Croft's star keeps on rising

JOHNNY WATTERSONtalks to Leicester's Tom Croft who was last night called into the Lions squad

THIS HAS been a hectic week in the short career of England’s Tom Croft.

Last night he was called up as a replacement for Alan Quinlan on the Lions squad to South Africa.There’s also the Heineken Cup final to consider – and his selection on the England squad for the summer Test series against Argentina which he had to withdraw from last night.

If there was ever a player to have been shouldered into a Lions squad by a clamorous local media, it’s Croft. The lad has some distractions. And talent.

England manager Martin Johnson has called him a hybrid player. Croft believes he knows what the World Cup winner means. Last weekend in the Premiership final Croft played at lock. This week it probably won’t change but he could easily figure at six. Johnson’s hybrid comment, however, comes more from Croft’s athletic style of rangy running and his lithe physique than movement between the rows.

“I’m no typical 18st, bruiser secondrow, I suppose,” says the 16½st player. “. . . a bit more lightweight and I suppose and I’m a bit quicker on my feet than most secondrows. But no, no, no it doesn’t bother me. He (Johnson) can call me whatever he wants to.”

Croft is a greyhound in an area where players, comparatively, move at glacial speeds. Where he gives Leicester poke is with his open running and his agility in moving in the lineouts as players jockey for position. But he doesn’t just outpace the opposing pack. He’s well disposed to embarrassing wingers and centres.

Croft is from Kingsclere in Berkshire. The last to emerge from there similar in build and movement was Mill Reef.

During England fitness tests last summer Croft was beating many of the backs over 40 metres and in Leicester they declared him the second fastest in the club after winger Tom Varndell. Aaron Mauger, Leicester’s All Black centre, believes Croft is quicker than any backrow in New Zealand.

“It all comes from tests we did four or five years ago,” he answers without a flat denial. “We haven’t been tested since and there are lots of younger forwards who have come in, the likes of Ben Young

. . . so really that was a while ago.”

But where Leicester coach Richard Cockerill and England have gained in Croft’s meteoric rise over just 18 months, contemporary dance has lost out. Had he not been bored by football young Croft may have become a professional dancer, when the mother of his best friend, a dance teacher, roped him into the West Berkshire Youth Dance Company.

“It’s all part of my life,” he says. “Some of the guys find it amusing. I find it has helped. I get stick for it but at the end of the day I find it’s got me some of the attributes I have now. It’s being light on your feet, being a bit agile. Obviously the older you get, it might drop off. But I believe it’s given me a lot of core abilities, speed and that sort of thing.”

With 13 caps for England he has passed the rising star phase of his career but few would recognise him on or off the pitch. Where former England wunderkind Danny Cipriani tumbles around nightclubs and puts his rugby career at risk, Croft has, sure-footed, scaled heights.

By Tuesday afternoon of this week he knew he was reselected onto the England squad but hadn’t looked at the roll call, knowing only that team-mate Sam Vesty was with him.

The Lions issue swirled around him too but in Leicester they’re intolerant of anything other than a lockerroom view. The Heineken Cup and its European dimension has been the only distraction this week.

“This is basically the biggest thing you can win, as a club, in rugby,” he says. “You speak to people like Julian White, Ben Kay and Cozza (Martin Corry), when they speak about it, I don’t think you actually comprehend how big it is until you’ve actually won it.

“Obviously guys have won it here but I wasn’t even watching it (in 2002). I was about 14 at the time. To me it’s a massive cup that I’m itching to win. I’ve won the EDF. I’ve won the Guinness now.”

Now it’s either lock Leo Cullen or flanker Shane Jennings. Former team-mates. That’s where his mind is.