Archie McParland: From Doubt to England Call-Up

Plenty of aspiring young players will relate to how Archie McParland once felt. Northampton’s fast-emerging scrum-half, on the verge of a full England debut this summer, possessed the requisite talent but not always the freedom of expression to maximise it. Perfectionists can often be like that, so averse to making the slightest mistake they end up holding themselves back.

Eventually there is a choice to be made: abandon all inner doubt and trust in his ability or stay frustratingly trapped in never never land. The turning point for McParland arrived just after Christmas in Bath when he starred for Saints in a pivotal league fixture at the Recreation Ground having been specifically encouraged by his coaches to follow his gut instinct. “That was the moment,” he says now. “I’d been training well but struggling to put it on to the pitch. In that game we felt quite free to play our game and it all worked out. Since then I’ve been able to show my game more and more.”

In what has been an eye-catching personal season for the 21-year-old there was another prime example at Bath in the sixth minute of the Champions Cup quarter-final in April. Clean off-the-top ball, a deft lob by Rory Hutchinson, a glorious one-handed flick on by McParland to Fin Smith and great support from Tommy Freeman and Fraser Dingwall made for the slickest of first-phase strike plays. Saints lost a thrilling contest 43-41 but for a while their attacking game was untouchable.

How they would love to rediscover that “flow state” at Leicester’s expense in a potentially thunderous Prem semi-final beneath the Friday night lights at Franklin’s Gardens. Northampton are currently without their injured England scrum-half Alex Mitchell but, increasingly, McParland poses a similarly lethal threat. Excellent spatial awareness, a constant sniping threat, clever support play ... as Saints’ head coach Sam Vesty says: “He is a nine who makes things happen.”

McParland also comes from a family accustomed to operating under pressure. His mother Emma is a maxillofacial surgeon at Glan Clwyd hospital near Rhyl specialising in skin cancer of the face and neck and jaw deformities. But despite growing up in north Wales – he first played rugby at Ruthin RFC at the age of five – it was always an England cap he craved. “As soon as I knew what England rugby was I wanted to play for them. To get the call up (to England’s training squad) was an amazing feeling ... I rang my parents straight afterwards and they were over the moon for me.”

His parents have long been aware how much their son wanted to make it. As a teenager he chose to focus on trying to progress as a No 9 rather than a fly-half only for the Covid lockdown to intervene. Determined to use the extra time to improve his passing, McParland drafted in his parents to stand at the other end of the lawn and catch a constant stream of balls. The sessions were so regular they eventually had to resort to wearing gardening gloves to try and protect their hands. “I won’t put them through that pain again,” says McParland now. “I’m forever grateful for their patience: standing in the garden, getting bruised hands. I just wanted to pass all day long.”

It also did his ambitions no harm when he found himself playing in the same Stowe school side as Henry Pollock, with whom he has since graduated into the Saints and England setups. Those imagining McParland to be an attention-seeking Pollock clone, however, should revise their preconceptions. “I’m most definitely not a similar personality to him. I don’t think many people are. It obviously does help us having played together through school and the Northampton academy. To be on that journey together and have him there for my first England involvement was obviously great. But I’m definitely not like him.” Really? Not even a tiny bit? “Honestly I’ve no hidden talents. Put me down as boring.”