Rugby World Cup: England’s Simon Middleton on Yorkshire upbringing

If England head coach Simon Middleton can relate to anything, it is hard work.

That grafting spirit is what first drew him into the England rugby set-up and is what has set the side on a history-making course.

Middleton’s Red Roses begin their World Cup campaign on Saturday as favourites.

They are the first side to have won 25 Tests in a row, have not lost since 2019 and have been top of the world ranking since November 2020.

Middleton became the first head coach of a women’s side to win World Rugby coach of the year in 2021 and has claimed four Six Nations Grand Slams with the team in the past six years.

The hard work is paying off and that is why he has “made a fuss” about the Red Roses’ record run – but the job is not done yet.

“Is anybody working any harder than these players are?” he asks.

“Maybe, but I’d like to see them if they are. It makes me massively proud to be part of that.

“Ultimately we know what the biggest goal is. I have said if you want to go down as one of the greatest teams ever, we have to be successful here.”

‘Connecting’ with hard-working players

Middleton began working in a factory aged 16 on the same day as his final exam at school.

He started out mending pallets, progressed to sweeping up on the shop floor and kept on rising until he began coaching full time in 2006.

Middleton’s ascent in the factory tracked his rugby trajectory as the former winger initially played union at Knottingley, then got picked up to play league with Castleford, before returning to union and going on to coach with Leeds.

Given England’s women’s XVs side did not get widespread professional contracts until 2019, he says having balanced a career with playing helped him understand England when he first got involved in 2010.

Middleton vividly recalls the moment he first saw a Red Roses training session. They were working incredibly hard and he says “that’s probably one of the reasons I did connect with it so much”.

“When I first came in I was so impressed with them,” he tells BBC Sport.

“It was very much like anybody who has never seen women’s rugby before, I was really taken aback by the standard and particularly by the commitment of the players and just how tough they train.

“It just had loads of ingredients that I’ve always held dear.”

Red Roses’ Pontefract faithful

Middleton speaks from a hotel in Auckland where England are preparing to begin their World Cup campaign and he has travelled the world as head coach of England and Team GB sevens -but most of his life has been spent in a seven-mile wedge of Yorkshire.

He laughs heartily when asked if he ever considered moving away from the Pontefract area.

Born in a village called Kellington, he moved the five miles to Knottingley aged five and that is where he would eventually take up a factory job.

At 22, Middleton married his wife Janet, with whom he now has two children, and they made the two-mile leap to Pontefract in 2000.

With Twickenham in London the home of English rugby, it is a blessing that Middleton likes driving.

His longevity in the town has helped recruit Red Roses fans at the local gym, where Middleton says he is one of the younger members and where followers are committed enough to embrace the anti-social New Zealand kick-off times.

He jokes: “The old guys are there and they never fail to come up to me saying, ‘I saw your girls playing, they’re unbelievable. I’ve got all the times written down, I get up during the night anyway’.”

‘If you work hard, you get what you want’

Middleton led England to a World Cup final in 2017, but they were beaten 41-32 as New Zealand claimed their fifth title.

He says it took two years to work out what had gone wrong but in the end, of course, more hard work seemed to be the answer.

Middleton’s ‘physical pressure practices’ are now infamous; exhausting training under game conditions to test the mental and physical limits of players.

Off the pitch, his coaching approach has mellowed. Players are respected and accountable for the side’s performance and it’s “very much about the carrot rather than the stick these days”.

The tastiest carrot in world rugby looms in New Zealand as England seek a place in the World Cup final on 12 November.

For Middleton, victory in that match would be a vindication.

He was left jobless in 2011, when he felt sure he was about to become head coach at Leeds.

Middleton describes that as “one of the greatest learning points” in his life.

“I’d always had two jobs from the moment I started being paid to play rugby,” he says.

“I went from that to not having a job at all. It was a pretty dark period. You’re in a situation with two young kids, a mortgage and no job. It was a serious situation.”

He took things into his own hands and sent out leaflets offering coaching services in colleges and universities.

Eventually that led to a job as a director of rugby at a school and, having been involved with England briefly before their 2010 World Cup campaign, he joined the national XVs side as an assistant coach in 2014 before taking over in 2015.

Reflecting on his journey, Middleton says: “I haven’t planned a right lot in my life.

“I tend to roll with things then react. Right at the foundation of working at [glass factory] Rockware, the family I come from and how I’ve done is hard work.

“If you really work hard, you’ll get what you want in the end.”