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If Owen Farrell is feeling at all threatened by the rapid rise of Marcus Smith, he hid it well, with the England captain lauding the country’s new playmaker sensation.
As Sportsmail revealed earlier this month, Smith is destined to wear the No10 shirt in autumn Tests against Tonga, Australia and South Africa, with Farrell leading the national team from inside centre.
The Harlequins prodigy propelled his club to Premiership title glory at the end of last season before making his international debut and going on to earn a call-up to the Lions tour in South Africa.
Harlequins prodigy Marcus Smith is destined to wear the England No 10 shirt in autumn Tests
Farrell has been impressed by Smith, despite his good friend George Ford being omitted from the England squad as a direct result of the 22-year-old’s emergence.
‘He’s obviously a massive talent and a very exciting player,’ Farrell said, from a temporary training base in Jersey. ‘He’s someone who can unlock a game himself but he’s also got a brilliant eye for how to make a team work as well.
‘We’ve worked together before. He has been in camps before, when he was a bit younger. I shared a room with him in the past and it was good to get to know him a bit better over the summer.
‘He is a brilliant lad — not just a very talented player, but a proper student of the game. That sounds like a bit of a cliche, but he is really bothered about getting better and understanding the game a bit more, and he loves
