Courtney Lawes: England's hopes are looking up

He's seen as the next big thing in Red Rose rugby but first the 6ft 7in second-rower must convince Johnson to use the long arm of the Lawes. Hugh Godwin speaks to Courtney Lawes

(DAVID ASHDOWN )

Hands thrust into his tracksuit-top pockets to defy the chill, beanie hat on his head, Courtney Lawes ambles into the venerable Members' Bar at Franklin's Gardens and crosses the room, ducking to avoid the ceiling girders like an upside down 110-metre hurdler.

A man of his height gets used to these obstacles and as he sways at the hips to dodge the television with the health-and-safety red-and-white tape wrapped round it he could – with the warm-weather tights lagging his legs – be an extraordinarily outsized dance student. In fact, or at least in prospect, he is the embodiment of England's brighter rugby future. Nice to meet you, Courtney. Pull up a banquette.

"Mate, I'm good to play wherever they want me to play, really," Lawes says languidly, in answer to a break-the-ice question. Outside there is snow on the pitch and the n-shaped hooks keeping the covers in place make it look like a wintry croquet lawn. Lawes' accent has an East Midlands inflection even though he was born, in February 1989, in Hackney, north London. He was four when his dad, Linford, moved the family to Northampton, where Courtney's mum, Valerie, was from.

Around the bar there are sepia photos of bearded gentlemen who might not have identified with the copious tattoos on Lawes' arms, his Anglo-Jamaican background or his fondness for answering the Call of Duty on the Xbox. They might have raised a bushy grey eyebrow, too, at his 6ft 7in build being deployed by his club as often on the blindside flank as in the second row.

They would surely appreciate, however, the comfort of a local lad in these surroundings, when the family home is a couple of hundred yards down the road. And cheer to these very rafters Lawes' arrival last Wednesday as a fully fledged member of the England squad, a couple of months after a 10-minute injury-cover debut off the bench against Australia at Twickenham.

"This time last year I was just playing a couple of games for the Saints," Lawes says. "But I haven't reflected too much and I never really get ahead of myself. I already know that once you get in the England team it's harder to stay there. Being in the squad, it doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to play."

Up and down the country, a chorus of critics are telling Martin Johnson "oh please, let him play". The England manager, who said on announcing his 32 for the Six Nations' Championship that he saw Lawes as a second row and as someone to nurture so that he is still in the national side in 10 years' time, is gathering a

reputation for safety-first selection. Or to put it another way, old is good.

"It is very different [with England]," says Lawes. "There's a lot more pressure on you for a start: the media, the coaches. There's a lot more coaches, I think six or seven in the England team, and there's only three here at Northampton. You've always got an eye on you, you know you're going to be a little bit out of your comfort zone. It turned out I only played 10 minutes in a month in the autumn and lost some match fitness. But everyone in the camp was having a good time, we had a decent social and got to know each other."

This last is a relief to know. The messages emanating after the autumn series from Lawes' Northampton and now England squad-mates Dylan Hartley and Ben Foden had told of a fear of failure. Even Brian Smith, the England attack coach, has admitted to "over-prescriptive" coaching.

To watch Lawes' dynamic breaks with ball in hand, his fantastic ability to regain his feet after hitting the deck and his famous wipe-out tackles on scrum-halves Julien Thomas and Morgan Parra in European club matches, is to enjoy a vivacious talent.

"I prefer blindside," Lawes says, "because you get to make a few more tackles, a few more carries and it's easy to get off the scrum and get round the corner [a favourite expression of Northampton's director of rugby, Jim Mallinder]. In the second row you need to hit more rucks and don't get as much ball, you're probably the second person to make a tackle.

"I'll do my best wherever I am. I'm fairly good at scrummaging, it's not my favourite part of the game but I get on with it, I do what I have to do. Basically all I want to do in any game is hit my rucks and make my tackles, and anything else is a bonus. That's how I like to mentally prepare for a game, to know that I'm going to work hard and things will happen from that. I play best when I'm confident and have got a smile on my face."

He smiled his way to the man of the match award against Munster in the Heineken Cup last October when his opposite numbers were the eminent Ireland and Lions second rows Paul O'Connell and Donncha O'Callaghan. Today's match at home to Perpignan and Friday's away to Munster will sort out the pool.

"That was probably the best game I've played this season," Lawes says of that Munster match. "I was finding my feet, it was on TV and I got a lot more exposure."

O'Connell, a champion swimmer who came late to rugby, praised Lawes in post-match interviews; he probably didn't know that Lawes had "pretty much no interest in rugby" until he went to Northampton School for Boys, aged 13. He tried out there for football, basketball and tennis too. But the rugby bug bit and he soon joined local club Old Scouts (who had brought through Ben Cohen and Steve Thompson) and later the rugby academy at Moulton College.

"I didn't watch too much sport as a kid, I just enjoyed going out and playing, pretty much anything, at the park or wherever I was. The only poster I ever had on my wall was a small one of the New Zealand team fighting a bunch of lions – not real ones, obviously. I have had a Jamaican flag up too, don't really know why, just fancied putting it up.

"When I was real young, probably 10 or 11, my dad used to do a lot of martial arts and I used to go with him and do a few things, a bit of kick-boxing. He went to a boxing club, I think. All I know is I enjoyed it, tagging along." His father used to work as a bouncer in Northampton. "Mainly at Barratts," says Lawes. "It's like a pub, night-out bouncing, nothing massive." A tough occupation, none the less? "Yeah. He seemed to enjoy it, though, from what I remember anyway."

He adds: "All of us do weights at the [rugby] club and I do sprint training here and there, but my athleticism comes from my dad. He did a lot of sports when he was younger, so it's come through the gene pool."

Linford is now a property developer and Courtney has done a construction management course. But rugby has long been Lawes' career choice and he has had two years with the England Under-20s. Their coach, Mark Mapletoft, has dubbed him Mr Tickle, after the long-armed cartoon character.

Morgan Parra of France, and then of Bourgoin, spent last summer mending a dislocated shoulder after being flattened by the long arms of Lawes in May's European Challenge Cup final, which was won by Northampton. The tackle was marginally late and the RFU beak had a look but gave it the all-clear.

Andy Ripley, a 1970s version of Lawes in his all-court athleticism, observed recently that professional rugby players must bottle up a lot of emotional baggage, such is the modern-day scrutiny. A good deal of emotion fizzed through the pressure valve when Bourgoin began scrapping and you could tell that Northampton relished it utterly.

They also handled it superbly. Lawes, having come on as a replacement, cleaned out Parra, took a cheap-shot punch on the side of the head without flinching or hitting back and tackled the centre Matias Viazzo into the advertising hoardings to close out the match. "Perfectly legal," Lawes says, "which is what I thought when I went diving into him.

"Sometimes you get in fights and scuffles and I like a bit just to get you in the game, but I don't ever go mad or go over the top. I'm pretty chilled out as a person and on the pitch. I don't get that angry, I don't get sin-binned a lot or throw any dirty punches. If someone starts to punch me, I'll just wait till it's legal and take my shot then.

"Obviously I like putting in big hits and when I get complimented for them, I like that. But you can never have a good game just on one tackle, can you? There is a lot more to my game and I hope people see that as well. I enjoy carrying the ball, breaking the line, winning lots of line-out ball. I hope they see the full package."

For England to start with Lawes they would need to drop two out of Steve Borthwick, Louis Deacon and Simon Shaw. The technical side of running a line-out is missing from Lawes' repertoire. Hence his reply to a speculative question: "Me and Simon Shaw would be a good second row, but I'm sure Martin Johnson would like Borthwick on the pitch."

Johnson, tantalisingly, made it clear that despite the "10 years' time" comment he sees the 20-year-old Lawes as 2011 World Cup material. It's equally clear that the young man with a Japanese coy carp tattooed on one arm for good luck and "tribal Maori stuff just because I liked the look of it" on the other, is ready to grasp his big opportunity. If he is given it.