Superhuman’ Sinfield is man to rediscover England’s soul

Those who know the inspirational defence coach best explain why he will help team find their lost identity.

Kevin Sinfield, England’s defence coach, at a training session in Bagshot. Picture: Getty Images

There is a point in any conversation about Kevin Sinfield when you find yourself asking: Is he really as incredible as he seems? It is not as if you are looking for his vices, or the story of when he pinched someone else’s parking space. It’s bigger than that.

 It actually goes deeper, even, than running seven ultra-marathons in seven days to raise money to combat the disease that is sucking the life from one of your best mates. It’s something to do with personality, integrity and the true honesty and generosity of the soul. Is it really all there, genuinely bursting from within him?

It’s something, too, to do with the milk of human kindness. Again, when you talk to people who have been close to him about what it is about Sinfield, the same cliche seems to pop up: “If only you could bottle it.”

Maybe no one puts it better than another motor neurone disease sufferer who is interviewed in Ultra 7 in 7, a film about Sinfield’s recent long-distance challenge, the third in a triptych of epic journeys fundraising for MND charities in the name of his friend, Rob Burrow.

Like many MND sufferers, he says that Sinfield has been his inspiration. “That calmness, that serenity,” Burrow says. “It’s like he’s king of the world without even trying to be.”

Really? Is Sinfield king of the world? Or is he actually just the England rugby team’s defence coach? With England kicking off against Scotland in the Six Nations on Saturday, it’s a hectic schedule trying to combine both.

There is, of course, one blemish of note. “I remember when he headbutted Luke Dorn,” Jamie Jones-Buchanan, his former Leeds Rhinos team-mate, says. He was on the field at the time: Headingley, July 2014. Jones-Buchanan had been sharing the same quadrangles of grass with Sinfield ever since their early teens; they were best man at each other’s wedding.

So he couldn’t believe it when Sinfield headbutted the Castleford Tigers full back and earned himself the only red card of his career. “It was like, ‘What’s happened to the golden child? Has his halo fallen off’? ”

Yet even then, Jones-Buchanan says, Sinfield handled himself and this completely uncharacteristic moment with characteristic integrity. “He knows he’s not perfect, nobody is. But if perfection was a destination, he’d be the one closest to it,” he says.

He then adds some detail. Sinfield’s favourite drink is water. “He’d frown on a Diet Coke.” And he rejects a local anaesthetic for a filling or root canal work. “He is hugely resilient when it comes to pain. I know, I’m making him sound superhuman,” Jones-Buchanan says.

Sally Nugent, a BBC presenter, has followed him throughout all his fundraising epics and she tells it in a slightly different way.

“What you don’t see is he is hiding an unbelievable amount of pain,” she says. “There are moments when you think, ‘How on earth?’ He is barely sweating. He looks invincible, like he’s a superhero. But he’s not; he’s incredibly mentally tough.”

When Richard Wigglesworth, who is now the head coach of Leicester Tigers, started at the club, he and Sinfield would both stay at the same hotel on a Monday night. They were both new coaches there and got to know each other extremely well.

“I’d get to pick his brains every week,” Wigglesworth says. “And, yes, he really is all the things that people say. That’s the only bad thing about him. He makes us all feel worse about ourselves.”

So, let’s agree that authenticity is one thing that will not be a problem for Sinfield in his role with England. With him, they will have found someone whom they will follow. That, at least, is how his life has been – about innately inspirational qualities that bring people along with him.

Wigglesworth describes him as “a relationship coach” which, he says, means that “people don’t want to let him down, they want to make him proud”.

“A leader is defined by how many people will follow him,” Jones- Buchanan says. “Throughout my life. I’ve known people following him. And now, recently, you’ve seen tens of thousands of people following him.”

It is, nevertheless, a fascinating appointment. What you are getting is this inspirational figure. What you are not getting is an experienced coach. Sinfield is short on coaching years; he has been in rugby union for only a season and a half. On the other hand, rugby league coaches who coach defence have tended to transfer across codes very quickly.

Yet defence is about personality, so maybe it was an inspired appointment. That, at least, is how Jamie Peacock sees it and, as Sinfield’s former Leeds team-mate and Great Britain captain, he has seen the personality up close, too.

“Defence is the ultimate team activity that everyone has to buy into,” he says. “It’s about helping each other, it’s about selflessness. And that is Kevin; he inspires through selflessness.”

It could be that the real genius in the appointment is in the identity of the team. We know that Eddie Jones, the Australian former head coach, was never a passionate Englishman – obviously. But we know, too, that Jones could be dismissive of the English, of what he deemed were English traits and characteristics. He didn’t allow a natural patriotism to percolate through the motivation of the team. Sinfield is at the other extreme.

“He’s an incredibly proud Englishman,” Wigglesworth says. “He’ll be incredibly proud of coaching the country and the players will feel that.”

Again, this is essential to Sinfield’s nature – not at the place where patriotism can be confused with nationalism, but where leading a successful England team means attempting to deliver a success that will mean so much to so many. The England team have been losing this connection, the feeling of who they are and what they represent, how they want people to view them and why. If you label this as “culture”, then you go back to Stuart Lancaster and the culture and identity that he attempted to bring to the team.

The short history here is that Lancaster tried to bring it in, probably in a too schoolmasterly way, and then Jones quickly deconstructed it. With Sinfield, it will return but more organically. It won’t be as if team culture can be learnt in class, it will be set by Steve Borthwick, the head coach, but Sinfield will embody it and, if we know anything about him, the players will want to follow.

Some questions naturally occur. If Sinfield really is this king-of-the-world figure, how and why has that happened? Clearly, it’s something in his background. The home he grew up in was something of a Cuban shrine. His parents were inspired by the writing and politics of Che Guevara, which wasn’t exactly common in the other terraced houses of Oldham.

Buchanan-Jones and Peacock say that it was rugby league that developed him.

“From a young age he was given responsibility and that responsibility has defined him,” Buchanan-Jones says. Peacock adds: “I think the sport has made him because it made him appreciate the benefits of being that way.”

In particular, Peacock remembers Sinfield’s final season as a player with Leeds, when he was 34 turning 35 and, for the first time in his career, he was dropped from the team.

“It demonstrated the character of the man,” he says, and there was no fuss, no complaint, just honest acceptance and the pledge to return and make a difference. “He dealt with it, came back and really showed himself: ice-cold under pressure and ruthless about what it took to win.”

His last game of rugby league was, therefore, the grand final at the end of that season at Old Trafford, where he would lead Leeds to the first treble in the club’s history. Jones-Buchanan could not play in that game because of injury but he nevertheless describes it as “the iconic moment in my life”.

Sinfield rang him before the match and said that if Leeds were to win, he wanted his old mate to come up and receive the trophy with him.

“He told me that even though you’re not going to play, you’re no less a part of this team and I want you to know that. Now, he could have forgotten about that but he didn’t,” Jones-Buchanan says.

“After the final whistle, he came looking for me and took me up to get the trophy.”

When he was done with rugby league, Sinfield had a single season across the codes with Yorkshire Carnegie, where Bryan Redpath, the former Scotland scrum half and captain, was the coach. Even though he was new and learning, his personality and work ethic still rubbed off.

“It’s an infectious thing,” Redpath says. “He was great for the other boys. He was always clear: I need a lot of help. So you had 23-year-olds thinking, ‘I’ve got Kevin Sinfield asking me questions’.

“That’s his humility. And it was never about him, he was never there to be praised. He just wanted to do the best that he could. Then, at the end of the season, he said, ‘I don’t think I can catch up’. That’s another thing: he was man enough to admit it.”

In Ultra 7 in 7, there is an interview with Sinfield that gets right to the heart. He is asked about who his heroes were when he was growing up in the sport.

He doesn’t reply with any specific names; rather, he describes a type of player. It is not the multiple tryscorer or the superstar, it is not even a man who notably stands out. It is the player battling it out in the mud and the rain, defending the line with his team-mates with all that he has, the player who exhibits quiet strength, relentlessness, selflessness and a passion for his team. All these are what Sinfield represents and everyone seems to agree that his campaigns – call it fundraising, call it friendship, or just call it running – have accentuated them all in him.

“That light, it’s just shone brighter,” Buchanan-Jones says.

It would seem, then, that the England team are fortunate to have it now shining upon them. That’s how Peacock sees it.

“I just think that the England players look like they have been lacking that tiny last little bit,” he says. “Kevin will get that into them. I expect to see a hugely committed England team. I can’t wait to see it.”

Is he really as incredible as he seems? The answer so far is: yes.

The Times