But the England prop and newly-named British & Irish Lions squad member has been around the block enough times to also raise the obvious problem.
“There’s a lot more kids that go to state schools than private schools, so you’ve got to ask yourself, how are you nurturing that talent? The teachers getting involved, that’s your route in.
“So the knock-on effect is the pool you pick from, these guys or girls are going to stand out head and shoulders above the rest, because they’ve had such better coaching through their school age.”
‘The talent is there in state schools,’ Genge says (Photo: Getty)The challenges it cited included the complexity of the game to coach and the nagging cliché of “a game for posh white boys”, but it would be “a major strategic error” if the sport was left to “elite schools” and clubs to nurture.
The 30-year-old Genge went to John Cabot city technology college in Bristol, which converted to an academy early in his time there, then on to Hartpury College on a rugby scholarship.
In return he is grateful for the luck he had in three teachers who happened to be interested in rugby, which he says was unusual for a Bristol school; as a younger kid at Knowle Park Primary, professional football was his dream.
“I definitely wouldn’t blow anything up,” Genge says with a brief smile at the literal thought.
“I don’t think chucking the baby out with the bathwater is what to do. I think you’ve got to take a calculated approach to it.”
‘The grassroots game is massively working class,’ he adds (Photo: Getty)“I’d love to make a huge impact on kids from the state system,” he says.
Genge is also persuaded by an argument about Premiership clubs’ academies he heard recently over a coffee with Alan Martinovic, his former Hartpury coach.
“These kids are already getting coached four times a week, playing rugby five times a week. The kids from the state schools do it for half an hour once a week in PE. So bring them into the academies two or three times a week.
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Under the new Professional Game Partnership, all Premiership clubs must have at least two partnerships with state schools. It doesn’t sound much, but should help.
“In Bristol, the grassroots game is massively working class,” Genge says, “and the same if you go south, from when I chat to Luke Cowan-Dickie and Jack Nowell in the likes of Cornwall.”
“When we were playing in tournaments or going away to trials, and it was held at Harrow School or Millfield School and places like this, it just blows your mind – whether that’s right or wrong, or a reflection of the way I’ve been brought up to… not envy, but feel uncomfortable in those environments.
“Especially as a young male in that environment, you feel quite weirdly intimidated, you know? It sounds crazy to think that the wealth is intimidating, but you feel out of place by how incredible these schools are. And you think ‘what chance have you got?’
The principle of “you can’t be what you can’t see” is well known, and Genge says “all sorts of groups” are invited by current England coach Steve Borthwick to watch training. Genge also says “we have a duty to make [rugby] more accessible and more affordable for people who are out of that bracket of paying 100 quid for a ticket”. But nor does he deny that supply and demand has its place.
More seriously, he says every Test side relies essentially on physicality and how hard you work, and he is used to adapting from Bristol’s one-off style anyway, and then his first Lions tour will be up to how he gets on for the first time working with coaches Andy Farrell, John Dalziel, Simon Easterby and John Fogarty.
“I’ve got, what, five years left if I’m very fortunate, and I’d like to retire on my own terms. But I think I’m well equipped for what’s to come after; the abyss that is the unknown.”
The Gallagher Touchline Academy is a free rugby teaching programme, created in partnership with Premiership Rugby clubs, designed to upskill 2,000 teachers in delivering rugby lessons by 2028. To find out more about how to sign up: click here
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