CENTRE STAGE

Exeter Chiefs and England stalwart HENRY SLADE says he feels better than ever

- JOSH GRAHAM

EVERYBODY DEALS with bad news in different ways. For Henry Slade, the Exeter and England centre, a spot of half-cut horticulturalism helped cleanse the soul after Steve Borthwick’s brutal 2023 World Cup axing led to the toughest time in his professional rugby career.

When he was omitted, Slade had played 30 of England’s 37 Tests since the 2019 World Cup. No Englishman had started more games in the 13 jersey in that time, so to be excluded from the 33-man group to travel to France came as a big surprise to almost everyone, including the man himself.

“I didn’t take it very well, to be honest, at the start,” Slade recalls when he sits down with Rugby World in the Baxter suite at Sandy Park. “You know you see films where someone is told bad news and they get this noise in their ears and you can see someone talking, but you can't hear what they're saying?

“As soon as he said that I wasn't part of the squad, I literally was looking at him, but I couldn't tell you what he said for the next four or five minutes. It was gutting.”

Slade’s only real inkling that something was afoot came late on after he only got a few minutes off the bench (and Joe Marchant impressed) in England's warm-up defeat away to Wales the day before Borthwick told his troops who had made it.

He adds: “Yeah, I was a bit (blindsided). I was expecting to go; I was thinking that I had a good chance to go.

“I’ve been involved in quite a few games over the last few years and gone through a couple of World Cups. I'm not saying that gives me the right to go to another one, but I was feeling like I had a good chance to go.

“But then in the last few days, you do sort of feel that, ‘Oh, maybe I'm not, maybe I am’, and it’s just a bit of a worry. Then when he said that to me, it was very, very frustrating. You get all the emotions: angry, frustrated and disappointed.”