ENGLAND new boy Chandler Cunningham-South is still paying the price for not recognising 2003 legend Richard Hill.
World Cup winner Hill, in the top tier of English players in history, was giving tips to the backrower after Under-20s sessions but the youngster didn’t know who he was talking to.
Cunningham-South’s coaches at his then club London Irish tipped him the wink about the identity of the man but the flanker has still not lived down his mistake.
Sidcup-born Cunningham-South was brought up in New Zealand after leaving England when he was four and claims not to have watched much northern hemisphere rugby growing up.
But he is still getting stick from Hill who has watched him develop from an age-group player to someone who has come off the bench in England’s first three Six Nations games.
“It is a bit of a running joke,” said the 20-yearold who is now at Harlequins. “When I was in the Under-20s I didn’t have a clue who he was at first and didn’t watch rugby over here. It was a bit before my time although he wouldn’t like me to say that. It is a long time ago. I didn’t know who he was, and I went back to the club and said there is this guy who keeps talking to me and giving me this feedback and he really sounds like he knows what is going on and I couldn’t quite remember his name.
“Then I later found out from the guys at Irish that it was Richard Hill and he let me know a couple of sessions later that he did win the World Cup and he does know a bit about rugby! I have a good relationship with him, and he helps me a lot.
“I haven’t been made to watch the 2003 final yet but he may sit me in a room with a laptop and his medal. When he said it, he was laughing and saying it in a jokey way and it was a bit of laugh.”
If things had turned out differently, Cunningham-South could have been playing Super Rugby at the Crusaders but he came back north after failing to get an academy spot there. His father Richard still has a farm in Wellsford on New Zealand’s North Island and coached Cunningham-South as a young player at Silverdale RFC before the back rower went to university. Things snowballed from there and the Harlequins man is pressing for a starting spot against Ireland at Twickenham on Saturday,
“I was 18, I was down at Lincoln University and playing down there and wanted to be in an academy set-up but nothing came to fruition,” explained Cunningham-South. “The Crusaders academy didn’t have a place for me so I got in touch with an agent and he got a highlight reel together and started t
