Anyone who has caught a Tube recently at Old Street or Vauxhall or Kensington might have seen a poster advertising a sporting contest once reasonably familiar in London, but which for two decades has gone missing: rugby league\u2019s Ashes. Two faces with slim antipodean sportsman moustaches beam out from them. One is Nathan Cleary, the Australian superstar half-back; the other is the England centre Herbie Farnworth.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe would walk into the Australian team,\u201d continues Tomkins, \u201cand we\u2019ve not had that for many, many years. He\u2019s massive, one of those players who can make something from nothing by themselves, with their individual brilliance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Farnworth might be an unfamiliar face in the UK outside rugby league\u2019s heartlands, but in Australia, where he has been based since he was a teenager, he is huge. And with good reason. In the eyes of Sam Tomkins \u2013 former England captain, now assistant to the head coach Shaun Wane \u2013 \u201che\u2019s the best centre in the world\u201d.<\/p>\n
Farnworth\u2019s story of dancing feet and swift hands has an unusual twist. He is from the small village of Blacko in the Lancashire hills,\u00a0outside the traditional M62 rugby league corridor, and he played rugby union at his grammar school in Skipton. He was also an excellent footballer, with Burnley and later with Manchester United, but his uncle Brian Foley, who worked at Wigan Warriors, encouraged him to give league a go \u2013 putting him through his paces on the Blacko village green with six training poles for company. He was a natural, later excelling at the renowned amateur nursery Wigan St Patricks.<\/p>\n
At 14, Foley took him to Australia in the summer holidays, where he played for Burleigh Bears \u2013 and two years later, he had signed for Brisbane Broncos, playing for their youth team and then making his first-team debut in 2019. He has since switched to the Dolphins, Broncos\u2019 rivals, and would have been voted the best centre in the NRL for the third year in a row if wasn\u2019t for a hamstring tear in August which ruled him out of the rest of the season.<\/p>\n
The hamstring is now good to go, and he\u2019s \u201cgot goosebumps\u201d for the first Test which kicks off at Wembley on 25 October. Wane will announce his squad tomorrow, after late \u00adfitness checks on yesterday\u2019s Super League Grand Finalists. Farnworth has long been inked in.<\/p>\n
Rugby league\u2019s Ashes date back to 1908, but this will be the first series since 2003 \u2013 because of various historic and ongoing struggles to arrange fixtures between the two countries. The most recent attempt to arrange a series, in 2020, was kiboshed by Covid. England (then known as Great Britain) last won a series in 1970, something Wane has been keen to remind his team about.<\/p>\n
Tomkins, who finally hauled his battered body off the pitch earlier this year after a glorious French swansong with Catalans Dragons, first met Farnworth when Foley brought him over to Australia. Tomkins just thought he was a young fan \u2013 he would soon change his mind.<\/p>\n
Farnworth\u2019s early progress with Brisbane had the wires buzzing and he made his international debut in the 2022 World Cup. He twice pulled England back from the brink in the semi-final against Samoa, a rip-roaring try from 50 metres in the dying minutes electrifying the Emirates crowd,\u00a0only for England to lose in golden-point extra time.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs soon as he came into the England set-up, I saw how hard he worked,\u201d says Tomkins, who was Farnworth\u2019s captain in that tournament. \u201cObviously he\u2019s supremely talented with amazing footwork, a good understanding of the game, a high skill level and very athletic, but he was always the last one on the training field and that\u2019s why he\u2019s the player he is. He\u2019s the best English centre I\u2019ve seen in my time playing. He\u2019s the \u00adperfect professional.\u201d<\/p>\n
Farnworth is one of a handful of the likely England squad who play in the NRL \u2013 currently booming, after a record-breaking Grand Final between the Broncos and Melbourne Storm last weekend. Both winger Dom Young, star of the 2022 World Cup, and Kai Pearce-Paul play for Newcastle Knights. Insiders also expect AJ Brimson to be included.<\/p>\n
The knowledge those players bring with them will be a huge asset, and Tomkins hopes it could make the difference in a series where England have a fighting chance.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo have \u00adplayers who\u2019ve played against these guys is invaluable,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be very close. We\u2019re going to be underdogs, but when I started playing for the international side in 2009, they were so much \u00adbetter that we needed a miracle to win. We don\u2019t need that any more. \u201d<\/p>\n
For Farnworth, as for the \u00adothers, it could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.<\/p>\n
Photograph by Janelle St Pierre\/Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anyone who has caught a Tube recently at Old Street or Vauxhall or Kensington might have seen a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207919,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-207918","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nrl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-national-rugby-league","11":"tag-nationalrugbyleague","12":"tag-nrl","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}