An ankle injury that changed everything
Jack van Poortvliet was wearing England’s No. 9 shirt in the summer of 2023. One twisted ankle in a warm-up game against Wales was enough to blow his path off course. Alex Mitchell stepped in, kept the jersey, and England finished third at the World Cup without him.
Three years on, the Leicester scrum-half looks back on that turning point without sugar-coating it. “Time matters a lot. It affected me quite a bit, but it also gave me time to think about what I needed to improve,” he told Planet Rugby on the fringes of the Premiership season launch.
The comeback came in stages. Cameos off the bench, a few starts when Mitchell or Ben Spencer were unavailable. Nothing straightforward.
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Mitchell’s injury opened the door again
Another injury dragged him back into the picture. Mitchell picked up a hamstring problem in England’s defeat by Ireland at Twickenham in February, then broke down again in May. He missed the whole summer tour.
Van Poortvliet started all three Tests in the Nations Championship, with wins over Fiji and Argentina along the way. At 25, he’s no longer the kind of player who is just being given a look.
His mindset has shifted too. “It gave me a better sense of how lucky I am, and maybe it brought back my enjoyment of the game. When I was enjoying it, I was reading the game better and playing better.”
2027 firmly in his sights
He doesn’t dance around the target: this squad has “100 per cent the ability to win” the 2027 World Cup. Steve Borthwick will go into the tournament with nearly five years in charge, compared with just a handful of months in 2023. England, meanwhile, haven’t lifted the trophy since 2003.
The competition is fierce at scrum-half, though. Van Poortvliet isn’t pretending otherwise. “It’s still a long way off, and I’ve got a lot of work to do between now and then.”
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