England Player Profiles

Tom Youngs

Key Facts

Squad	Leicester Tigers
Position	Hooker
Age	26
Height	1.75m (5'9")
Weight	102kg (16st 0lb)
Caps	9

A first senior call for the tour of South Africa brought a fraternal double for the Youngs family with Tom, a former England U20 centre, completing the rare transition to a the middle of the front row by joining brother and scrum half Ben in the 42 strong party. Tom has since appeared in nine consecutive Test matches, eight of them in the starting line up.

He also played in both midweek matches against the South African Barbarians South and North, starting the second game at Potchefstroom. When Tom made his Test debut in the QBE International against Fiji at Twickenham last November, they became the first siblings to appear together for England since the Armitages, Delon and Steffon, in 2009.

The other curio was that Tom, educated at Gresham's in Holt, learned his new trade in the front row while on a dual registration with Nottingham. Former Leicester head coach Heyneke Meyer inspired his positional switch.

When Tom, then a centre, was sin-binned for fighting with an opposing Saracens prop in a second team game, Meyer walked up to him and said: “You should play at hooker.” Tom liked the idea and on previous age group tours had done one-to-one scrummaging with Dan Cole, no less. Tom has gone on to start all of England’s past six Test matches.

When he went on loan to Nottingham in 2009, he had not played a game in the position but went on to wear the No.2 jersey or play off the bench in 60 matches and was named as players’ player of the year. Glenn Delaney, then Nottingham's director of rugby, said: “It takes a special person to switch successfully from the wide open spaces of the backs to the middle of the front row. His potential is enormous.”

He has the pace and footwork of a centre but the aggression and physicality of someone ideally suited to the nitty gritty of the bump and the grind. Brought up on the family’s arable farm in Norfolk, Tom, the older brother of Ben, is also the son of Nick Youngs, the England scrum half capped six times in 1983-84.

Norwich-born Tom underwent surgery on a bulging disc that was aggravated during a Heineken Cup pool match against Aironi in November 2011 but went on to play 46 matches for the Tigers overall by mid March this year.

His first team debut was in 2006 and his initial Premiership try was against Leeds Carnegie in November 2007. He started alongside Ben for the first time in the EDF Energy Cup match at Bath in 2008-09. Tom had represented England from U16 to U20 level and earned an England Sevens call for the IRB World Series in November 2007.