As a sports journalist, I learned more about these players in a couple of episodes than years of press conferences<\/p>\n
Things are a little different around England\u2019s training base at Pennyhill Park this year. It\u2019s not just that they have a new captain or a couple of uncapped players, it\u2019s that you have to go way back to 2009 to find the last time that one, the other, or, more often than not, both of Ben Youngs and Dan Cole weren\u2019t with the squad.<\/p>\n
The Leicester pair have been ever-present through the best and worst of the past 15 years of English rugby, until Youngs, 35, retired from Test rugby after the last World Cup. His great mate Cole, 37, went on one more year, until the head coach, Steve Borthwick, finally decided to leave him out of the squad this spring. Cole hasn\u2019t officially announced his own international retirement but only because, he says drily, that \u201cit would feel like locking the stable door after the horse has already bolted\u201d.<\/p>\n