THE BIG INTERVIEW
Mr Reliable for Northampton Saints and England, the back-row looks to the future and what the world should have in store for our game
WHAT A SERVANT to Northampton Saints. Lewis Ludlam has been so dedicated to the Shoe Army that you wonder whether he was born in Franklin’s Gardens. But it’s all change on the horizon, as he will be plying his trade in France’s Top 14 next season. A big life decision for sure. So as this issue of Rugby World is all about giving players a voice on how they feel about the game, we decided to ask the England international about various aspects of the professional game. This is a character who was named England U20 Player of the Tournament in the Junior World Cup in 2015 and who made his elite debut in the 2016-17 season. He’s been to two senior World Cups and captained the Saints. In short, he’s seen an awful lot of the professional game in this country, while still being shy of his 30th birthday.
Over an engaging 40 minutes, the back-rower talks to us about his decision to leave the Premiership while in his prime, his love of painting in his time away from the sport and how best to market the elite game while still looking after his fellow pros.
A passionate figure, he bought in.
What have you made of the global season so far? “From a Northampton Saints perspective, it’s been brilliant. We’ve hit a run of form where we’re starting to understand how to find a way to win games when perhaps conditions are against the way we traditionally like to play rugby. So I think there’s been a massive positive.
“What’s disappointing in the rugby world is that we’ve seen so much about the safety (concerns) of the game and financial situation of the game that it’s drowned out all the positives that rugby brings, from a playing point of view and a spectators’ point of view as well. The most we felt that was pre-World Cup. There was a lot of negative chat surrounding rugby, and especially English rugby. And that was a massive driver for us as a national team, to help bring the country together and help bring a little bit more positivity around what English rugby is.
“I think we did that. It just feels like very quickly that’s been forgotten.
The narrative switched to negative chat, which we’ve seen before, surrounding rugby again. Which was the disappointing thing really.”
How do you combat that? “I think we need to find out what the fans actually think, and then what the noisy fans think! “I don’t think rugby has to follow that trend (of the noisy minority), though I am a firm believer that what the people want to see is how we are going to grow the game, by catering to that. However, rugby is at a crossroads. We need to start appealing to a
