Henry Slade

The leg cracked three times as the weight of the opposing forward sent Henry Slade in the opposite direction to his limb. It wasn’t going to be good. It hurt like hell, but he wasn’t going to have gas and air, not after what happened to Ben White.

Starting from the Devon-Somerset border in the north before meandering its way down south through sixty or so miles of countryside, passing through towns, villages and even a city en route, the River Exe is the biggest of deals in the world of Devonshire waterways. 

It’s been around a long time, far longer than the Jonny-come-latelys that live on its doorstep and stole its name too. Exmouth, Exminster, Exeter – all got their ‘Ex’ prefix from the river. So important was the river that the locals even deemed itself worthy of a protector, and built Exeter (meaning fortress of the Exe) to look over it.

It’s carried traders and warriors, pirates and pioneers, indulged swimmers and scuba divers, and is home to avocets, oystercatchers, redshanks and 20,000 or so other assorted migrating birds each year. 

In short, there isn’t much that hasn’t been on it, in it, under it or through it. 

Except for, until now, a fully suited England rugby international.

He’s about to enter the River Exe from Topsham, a town for which the word ‘quaint’ was probably first created. Even the fact it’s named after a former landlord called Toppa seems fitting – he sounds like the kind of jolly fella you’d want as a landlord, he probably wouldn’t mind if your rent was a day or two late. 

Topsham is where antique hunters go for rare finds, birdwatchers go for rare sightings, and people go to stroll. Every house feels like it’s got a story tell. 

Right now, we’re giving the late-afternoon strollers their own story to tell, or at least a question to ask. Such as, why is fully suited Exeter Chief and England centre, Henry Slade, on the edge of the water looking as if he’s about to go for a swim? “Really? You want me to go in there?” Henry asks our photographer. Who nods. “It’ll look good,” he reassures. “Can I take my shoes off?” “Of course.” “I’ve done a lot of things for photoshoots, but not this,” says a wary but obliging Henry.

Wearing a brand-new blue suit we’ve brought especially for the occasion, he wades into the estuary. “What is that?” he points to some particularly foamy water near him. “It’s fine,” we reassure, again. “The water’s definitely clean around here.”

After a few minutes of effortless posing, Henry returns to the shore. A couple walking their dog approach him, or rather their dog does. Being a dog lover – Henry has a cockapoo called Frank – he makes a big fuss. The pressing issue of wearing wet suit trousers takes priority though. “I’m going to take my trousers off now,” he politely warns the couple, who take their leave as the Exeter Chief does exactly what he said he would, by the side of the road.

Henry is wearing a Maxwell Textured Navy Slim Fit Italian Infinity Active Suit from TM Lewin, £299

We walk through the streets of Topsham, stopping occasionally when the photographer sees a ‘good bit of wall’ for a backdrop. Henry talks about his life. 

Born in Plymouth, brought up in Yealmpton, the oldest of three boys, Henry’s parents both hail from farming stock. His dad John is a surveyor and his mum, a former hairdresser, was passionate about respite foster care – opening their house to ensure the Slade household was always a full, often noisy, one. 

Although he’s the oldest at 26, it’s the middle one, 23-year-old Seb (the third, Albert, is 18), who is the most confident. “He’s nuts,” says Henry. “He’s at drama school doing a course called CDT, which is acting and directing. I don’t know what acting he wants to do but that is what he’s born to do, he’s mental.

“If you sit down with him, you’re barely able to speak because he won’t stop talking – always impersonating everyone. He’s just very good with his words.”

Are you the opposite? “No, I’m just pretty normal, I’m not as extrovert as him – he’s off the chart. 

“I did do house drama, I just didn’t do all the productions like he did. I did more sport and things like graphic design.”

Conversations stop for photographs. And a car drives by, very slowly. Then stops, as the driver wants to wish Henry good luck. The presence of another car behind moves them on. The other car then also stops and repeats the scene. 

In Topsham, everyone seems quite lovely, never wanting to put anyone out or intrude, but still feeling the need to wish him good luck or just say something nice to him. We’re definitely not in London anymore. “I go to London for a day and I’m stressed,” says Henry. “I can’t cope, nobody says thank you when you hold the door open, people knock into you…

“I like [in Devon] how there’s places that are busy enough if you want to be busy, but not very far away from that, there are places where you can get out of sight of everyone and just do your own thing, have your own space – I get the best of both worlds here. 

“I live just outside of town, right next to the hills, and I’ve got a dog [the aforementioned Frank], so get to go on loads of nice walks and play a bit of golf.”

Good handicap? “No, just 18 or something,” he says. “My best mate, who lives with me, is a professional golfer and he just got on the PGA Tour, he’s called Leon Fricker. 

“We went to school together, he used to live next door too, so we’ve been best mates since we were four. He got a full scholarship to America for his golf so went there for five or six years and I didn’t see much of him. When he came back he moved in with me and it’s been nice to have him here. He’s away in China at the moment on the tour there for three or four months.”

Any crossover between the two sports? “I think it’s very different, golf is all about you, it’s individual,” considers Henry. “There are certain things that translate. I still do a fair bit of goalkicking, but when I used to do goalkicking all the time that was a bit like golf where, for every shot, you have to concentrate 100 per cent. 

“It’s a closed skill,” he continues, “it’s all up to you. I think the main difference with him is that while we travel a fair bit, he travels all the time. And I enjoy playing a team sport too when you’ve got other boys around, helping you out.”

Henry had become set on a rugby career in his teens. Picking up the sport after a minis coach asked him to join in a session when he noticed Henry watching brother Seb play, he started to take it seriously in his early teens. “One of my coaches came up to me after training and asked if wanted to pursue rugby as a career,” recalls Henry.  

“Obviously I did, but didn’t know how it would happen when I was tucked away down in Devon.”

At the time Chiefs weren’t a top-flight  club, and hopes of full-time professional rugby were further afield. “Exeter were in the Championship and actually Plymouth Albion were the local club I supported,” he admits. “I did go to watch Exeter at the County Ground [the Chiefs’ former ground] quite a few times though, but only to watch them play Plymouth. 

“Yeah, sorry guys,” he says to non-present Chiefs fans, “I supported Plymouth.”

Before he could even think about which sides from up country he might be able to play for, he had to make the county side – which proved to be his first stumbling block. “I didn’t get into the county side because I was too small,” he says, adding, “I wasn’t that tall and I was too skinny.

“I’m 6ft 2in now but I didn’t get pubes until I was about 16, I was a late bloomer.” 

He laughs now, but says the county rejection was hard at the time. “We were moving house and I was staying at my nan’s house that night when I found out. I remember going back there and just crying. I never cry, but I was distraught for days.”

That was at under-15s level, so while still young, he already had his heart set on rugby. “Academically, there were five sets, and I was set two,” he says. “I wasn’t proper smart, but not stupid either. If I didn’t play rugby though, I had no idea what I was going to do.

“I didn’t know if I was good enough,” he admits. “One of my coaches came up to me when I was doing kicking practice and said I had to keep the right mindset, and not to let anyone tell me I couldn’t do it – I had the same speech from my dad.”

A combination of anger and support, drove him on. “I was upset but proper pissed off,” he says. “But it was probably good for me, as I went away and did loads of running, practise, weights – I put on a bit of size and got in the next year.”

Playing for his local club Ivybridge until he was 16, he then turned out for Truro College who were in the academy leagues. “Mum had to drive me all the way down to Truro twice a week, which was a bit of a ball ache for her,” he admits.

Devon under-16s became South West of England, which was where he was spotted by then England under-18 coach John Fletcher, who took him on tour to South Africa. An invite to train with Exeter Chiefs followed and, as the club reached the Premiership, he signed for them. “I finished my A-level exams on the Thursday then the following Sunday I went up to Exeter to start pre-season,” he says. 

Faces that had first appeared either with or against Henry on the regional circuit and then together with England under-18s and under-20s became his closest friends. “We were the first bulk of academy  signings,” says Henry. “There were four or five us, me, Dickie [Luke Cowan-Dickie], Nowellsy [Jack Nowell], Sam [Hill] and Dave [Ewers] as well, even though he’s a bit older. We all came up together.

“We left school at 18 and moved into the academy house – it was decent actually, a six-bedroom bungalow. It was perfect for what we needed, although I’m glad to be out of there now.”

His first senior rugby came with Plymouth Albion. “I played at fullback for Plymouth on loan, I was only 18 and it was good for my game,  Graham Dawe ran tough sessions – even the Thursday night before a game when it’s normally just a team run, he made the rucks fully contested. He wanted us to be hardened.

“Jack [Nowell] was there too, but we didn’t get on the pitch at the same time, it was always one of us starting, the other on the bench, as Graham didn’t want to have two 18-year-olds on the pitch at the same time.”

At Exeter, LV Cup appearances ultimately paved the way to a breakthrough, but not at his preferred position of ten. “We had loads of injuries in the centre and only Sam Hill was fit for a pre-season game, so on the Monday night we were emailed the team and I was at 13 – I just thought, ‘what the fuck?’.

“I didn’t say anything that night, but went into the coaches’ office the next day and saw Ali [Hepher] and said, ‘are you sure about this? Am I really 13?’ ‘Yeah mate, it’ll be sweet, give it a go’. 

“I was just happy to be playing,” he says. “I’d played a few games the season before, mostly off the bench, at ten.”

The game went well and he saw more action over the course of the season, slowly becoming a regular in the midfield. “I’m comfortable at 13, but I still really enjoy playing ten and try and get in there during training as much as I can. 

“I just like to get my hands on the ball, which happens more at ten – you also get to goalkick, and you’re in charge too. 

“I always keep ten as an option on my contract – just for the value of it!”

England saw the value in Henry early with Stuart Lancaster calling him when he was just 21. “I was young, but confident,” he says. “I’d had a good season with Exeter and it was like first day of school, I didn’t know that many people, so it was daunting but it’s what you always want to do as a kid and you’d finally got there.

“I think I fitted in pretty quickly. When you find yourself doing what you’d been trying to achieve all your life you have to sit back and pinch yourself.”

As confident as Henry felt, in a world cup year, he still didn’t think he’d make the final cut. “I wasn’t expecting to get picked for the squad, there was a lot of good centres,” he says, “but I kept making the next cut, then the next cut, then I had a one-on-one with Stuart and I was in. Shit. I didn’t know what to say, I was shell-shocked. 

“I didn’t expect to play in that first game, but then JJ [Jonathan Joseph] took a knock. There were four centres, Brad Barritt and Sam Burgess were like for like, and me and JJ were like for like, so I did think I might get a go at 13. 

“Stuart said he nearly put me in, but then went for Brad and Sam in midfield. That was frustrating, but you’ve got to live with what the coach says, you can’t complain, you’ve got to get on with your job. I got my world cup cap against Uruguay, which I’ll remember forever but it was too late to have any effect.”

Although on the periphery from a starting point of view, England going out of the home world cup still had an impact. “Everyone was devastated, we were in it as a team,” he says. “The side was pretty similar for those first three games, but we [the non-playing squad members] were still with them emotionally. It didn’t happen for us that year but, having been there and experienced it, that makes me want to go to this next one with more of a part to play.”

After the world cup, Henry’s club form continued where it left off, until he suffered a severe injury. “I was always worried as a kid about breaking a leg. I’d see it happen on the pitch and it would freak me out,” he says. “So when it happened to me…”

Against Wasps in the December, Henry was standing over a ruck when an opponent tried and failed to clear him out. With the first player now on his leg, another attempted to clear him, sending Henry one way while his leg didn’t move. “I felt two or three snaps,” he says. “My fibula spiral fractured, so I had a plate put in there and I ruptured my syndesmosis ligaments and ruptured the deltoid ligament in my ankle – they said it was going to take about four or five months. 

“It was awful, but [at the time] I didn’t want to have gas and air. I thought I’d done something but couldn’t be sure until the scans. 

“I knew it [the scan] would probably be bad but a couple of weeks before, one of the lads, Ben White, hurt his ankle, got stretchered off, gas and air, everything. Then when he had a scan he hadn’t done anything and everyone took the piss out of him, so I didn’t want to be that guy who had gas and air for nothing.”

Four to five months out of action was the doctor’s estimate. “I wanted to be back quicker,” says Henry. “So I didn’t have any days off, I was in at weekends, all the time, trying to get it better as quick as I could. I had the operation the next morning which was great because if I’d had to wait a week for the swelling to down I’ve have gone mental – I’d have to spend a whole week not getting better.

“I was lucky because we had some stuff to help – we had an alterG (anti-gravity) treadmill that takes the weight off and allows you to run quicker and I went to an oxygen chamber to speed up healing. The physios also worked tirelessly to help me and I got back in about three and a half months.”

Henry makes a point of highlighting the support of his coaches, Rob and Ali, with their mindset clearly the main reason behind the club’s sustained success. 

“Rob Baxter has an aura about him,” he says, recalling when he first came to the club. “You’d see him in the corridor and he’d just have this presence.

“Rob and all the other coaches are just very level-headed. He doesn’t have major ups and downs in emotions, which is important for someone in charge of the boys. Because there are so many different characters in the squad you need a rock to be leader and to give us all a stable platform. It’s good for the squad. 

“We’d have a good win and the boys would be ecstatic and while the coaches would be happy, they’d try and bring us down a bit, so we didn’t get too carried away. It’s the same if we lose and get beaten well – the players will be down, but they bring us back up. It’s important, especially in those early days.

Do they every lose it? “You don’t see it that much,” says Henry. “The only time Rob will ever lose it, is if he thinks you’re not trying hard enough. He and Ali wouldn’t criticise us for dropping the ball, but they’d criticise for not sprinting back to tackle someone or not sprinting back to get on someone’s shoulder for support.

“That’s very much what gets instilled in you here,” continues Henry. “It’s what I believe in too and when I heard about how they ran the club, that was why I wanted to be here.”

If breaking his leg was Henry’s low, his highs have been numerous, capturing the Premiership title obviously at the top. “Winning the Premiership and doing it with your mates, people you’ve known for so long, is just unbelievable,” he says. “We had a hell of a weekend after that – I can’t tell you about it though, team rules.” 

The kick that helped them to the final – a booming penalty that took Exeter within driving range in the dying moments against Saracens – runs the final close. 

“A couple of minutes left, we’re four points down, the penalty was quite far out, so I’ve just gone, fuck it,” he recalls. “I had to get it as far as I could because anything short of ten metres out was a very tough drive for the forwards. Back then a penalty out to touch after 80 minutes didn’t give you another lineout, so there wouldn’t be another chance. 

“I lined it up, absolutely wellied it, and it came off my foot so nice. I saw Alex Goode shuffling to get underneath and thought, ‘oh no, it’s not going out’, but it just carried enough.

“Then the forwards scored and everyone went nuts.”

Henry is now an England regular. Aside from bench caps against Japan and Italy – where England often rest first-choice players anyway – 22-cap Henry has started every Test since last year’s summer tour to South Africa. 

Is he now relaxed in the England environment? “I wouldn’t use the word relaxed but I feel comfortable, I’m confident there now,” he says. “Obviously international rugby is an intense environment, but I’ve enjoyed the last year or so, getting more game time there. I feel more confident the more I play. 

“I think, as a squad, we’re in a good place at the moment. We had a sticky patch a while back but you sometimes learn more in defeat than victory.

“Apart from a couple of second halves and 20 minutes here and there, we had a good Six Nations, we had a good autumn and, yeah, we’re in a good spot.” 

And Eddie Jones? “He’s good,” says Henry. “He’ll come around, say, when we’re having lunch and talk to all the boys individually, and have a joke – he’s pretty relaxed in that respect. 

“But when we come to meetings and training he demands high standards, as you should do, and as all the boys do. As a player you want to hear it straight, you don’t want to be told something just to make you feel better. He tells it straight, exactly how he feels. It’s not always nice to hear but you definitely prefer it that way. 

“On the rugby side of things, he gives us real clarity at the start of the week about how we’re going to play, what we’re going to do and puts us all on the same page. When you have that clarity from the top, it makes things easier.”

It was also the first time we had all been able to witness the partnership of Manu Tuilagi and Henry. “We’d been in training camps together, we’d got on well, always have done, but I never played with him – he’d been injured when I was fit, and vice versa. I think we’ve got completely different strengths and his strengths cover up my weaker parts and my strengths cover up his. 

“It was nice to have someone that big to either get you over the gain line or hold defenders to free up space.”

While Henry was cementing new friendships in England’s midfield, off the field, he already had plenty of old ones in place, with Exeter Chiefs supplying six players to Eddie’s full squad, more proof that the Devon club’s model is one to be envied. “I’ve lived with some of those boys for years, and trained with them every day since I was 17, so it was really nice to have the boys up there.”

Whatever the outcome of the season finale, Henry and Exeter Chiefs have had another successful campaign, securing the first play-off spot in record time and, with Stuart Hogg’s arrival in the summer, look set to getting  even stronger.  

“I’ve never experienced anywhere else, but people who come here from other places, say there is something special here and that it’s the best place they’ve experienced rugby,” says Henry. “Nobody really wants to leave and so many people have said that you’ve got to listen to that – we’re definitely doing something right.”

Words by: Alex Mead

Pictures by: Rick Truscott

This extract was taken from issue 6 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.