Enemies of academies get their facts wrong

Midway through the savagely funny second season of Jesse Anderson’s media big-shot drama Succession, one of the principal characters is talking to a mature student who has spent years working on his second PhD at an Ivy League university. “Just think,” she says. “When you’re done, you won’t have to waste the 12 seconds it takes to look up something on Wikipedia.”

- CHRIS HEWETT

Which leads us, in a roundabout kind of way, to the state of English professional rugby’s oft-criticised academy system and the perils of believing everything you read.

You can find plenty about academies on the internet, once you fight your way past the tweets of Piers Morgan and the pictures of Katie Price, but only a proper QAnon type would give serious consideration to the idea that Exeter, the reigning double champions, are at the wrong end of the league table when it comes to fast-tracking their locally-developed talent.

Yet if you run a lazy eye over the Premiership “ins and outs” pages on the aforementioned Wikipedia, it is possible to reach a very odd conclusion: namely, that while Gloucester have promoted more than 20 academy graduates to their senior squad over the over the last six seasons, their fellow West Countrymen have been just a little more conservative, to the point of promoting none at all.

Which is, of course, a load of oval balls. The presence of Stu Townsend in Exeter’s current Champions Cup squad, together with a couple of Maunders in Jack and Sam, proves they have elevated three players in the scrum-half position alone.

Unlike a majority of top-flight sides, the Chiefs do not make a formal “promoted from the academy” declaration in announcing their squad at the start of each campaign.