that. 

“I did as well,” he admits. “It’s quite nice waking up, pretending you’re doing school work, playing Xbox, while mum’s cooking you something to eat.”

Both mum and dad also played a role in his rugby life. “I used to goal-kick and my mum would drive me to the local club and just sit there for like two hours waiting for me, while doing work in the car,” he says. “And then on the rugby side, my dad’s no Shaun Edwards, but he knows what he’s talking about when I talk to him [about rugby] and debrief everything that’s happened.”

Bath were the first to spot Henry’s talent. With his maternal grandfather a season-ticket holder, he’d dreamt of following in the footsteps of, as it was then, George Ford, Matt Banahan, Jonathan Joseph, Anthony Watson et al. “We had a good team in 2015, when we got to the final,” he says of his boyhood club, “but we lost and it was devastating, and it’s been a bit demoralising since then.”

The club had seen him play as a twelve-year-old when he trialled for the county, and they had spoken to Ralph. “The plan had been to join their academy, but then I went to Harrow and had a pre-season game against St Benedict’s at Hazelwood, where London Irish train, and the next week I got an email from the academy manager Patrick Grady – who’s still there – asking me to go for a trial.”

And although not Bath, London Irish have been there for him ever since, starting from when he was twelve. “They’ve been a massive influence, Irish have been relentless in looking after me, so I’ve always felt loyalty towards them, and I thought that when signing for them,” he says. “All through my school years, James Lightfoot Brown has been the biggest influence, coming to games, analysis, giving feedback, doing skills sessions with me and treating me not like a kid playing rugby, but like a professional, and that helped a lot. It helps now, I still have that relationship that I’ve known since I was thirteen.”

Harrow also played a role in building Henry. “We knew that guys like Maro [Itoje] and Billy [Vunipola] had gone to Harrow so we thought it was actually a very good rugby school,” he says. “We went for a scholarship and managed to get it; it was kind of some no-brainer to go.

 “A lot of people expect it to be stuck-up, posh people, but it’s actually just a bunch of kids that happen to have wealthy parents,” says Henry. “You do get the stereotype once in a while, but most of them are normal kids. 

“It’s not like a normal boarding school where you go home at weekends, you’re there four weeks, then you get to go home. It’s intense, but I loved it.”

And you mixed with the great and the good? “We did have a couple of princes,” he admits. “The Prince of Malaysia, a lot of Russian billionaires – some really a bit questionable, I think. But in my boarding house year there was another rugby player, who ended up at Wasps, Rekeiti Ma’Asi-White. He has just been with the England Under-20s too, and I was playing in the game when he made his under-20 debut against Wales, which was cool.”

Henry always had options. During his time at Harrow, scholarships to American universities such as Yale and Berkeley were said to be feasible, and the military has never been far from his mind. “I think the life could’ve been similar to rugby, the bond you get from spending a lot of time together,” he says. “And if it was twenty years ago, knowing the situations that lay ahead, I would’ve gone, but I wouldn’t have wanted to spend my career training all the time [and not seeing action].” Either way, a passion for studying history and the military both lost out to attempting to becoming a professional rugby player. “I tried to do uni at UCL alongside lrish,” says Henry, who managed an A* and two As at A-levels. “I thought I could manage both, but it was too tough, so I had to sack it off, that’s why I’m doing Open University now.”

Henry didn’t spend last season holding bags. He made his senior debut against Saracens in the Premiership Cup in November, one of four cup games, which also included a semi-final brace in the 59-20 win over Leicester that took the club to their first-ever professional era final. People knew him before then, helped along by a full Premiership debut against Bristol Bears in February, then a March start at Leicester which he hadn’t expected. “I was meant to be travelling reserve, but then I was on the bench, then our full back at the time called off due to illness three hours before kick-off, so I ended up starting at Welford Road. 

“It was only my second league game, we lost convincingly, there was a red card early on and I had to face Nemani Nadolo, which was horrible.

“He kept breaking through and I couldn’t handle him, he was a monster,” he admits. “It’s a vendetta I’ll have to repay, even if I break my shoulder doing it.”

His attacking play had also started to get him noticed, particularly in Europe when he scored against Saracens during January. 

After the under-20s Six Nations, Henry was definitely not under the radar anymore: it wasn’t just finishing as player of the tournament and scoring four tries, it was the manner in which he did it: a length-of-the-field score against Scotland; a brace against Wales; and a spectacular effort against France. 

Back in the club game, from the bench he helped London Irish claw their way back from 21-39 down to draw 42-42 against Wasps. Picking up the ball on his ten-metre line, he chipped the pressing defensive line clustered around halfway, and stole the dropping ball from between two Wasps to power in and narrow the gap, before later assisting Ollie Hassell-Collins to reduce it further. 

It was another nudge for the various national bosses seeking to secure him, and he had plenty to choose from: England, Wales [paternal grandfather], Scotland, [maternal grandmother] and Cyprus. “Cyprus sent me a shirt last year,” he laughs. 

Scotland had been in contact after all the senior staff had witnessed his performance first-hand in the under-20 Six Nations. Gregor Townsend had got in touch. “I spoke to Gregor quite a lot, he’s a very good man,” he says. “We did some analysis, he offered me a place on tour, and I did consider it a lot, I chatted it through with family – my grandmother was Scottish. 

“It was hard,” he says of the decision. “I’d said no to Wales quickly, I didn’t feel much connection to Wales, but with Scotland, I was weighing up the long-term, and what was a smart decision, there were a lot of factors.

“But it came to thinking about the ten-year-old me that wanted to play professional rugby, and it was always England. I wanted to go and watch England, never Scotland, always England. And it was always Twickenham you wanted to go to, never Murrayfield.

“That was what settled it for me, you’d always regret not trying for England.”

Eddie Jones had kept tabs on him since the under-20s. “I spoke to Eddie two days before the Toulon game,” explains Henry, “and we chatted about everything and he told me to get on the ball.”

Being Henry, he didn’t just get on the ball, but scored another length-of-the-field try. As if he needs the full length of the pitch as some kind of runway for take-off, Henry collected a spilt ball, and wove his way through more than half a dozen grasping defenders, although he actually passed the entire team en route. “World-class,” was the verdict that echoed from the commentary team through to social media. “Eddie texted me after the game, just saying: ‘Good, mate’.

“My family support system was massive for me, at that time,” he admits. “Especially my brother and dad, just keeping me settled, just saying, ‘it’s exciting and fun, but nothing’s happened, you’ve just been told something you want to hear, you’re not on tour, you’re not on camp yet, just don’t worry about it, you’re still only nineteen’.”

And then he was on camp. “I was playing Xbox with my friends, checked my phone and I’d been added to a WhatsApp group with people like Marcus Smith and Owen Farrell,” he recalls. “That’s when I knew something was going to happen. I had to tell Gregor then; telling him was awkward, but he was very nice, and even congratulated me on my debut.”

Henry was named in the 36-man squad to face the Barbarians, but didn’t make the game due to a calf injury, instead having to make do with a place on the tour to Australia, albeit with the ‘apprentice’ tag. “Eddie had said to us ‘you’re an apprentice for certain reasons, but you’re still a player, and will still be considered. If you train well, you may get an opportunity.’

“Initially it was very surreal going to camp, shaking hands and training with the England players,” he says. “The tour was great at breaking down barriers. You still see them as superstars though, but you’re playing alongside them too.

“We did a fishing trip that was funny in Perth, deep sea fishing that went terribly wrong,” continues Henry. “They got the weather wrong, and we had a training session the next day but ten of us were feeling seasick, cold, freezing... 

“What was funnier was seeing a giant man like Courtney Lawes on a fishing boat, rocking about feeling seasick, and in the end he told the skipper, ‘right we’re done, we’re going home’.”

Some fared worse than others. “Ollie Chessum didn’t touch a rod,” says Henry. “Within five minutes of going out, the weather wasn’t that bad, but he was throwing up – he got fined for that...”

He found out on the Tuesday before the first Test he was on the bench. “I couldn’t believe my name was down, and my dad and brother flew over,” he says.

Aside from an early injury scare for Jack Nowell, the game rolled into the final quarter with Henry feeling his chance of a debut was gone. “Richard Hill [team manager] kept saying to us, ‘come on, you’re going to get on’, so we’d get up, take our jackets off, warm up, only for it not to happen and we’d sit back down.”

But in the 74th minute, he got up and went on the field with England already having lost the game. “I got to 68 minutes and figured I wasn’t getting on,” he says. “But then I was, and it was so quick. Joe Merchant and Marcus Smith both said ‘get on the ball’, and Faz said ‘we’re going to get you the ball’ – it was crazy. 

“Then Merchant did that ridiculous tip ball, then Freddie gave me the ball, so I could run and see what happens...”

He was faced with an Aussie blockade. “I knew I couldn’t go outside, because I’d be put into touch, so I just gave it everything, put all my bodyweight into it. I was expecting to get hit and to make a breakdown and next phase, but then I broke through, and I was like ‘oh my god’. I saw James O’Connor, but I saw the space, and by that point I knew I was going to score. 

“I couldn’t believe what had just happened.”

He couldn’t save England, as they lost 30-28. “The result was tough, it put a downer on the group for that evening, but for me the dream had just happened, the only thing that could’ve gone better was the score. 

“We did debrief straight away, did some social stuff, and then went back to the hotel and that moment in my room was quite emotional. All the emotions came together from what had just happened, what it meant to my brother and dad – they’d been crying at the ground. It was just very emotional.

“My phone blew up, there were a lot of messages from people I’d not messaged in a while, then lots of messages from people that did matter. It was a nice humbling moment when Farrell gave me one of his shirts and embroidered on it was ‘95th Test cap’ – that’s what you want to be, that’s how many you want to get. 

“From then on, it was about doing what you needed to do, to train and play again next week and not be a one-cap wonder.”

He knew there was clamour for him to start. “I’d seen stuff like ‘Arundell
must start next week’, but that’s not how it works, that’s not the game plan. That’s not how Eddie sees it working out, and he spoke to me about it,  we chatted about everything and it made sense. I wasn’t thinking, ‘oh I should start because I scored a try’. I just wanted to play again, whatever [shirt] number that was.”

Eddie was succinct in praise. “He shook my hand and then said I should’ve scored on the second touch when I broke the second time, he said I stepped too early... he was quite ‘Eddie’ about it. I like that. I knew he’d appreciated what I’d done, but it was also ‘you can still improve, you can get better’.”

His mindset is a good one, Henry isn’t setting a target number of caps for the season ahead, he just wants to be “in the environment every single time; if I play, I play, if I don’t then I’m still at the best level to get into it.”

And for the club, his ambitions are the same as last year. “It’s only my second year, so I’m going to use what I’ve learnt from the first season, the tour.

“Declan Kidney is good at managing you when you are young, because you don’t want to be burned out so you hate rugby at 21. Declan and Eddie are good at that, they’re good at managing you as a person.

“There’s always a plan, which is nice,” he says. “It’s not a case of ‘right, now you can play 30 games a season’, it’s doing everything gradually, managing you, but ultimately, they want you to play.”

Aside from jokingly being called ‘superstar’ by 105-cap Wallaby legend Rob Simmons, little has changed for him at club level. “I want to win something with London Irish because that club deserves something,” he says. “The Prem Cup final, it’s a shame we lost, but when you think back to it, if that’s what you’re striving to be, just to win the Prem Cup, that’s not a great club to be at. We want to compete in the Premiership and Europe.”

And for England, the World Cup? “I was always thinking I want to play at the 2027 World Cup,” he says. “And I do want to play at next year’s World Cup but I can’t focus on that too much, it’s so far away and it’s out of my control, it’s just the more I can do for Irish, the better chance I’ll give myself.”  

Story by Alex Mead

Pictures by Philip Haynes

This extract was taken from issue 19 of Rugby.
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