When Richard Wigglesworth made his Premiership debut England were months away from winning the World Cup, Sir Clive Woodward was still plain old Clive and doing your extras meant one for the road. At a time when grand statements about the game are 10 a penny – some say it has gone soft, others that it faces ruin – there are few better placed than Wigglesworth to offer a welcome dose of realism.
He barely remembers his first Premiership outing – off the bench for Sale against Bath in November 2002 – and does not really do nostalgia. There is no “good old days” spiel, more an appreciation of how much English rugby has progressed since he was a “scrawny little 19-year-old”. So as he prepares for his 266th Premiership appearance it pays to listen to Wigglesworth discuss the game’s current health. “It has moved on immeasurably. So much has changed from then to now, both in the rules but more so in the standard of what we have got, on and off the field,” says Wigglesworth.
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“We have got a really good product now and that wasn’t always the case at the infancy of the sport. There are lot of nice grounds, nice surfaces, clubs are playing good rugby. There’s always a lot of doom and gloom around but I think we should be pretty proud of the Premiership now and the standard of how many good teams we have.”
It is fitting that on Sunday against Gloucester Wigglesworth eclipses a record set by his former Saracens captain Steve Borthwick. For Borthwick was in the Bath team when Wigglesworth came off the bench at Heywood Road and to give a sense of how long ago it was, Ben Earl, who wears No 8 for Saracens on Sunday, was four years old at the time. “[I was a] scrawny little gobby thing,” Wigglesworth says. “I look back now and cringe at what I did. I was banging on the door thinking I should be playing when I wasn’t. I was just desperate to get a crack at it and thought I was good enough. I probably wasn’t but that did not stop me knocking on the door haranguing the coaches. In fact, I still do that now.
“I signed out of school and I remember lying on my form, saying that I was 11 and a half stone. I was 11 stone. I am a better weight now than I was back then. I have had to move with the game. I am definitely a smarter rugby player than I was then. I was lucky in a position like scrum-half that counts for so much that you can always learn and improve. I have enjoyed that part of it.”
The received wisdom is that the most obvious change since the start of Wigglesworth’s career is the size of the average player. To an extent he agrees but he believes the differences are more nuanced. “We have always had big athletes in the game,” he says. “There’s now more of them. If you look at how the second-row position has developed over the past few years, it has gone from a beanpole and a workhorse to people like Maro [Itoje], George [Kruis], Nick [Isiekwe] and Will Skelton.
“But what is also underestimated is how much more skilful the game has become. It is faster and more attritional from a defensive point of view. Everyone flies off the line and there’s no time any more. With that it takes a lot more skill to break down these defences. That often gets missed.”
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This is not Wigglesworth’s first foray into the record books. His role in Saracens’ Premiership title triumph last season puts him alone as the only player with five winner’s medals and it would be naive to suggest he will not add to that. He is 35 now but demonstrated his persistence in winning a first Six Nations start for England in a decade in March. “Everyone says they’re not bothered about records but I want to make it a record that’s tough to beat,” he adds. “If it’s yours you may as well make it tough to beat. I’ve got quite a few more in me and let’s make it a mark that, if someone gets past it, I’ll say fair play.”
If anyone does beat it, there is a fair chance it will be someone from Saracens. Jamie George makes his 200th club appearance on Sunday – the latest member of the class of 2008 to reach that landmark – and Wigglesworth wonders aloud if he would have reached his own milestone had he not signed for Saracens in 2010.
“Maybe not because it’s always so much easier when you’re at a place that you love, and when you’re enjoying your rugby nothing is a chore,” he says. “Had I not come, that might not be the case. I’d like to think it would have been because you want to have something inside you that drives you, but it definitely makes it a lot easier. I’ve been managed unbelievably well. Maybe I would have survived but not been the player I am.”
And make no mistake, he is some player. Often pigeon-holed as a pragmatic scrum-half, a box-kicker without the bells and whistles, Wigglesworth has won only nine of his 31 England caps as a starter but anyone who witnessed his performance in guiding Saracens past Racing 92 to a first European title in 2016 will appreciate his value.
There were nine Saracens players in Eddie Jones’s squad named on Thursday but Wigglesworth was not among them, though it would be a fool who rules him out of contention for next year’s World Cup just yet. If he does not make it, it will be to Saracens’ gain, as their director of rugby, Mark McCall, knows only too well. “It’s amazing how many games of top-class rugby he’s played,” he says. “It’s testament to how much he’s driven himself physically, worked on his game. It’s an incredible achievement and he’s been a big part of what we’ve achieved over the last couple of years.” And as Wigglesworth is at pains to point out, he is far from finished yet.