Afolabi Fasogben

At thirteen, Londoner Afolabi Fasogbon was introduced to rugby. By the time he reached twenty he was winning West Country derbies and waving goodbye to 68-cap England props. 

It’s certainly the game in which to make your mark. Deep in the throes of a West Country derby, with Gloucester leading 28-15 against Bristol away at Ashton Gate, Afolabi Fasogbon, the twenty-year-old prop on for just his second Premiership appearance, joined the fray to shore up the cherry and white scrum. 

Measuring six foot four and weighing in at 130kg, Afo was fresh from an Under-20s World Championship victory with England, but a new challenge awaited in the man facing him down at scrum time, none other than Ellis Genge, a cornerstone of the England scrum for nigh-on seventy caps.  

But, less than twenty minutes and two Gloucester penalties later, Genge was trudging off the pitch, his side trailing, with a departing wave from Afo. 

It was a moment tailor-made for a social media frenzy, and that’s exactly what happened. “I honestly didn’t know the camera was on me,” Afo tells Rugby Journal. “I didn’t do it because I thought it would get caught on camera, I just thought, ‘this’ll be funny’.

“What’s funny about that is it isn’t the first time I’ve been caught doing something silly, it’s just the first time it was ‘offensive’ silly,” he continues. “There was one time in the under-20s where they caught me belly flopping on top of a maul, but it was only my friends at home who picked up on it.”

Arrogance; bravado; entertainment; call it what you will, but Gloucester eventually emerged 41-44 winners in a Premiership thriller, and anyone who hadn’t already heard about the young prop now knew his name. And for those who may not have been scrolling through social media that September evening, it wouldn’t be the last time he would be up to his old tricks, pulling out another ‘wave’ in the direction of Tom West in Gloucester’s 25-17 win away at Northampton after another scrum had gone in the visitors’ favour. 

“That one wasn’t a wave, but I can see why people think it was,” he says. “They were just moaning at every decision. I thought that one was a penalty clear as day, we’ve hit and I’m square, he’s on his knee and facing inwards. We got up and they were still complaining. I was just a bit angry, and I was just like, ‘shut up’.” 

Has anyone asked him to wave? “Yeah, the kids do,” he laughs. “I can’t remember what game it was but while I was warming up there was a group of kids, and every time I ran past them, they’d be screaming at me to give them a wave.”

Hendon-born Afo only made his Premiership debut in the first round of the 2024/25 Premiership season, but his impact goes far beyond a social media clip. 

We meet in the smart surrounds of Gloucester Docks, with Afo about halfway through his rehab from a mean cocktail of injuries to both ligaments and tendons in his ankle and knee. “I looked ridiculous for the first three weeks, I was in a boot, I was in a brace, and I was on crutches, the triple whammy,” he says. “The timing of it … it’s not great obviously, it’s never good to be out, but because of this Six Nations block I don’t actually miss too many Premiership games. I’ve done this ankle before, but this operation I’ve had means it can’t go again, they’ve wrapped a rope around it, so it won’t go, it’ll just hurt.”

The eight games he’s amassed so far in the Premiership have proved that he’s not just another promising English talent, but among the best of the crop from England’s first Under-20s World Championship-winning side since 2016, alongside the likes of Sale prop Asher Opoku-Fordjour and Northampton flanker Henry Pollock. He was handed a start in Gloucester’s season opener against Saracens and impressed at the breakdown, stealing a turnover inside five minutes, holding firm in the scrum against Wales international Rhys Carré, and with ball in hand, his important pick-and-go drew in Saracens defenders to allow Freddie Clarke across the line. 

Cutting a physical presence not dissimilar to the all-conquering France prop Uini Antonio, who any international side would give handsomely to have on their team sheet, Afo appears to be a star in waiting. 

Which is why Gloucester, after the collapse of his first club London Irish, were quick to swoop for his signature. “I got offered a contract by Saracens, but that season they’d had a bit of a prop crisis, so there’s a high possibility that if I’d gone, I would have been playing straight away,” he says. “They did the classic and offered a lot, and I could have taken it, but I don’t think I was ready. Instead, I went to Gloucester; they just seemed a lot more interested in my development.”

And who better to guide that development than Gloucester scrum coach and 2003 Rugby World Cup winner Trevor Woodman? “He was one of the main reasons I chose Gloucester, him and Skivs [George Skivington]. Where I wanted my development was scrum and maul – everything else matters, but not as much. At the time you looked at the league and it was like, who has the best scrum? Gloucester were up there, but you looked at who had the best maul, Gloucester were up there as well.

“With my injury I’m actually training with Trev at the moment, we’re doing neck and core sessions together. I reckon he’s ready to play, Trev.” Is he stronger than Afo? “No, no, absolutely not,” he assures us. 

Born and raised in North London to Nigerian parents, where a love of Manchester United was the sporting force uniting the family, it’s safe to say rugby was not on the agenda in Afo’s early childhood. “I was active as a child,” he recalls. “Me and my brothers, we all played different sports, we all started in football but branched out. My younger brother stayed in football, my older brother played basketball.

“I started as a keeper then moved out to attacking mid. My dad tried to start us all out as keepers, I think he thought he knew what he was doing. I used to swim as well, growing up was pretty much football, swimming and riding a bike around with my brothers and my mates.”

It was only at thirteen, when his school put on rugby during PE, that he first came in contact with the sport. “We were just doing the basics, I thought it was a bit weird to be honest,” he admits. “Apart from one mate of mine, nobody played it, it was all football. I remember my teacher trying to explain to me the positions and I was like, what is this? I was definitely a bit iffy about it, laughing at my mate saying like, ‘there’s no way people do this’.

“But after that he took me down to Saracens Amateur, and as we progressed into contact, I was like, ‘woah’.”

A whole new world was opening up for Afo. “Rugby wasn’t in my family at all, never ever,” he continues. “It’s actually quite funny, I told my mum I wanted to leave my football club mid-season to go play rugby, and when I told her she sat me down and shouted at me and said, ‘if you leave and you hate it, you’re not going back, because you’re messing your club about’. But now, she claims she’s the person who got me to start playing rugby even though she had nothing to do with it, she didn’t even want me to play.”

“My dad cracked on with it straight away, he took me to my first session – didn’t have a clue what’s going on obviously. Interestingly mum has always watched all sports, she loves the Olympics, tennis, football, she’ll watch anything, so she’ll have watched rugby before I started playing. But she still doesn’t understand it, she thinks she does, but she doesn’t.”

Once rugby was in the picture, everything else soon took a back seat. “From reception up to year six I loved school, but I don’t know what changed, there just came a point where I just couldn’t be bothered with it. This was before I found rugby as well – once I’d found rugby, that was it. I still did all my A levels, and I went to uni for a bit, but I was just done with it really.” 

In terms of his rugby, it was a speedy ascent. At fifteen, barely two years after discovering the sport, he was being selected for Middlesex, and was soon picked up by the London Irish academy. At seventeen he signed a senior academy contract, made his England Under-18s debut, and a month after his eighteenth birthday he made his debut versus Harlequins in the Premiership Cup.

And the whirlwind hasn’t stopped swirling, despite a few injury setbacks. Two years on from his debut and with little more than ten professional appearances under his belt, his name is already in contention for England squad selection, an extraordinary rise for a man who, if it wasn’t for his friend dragging him along to a club session, could very easily have never connected with the sport at all.  “The London Irish catchment area was a bit mental, it was all a bit messed up with Saracens and Harlequins, and Wasps still had bits from before they moved away,” says Afo. “But what that meant was there’s a lot of people who fell through the cracks in the system. I played with a lot of very good rugby players who I definitely thought would crack on, but maybe they had a bad day on the trial and then they were gone. Those trial days were mental, there must have been thousands of kids from like 8am until 4pm with just games on games. 

“In state schools in London, rugby just is not a thing,” he continues. “It was always basketball, football, it would be great if it was introduced especially from a younger age for the skill development side. It’s something I massively struggled with when I got to the academy, just being able to pass the ball, it would be so good for people to get that from a young age.

“Before I played, I guess my perception was that nobody really played rugby. I didn’t know anything about it, didn’t care about it. I knew Saracens existed because we played at the Power League nearby, and there’s a leisure centre there where I’d go swimming. I knew it kind of got busy around there sometimes, but I didn’t think much of it. You just need to show people what rugby is I think, and maybe they’ll want to go play.”

Thankfully for the sport, by sixteen Afo was a rugby obsessive, watching every game and highlight reel he could get his hands on. When he made his professional debut for Irish in a 30-26 win at the Stoop, scarcely five years had gone by since he’d first picked up a rugby ball. “It was a big occasion, out of the academy house I lived in four of us were set to make our debut, and two of us got on. It felt like it was a minute [he actually got about five].

“It’s weird, I’ve made a few debuts at the Stoop. My 20s debut was there too and so was my England A debut. I don’t think I’ve lost there either.”

After the collapse of Irish, it’s the surrounds of Gloucester that will be home to the next stages of Afo’s career. On the doorstep of the Cotswolds, and famous for woolsack racing, rolling cheese down a hill and being home to the world’s loudest town crier, it’s certainly a new experience from cosmopolitan North London. “This place is interesting, it’s definitely different,” says Afo. “It’s not like there’s a lot going on; in London it’s always busy. I remember the first time I heard a siren here, like it registers. I was like, ‘oh my gosh’, I’ve been here four months, and I haven’t heard a siren. I was quite accustomed to that constant stimulus growing up in London, but I’ve settled down now and got used to it. You walk around and most days you see at least ten people in a Gloucester jersey.”

With the Six Nations ongoing, talk turns to the prospect of England. Afo’s fellow under-20s prop and good friend Asher Opoku-Fordjour has already made inroads to Steve Borthwick’s squad, making his senior debut in the autumn internationals off the bench against Japan. He’s back in the squad for the Six Nations too, somewhere Afo is desperate to join him. Is he ready to make the step up to international level? “It’s hard to say,” he admits, “because I don’t have a clue what it’s like compared to club. I train with people who play Premiership week in week out, we don’t have many internationals at Gloucester, so it’s hard to say. I speak to Ash, and he’s said the step up is big, the game is very quick and there are a lot more contacts. I won’t know until hopefully one day I get there.”

With the British & Irish Lions jetting off to Australia, England’s two-Test summer tour to Argentina is certainly a chance for Afo to make that next step, a tour where new talents have often been given their first taste of international rugby; the 2013 equivalent saw the likes of Billy Vunipola and Jonny May make their debuts, with Tom Curry winning his first cap in 2017. “I can see maybe two England tightheads going with the Lions, which could potentially open up a space for me,” says Afo. “The opportunity is possibly there, I’ve just got to take it.”

He’s got the natural attributes for sure. The physical ones are obvious, but it’s his mental qualities, being able to flick the switch from the affable man that sits in front of us to the presence you see on the pitch, that really sets him apart. “It’s just my competitiveness,” he says. “The way my mindset is, even when I train is very different to when I play, it’s like I’m like a different person. 

Has he always been like that? “It came about with rugby really. I played basketball, which is more American, and in that sport its normal to be trash talking constantly, you’re always in people’s ear. But I played basketball for a bit of fun with my mates. Football, it’s quite technical as well.

“And then with rugby, its either get belted or belt someone, simple as that,” he laughs, “so I think that’s where that switch came from.”

At just twenty years old he’s barely even begun – what do the next few years look like? “I have specific goals for specific things. Last year it was all about getting fit and coming back better, so I spent a lot of time with Trev and he was like, ‘where you need your development is your neck, back and core strength’, so I spent all my time hammering that, which benefitted me thisseason. If I didn’t have time with injuries last season to develop those, I don’t think I’d be at the point I’m at now. 

“I’m also working on the skills side, that’s what I’m chasing – once you join a rugby programme there’s not many times where you can just sit and develop your skills. Thorlo [Ollie Thorley] has challenged me to learn how to juggle and I’m almost, almost there. He said it’s really helped him.”

There’s so much more to come from Afo, but England are already keeping close tabs on him. “I have these player development meetings, so for me it would be Steve Borthwick and Tom Harrison [England scrum coach] who would come down, and they’ll bring some S&C’s as well. It’ll just be a meeting about where I’m at, where I need to get to, where I compare with other props. 

“Other times, I’ll just go meet Tom Harrison for a coffee or sit on the phone and talk and about how the weekend’s gone, or about the weekend coming and what he wants to see from me.

“It’s nice, it keeps me positive, keeps me on my toes, keeps me hungry. If I could go back in time and tell the guy I was at fourteen where I am, he would not believe me. In fact, I reckon he’d tell me to eff off.” 

Story by James Price

Pictures by Nick Dawe

This extract was taken from issue 29 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.