Six Nations: England star Marcus Smith won’t stop working until he is the best player in the world

Watch when the 23-year-old scores, when England win as much as a penalty, let alone the match itself, and his body language tells you of his determination and will. Smith’s teeth grit as he punches the air. So while he looks a chilled-out character off the field, who enjoys relaxing with a mug of South American yerba-mate tea, an innate competitiveness has been part of his make-up for years.

There are a couple of stories from his days at Brighton College which show Smith as a driven perfectionist. The first came when he was 16, already in the school first XV, and played away to Henley, who were predicted to win comfortably.

Smith dragged his “Pelicans” — the nickname for the college side — to within touching distance of their opponents and then he had a penalty to win the game with the final kick from 45 metres out. When he was denied, hitting the left post, his teammates rallied round. “You were nearly the hero,” they told him — but Smith would not talk for the whole two-hour car journey home to Hove. He had not been good enough.

The second moment came a year later, when Smith played cricket for Brighton against Oakham. Usually a wicketkeeper, he saw his team struggling to remove batsmen, so asked to bowl himself. His mates’ jaws dropped when Smith tore in, bowled 75mph chin music and skittled out the Oakham boys to win the match.

Six years on and now England’s No 10, his coaches at Harlequins recognise this side of Smith.

“He’s naturally competitive,” Jerry Flannery, the former Ireland hooker, now Quins’ lineout and defence coach, says. “He’s come in and said, ‘Listen, I want to be the best player in the world,’ so that’s where he’s aiming to go. He’s not happy with where he is currently. He’s doing very well by everyone else’s standards.

“If Marcus’s goal is to be the best player in the world, we just have to help with that.”

Adam Jones, who won 95 Wales and five British & Irish Lions caps and is now Quins’ scrum coach, agrees.

“I don’t think you can play at that level if you’re not competitive,” he says. “When you get to that upper echelon, Test match level, there aren’t many of those boys who aren’t competitive in everything they do.

“If it’s inside them, or outwardly they’re pissed off if they don’t win, you don’t play [at] that level without being incredibly competitive.”

Nick Evans, the former All Blacks fly half, agrees. “Marcus has such a thirst to get better and improve himself,” the Harlequins attack coach says. “He’s very self-aware and will go around everyone when he’s had a bad game, hit up all of us to get our advice to work out where he can improve. I’ve got no doubt in my mind he wants England to win the World Cup and be part of that.

“He’ll have that dream, vision — that’s his goal, and he’ll do everything he can to help England do that, just like he did to win us the Premiership.”

In the Six Nations Smith is taking command of England’s attack. Of all the fly halves who have played 80 minutes or more this tournament, he has carried the ball the most (23 times), made the most metres (135), the most line-breaks (three), beaten the most defenders (nine) and scored the most tries (two).

His goal-kicking (striking at 78 per cent) is second only to Finn Russell’s (90 per cent), having missed four of 18 attempts, and his responsibilities are clearly growing, with him running the ball 19 per cent of the time, more than any other fly half so far.

At Quins he is used to taking charge. He often runs video-analysis sessions with the backs, such as Danny Care, Joe Marchant and André Esterhuizen, challenging them to identify space by “scanning” left and right.

He took on that role when wrestling his Gallagher Premiership club from also-rans in 2020 to English champions in June 2021, repeating those feats from his Brighton days at the highest level.

“In his first pre-season with the club we went to Germany and he was my roomy for the week,” Charlie Mulchrone, who played with Smith before becoming Quins’ skills and kicking coach, says.

“He debuted the year before that in the A League as a 17-year-old. He came on for ten minutes at the end of a game and you could tell he was just a bit different.

“Smithy, March [Marchant] and the boys first and foremost work bloody hard to get where they are. They get what they deserve.”

With Smith it keeps coming back to one thing: his desire.

“Even though he’s one of the younger lads here, he’s set a really good example with his work ethic when he’s training,” Flannery says.

“He embodies everything that’s good about Harlequins — he’s a real instinctive player and plays what he sees in front of him. He is lucky he gets to work with Nick and Charlie [and] pick their brains.

“They help him develop his knowledge off the field, situational rugby; the way the training here is structured [helps him] to develop and take advantage of what he does well, and to allow him to use his instinctive skills [and] play heads-up rugby.

“It’s not for us to say, ‘Marcus, you need to get better at this’ — he is driving his own development. We’ve just got to find ways to give him the best environment where he can do that. He’s developing his game-management, which is obviously the big step when you go up to international level.

“He deserves everything he gets, as he’s worked hard for it.”

Smith himself revealed during this tournament that he studies Antoine Dupont, the France scrum half, who is widely regarded as the best player in the world.

He does it to analyse support-running lines, to pick up hints and tips — but it is also so that Smith will one day be in a position to wear Dupont’s crown. He is competitive like that.

– The Times