Joe Launchbury cannot really believe it, but he is going back to England’s training base at Pennyhill Park this weekend. The visit will bring back a flood of memories — from Eddie Jones beastings to lighter teasing by Joe Marler, most of which the old prop has posted on Instagram this week to retake the mickey out of him — across all those days with the national team.
He had promised himself he would never return, happy to close off that chapter when he last represented his country, winning his 70th cap, in 2022, but it just so happens that it is the perfect place for a celebration.
His sister is over from Hong Kong, his parents are marking their 40th wedding anniversary and he has announced his retirement from rugby at the season’s end.
Launchbury will end his career with Quins, having decided to retire from rugby at the end of the seasonEddie Keogh/Getty
For Launchbury, this announcement has been a long time coming. He has felt his body creak over the past two seasons, and needs a hip operation, so at 35 is calling it a day. In typically understated fashion, Launchbury wanted to slink out unnoticed, but was convinced to do a proper announcement last week, and does not regret it.
“I was putting my son to bed when I kept getting notifications going, ‘Joe Marler has added you into a story,’ and I knew that wasn’t going to be good news,” Launchbury says, on The Ruck podcast from The Times, with a knowing chuckle.
When it comes to picking his dream XV, Launchbury has his revenge. “Because Marler stitched me up, I’ll go for Mako Vunipola,” he says.
“I don’t know how he’s got a vault of videos from ten years ago, but he does. I think it shows the importance of verbalising your feelings about people.
“Men and people in general can be a bit stoic, and onto-the-next-job, so it’s nice to show appreciation to each other. It’s meant a lot to me to receive messages from players and coaches I’ve spent a lot of time with, and it’s been really nice to hear their words.”
Launchbury has had a fine career. He made his debut in November 2012 against Fiji alongside Mako Vunipola and Tom Youngs as a 21-year-old bright light, and battled through a forest of locks — particularly Courtney Lawes, George Kruis and Maro Itoje, who were all British & Irish Lions ahead of him — to win 70 caps.
The 6ft 6in lock takes pride in the way he “kicked on” and evolved as an England playertimes photographer Marc Aspland
He lifted no domestic trophies, but came agonisingly close to winning two Premiership titles with Wasps; the first in 2017 when Exeter Chiefs beat them 23-20 in extra time, and then three years later when Exeter did for Wasps again, winning 19-13 in the Twickenham rain.
Those near-misses are perhaps Launchbury’s only regrets. His resilience is what he prides himself on most.
“I look back on my international career with a huge amount of pride as I got the opportunity to play young when I hadn’t played many games for Wasps but was entrusted to play when I thought I wouldn’t have been good enough. I really took that opportunity, and loved my time there,” he says.
“To be brutally honest, when Eddie took over I probably wasn’t his cup of tea, but I was really proud of how I changed my game. I was probably on the way out a few times, but managed to remodel a few things and not necessarily prove him wrong — he’d probably say that was part of his technique — but I’m proud I showed resilience to play as many times as I did.
“I’m so thankful that he must have capped me 40-odd times, but I always felt, and maybe a lot of players in that time felt that they were being pushed, and always one bad game from being out of the team. I was always striving and striving to stay in. I guess that’s what international rugby should be.
“That brought the best out of me, and I might not have agreed with it at the time, but looking back now I’m so thankful as you see some players plateau a bit and don’t kick on.
“So to go from ten caps right through to over 50 caps it takes some real staying power. I was a tight-five forward who enjoyed the open spaces and carrying the ball in the wider spaces, but remodelled my game a bit. My body slowed up but I developed a real appreciation for the set piece and the tighter arts.”
Watching his Wasps team go bust in 2022 was a brutal experience. It still pains him now, and he wishes that one day he can sit in a stand somewhere and watch the reborn club that helped him make his name.
A happy spell at Wasps turned into a “horrible episode” when the club folded in 2022David Rogers/Getty
“There is no way I can’t talk about that experience and what happened then and not see it as anything but that horrible episode,” he says. “I probably would have never left Wasps. I had plenty of offers to go elsewhere and nothing really interested me.
“I remember Jimmy Gopperth saying, when he got older, trying to explain to his kids, ‘I used to play for Wasps.’ And the sad thing would be, maybe in a couple of generations, some of your grandkids or your great-grandkids would be like, ‘Oh, I don’t know who you’re talking about there.’
“You don’t want to be the last group of players who have played for the club, so I’d love the club to live on. I know the amateur team in Acton are still thriving and doing unbelievably well. The appetite to bring a professional club back, I believe, is there, but I guess it’s a longer-term project.”
It makes Launchbury beam to see what his old squad have made of themselves elsewhere — whether it be Jack Willis in Toulouse, Alfie Barbeary at Bath or Paolo Odogwu with Benetton and Italy — and his glass-half-full view is that their collapse allowed him a year in Japan and to reconnect with Harlequins, where he came through as a child.
Despite the poor results, he has enjoyed this season, knowing it is his last, and believes brighter days are ahead under the leadership of Jason Gilmore and Robbie Deans.
The battle now for Harlequins will be to make the Champions Cup, by finishing eighth. “We know we have to compete and be a part of the top tier of Europe next year,” Launchbury says.
As he departs the scene, looking at those following in his footsteps, tyros like Henry Pollock and Noah Caluori, trying to make long careers as teens and early twentysomethings, Launchbury knows his race is run.
“The level of these players now is above and beyond what it was when I came out of school,” he says. “It is hugely impressive. That is why these guys are now almost ready to play at 18, 19, the second they come out of school.”
But he hopes they can take one lesson from his career.
“You have got a bit of confidence in yourself, but rugby is tough. You are going to get injuries, you are going to get a selection of stuff along the way,” he explains. “The ability to keep pitching up through some pretty tough times is what stands out.”
Launchbury did that, and was a credit to himself and his family as he did; playing hard but never losing his softer touches, whether with the ball or off the field, as one of English rugby’s great gentle giants.