Hello everyone and welcome back to the Ruck from The Times. It's Will here. And look at this. It's a two

podcast week for you. You are so welcome.

And with good reason, as we have a very special guest for you today on The Ruck, Alex and I are up at Northampton Saints, where there's powdery snow brushed across the pitch at Franklin's Gardens, and a young superstar waiting for us in the warm inside.

You all know him.

How could you miss him really?

The celebrations, the haircuts, the rise and the rise again through Saints, England and the Lions.

In 2025, it was definitely the Henry Pollock show.

But we've not really yet understood the boy or now the man behind it all so we're up here

to learn a bit more about Pollock a young man just 21 years old next week with the world at

his feet loads of things that he wants to achieve in 2026 lots of misunderstandings about who he is

how he goes about his business and all sorts

else. So let's get into a Ruck special with the man of the moment, the man of 2025, maybe

the man of 2026 as well. Ladies and gentlemen, it is Henry Pollock.

Okay, a belting guest to kick off 2026 for us on the rock, a man who needs little introduction, so I won't give him one.

It's Henry Pollock.

Hi, guys, thanks having me on. Thank you very much.

How's everything? How's life?

Yeah, good, actually. Yeah, very good. Obviously, big week this week, so yeah, just very excited.

Is it a really exciting time to come back from Christmas? And I know that you guys played and won and the team's flying, you've got six nations around the corner, a massive game against Bordeaux. Are you just looking at the next few weeks going, how fun is this? Yeah, exactly. These are the kind of games you want to play in. This weekend's massive. and then as you said it kind of just gets bigger and bigger as it goes on through the start of the year so um yeah it's been a kind of great start to the year with saints and yeah we're just trying to kick it on as much we can looking forward to a happy hospitable welcome in bordeaux of the weekend hopefully yeah like yeah looking forward to their game like I know I played down there before. And, yeah, we talk about in Europe, loads of times, making our memories and going on adventures. So I'm looking forward to going down there and, yeah, playing with this team. How much does the final, before we get on to yourself in the final, just the final how it played out from a, rugby perspective. Does that get referenced a lot in the week? Not too much. Obviously, it's different squad now, so lots of pairs have kind of gone, like, you know, team of a man of Inouye, he's gone back to Fiji, Juana Augusta's gone, so it's different squad, different group, so the tactics probably do change a little bit, but yeah, we're

definitely kind of looking at that potentially and, yeah, kind of writing some wrongs, I guess.

Does it still hurt a bit the way the final slipped away like that? What do you remember from

the game itself and the elements that you were maybe disappointed about? Yeah, it's always a

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