Earl and England look ahead to Rugby World Cup semi-final
England Rugby World Cup ace Tom Curry may have been a Premier League football star if it wasn’t for an own goal he scored during a trial with Manchester City more than a decade ago. Curry was in inspired form on Sunday as he helped his country defeat Fiji in the Rugby World Cup quarter-finals as England booked a semi-final showdown with South Africa.
Curry and his twin brother Ben, who saw his hopes of making the Rugby World Cup squad ended by a hamstring injury he sustained at the end of last season, were huge City fans when they were growing up and concentrated their efforts on excelling in the round ball game, with the pair both plying their trade at centre-back. But they had their football careers cut short after being invited to showcase their talents in front of Citizens coaches.
“Ben had managed to get us into City in the first place, because I had split my shin open when the scout came originally,” Tom told The Telegraph in 2019. “We were in Year Nine at the time. But when we had the trial I think it was that own goal I scored that got us both kicked out.
“I never really thought about being a professional rugby player either, I just played for the love of it and it turned out like this. Being rubbish at football meant I just had to carry on with rugby.”
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Football’s loss was rugby’s gain, with Tom going on to become the youngest player to start an England international for 90 years when he won his first cap against Argentina five days before his 19th birthday in 2017.
The flanker went on to represent his country at the 2019 Rugby World Cup and has been a key player under current head coach Steve Borthwick. But his 2023 World Cup campaign was rocked just three minutes into England’s first game of the tournament as he was sent off against Argentina for a high tackle. He subsequently missed the pool stage victories over Japan and Chile but returned for the encounter with Samoa. And he will once again be thrust into the starting line-up when his team take on the Springboks in Paris on Saturday.
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Curry’s rugby pedigree runs in the family as his uncle John Olver was also an international player and won three caps for England at hooker during his playing days, And Olver previously joked that his nephews were never going to make it as footballers.
“Trust me they are cloggers,” Olver explained four years ago. “Another cousin [Patrick Jarrett] is on the books of Stoke City, but they are not footballers. They were not bad cricketers. But it was always rugby really.”
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