HENRY SLADE interview: When I first broke through it was 'speak when spoken to' – I'm not sure Henry Pollock would have survived the England dressing room in 2015!

Settling into a plush sofa beside a fireplace at Pennyhill Park, Henry Slade reminisces about his highs and lows since he first checked into England’s team hotel in 2014.

He has spent hundreds of nights here – some more sleepless than others – and he knows the corridors of the old manor house like the back of his hand.

Sipping on a berry protein shake, free from carbohydrates to help manage his diabetes, he recalls the first time he made the three-hour drive over from Exeter.

‘It was me and Sam Burgess in the centres for my debut,’ the 33-year-old says. ‘Being pretty new to it all, it was the first time I’d seen that much hype around a player. Slammin’ Sam. People knew about it if they ran into him! He was a big lad. He was new to the game, coming from rugby league, but he was a big personality.’

Slade has started next to 13 more midfield partners in 12 years since first stepping out alongside Burgess, from Alex Lozowski to Max Ojomoh.

‘Jonathan Joseph, Piers Francis, Dan Kelly… it’s a lot, isn’t it?’ he says, reading a list of the centres he has started with across his 77 caps. ‘I’ve been around for a while now. It’s nice because the higher cappers get a bigger room. Back at the 2015 World Cup, me and Jack Nowell shared a twin room for four months. Now I’m with Freddie Steward and we get an apartment with two different bedrooms. Times have changed.

Settling into a plush sofa beside a fireplace, Slade reminisces about his highs and lows since he first checked into England’s team hotel in 2014

Slade’s England debut came alongside Sam Burgess, the rugby league convert, back in 2015 in a World Cup warm-up against France. He has played with 13 more midfield partners since then

‘It was more of a speak-when-spoken-to environment back then. We had guys like Dylan Hartley, James Haskell, Geoff Parling, Nick Easter. There was no mincing of words. They weren’t afraid to say what they thought if you f***ed up or if you did something that they didn’t want you to do. They’d tell you straight there and then. I think that’s quite a good way for it to be.

‘The standards are the same but it’s a different world now. You see the academy boys come in at Exeter and they’re straight on the dartboard. I’m not sure Henry Pollock would have survived in 2015… he’s lucky he’s coming through now!’

Resilience, Slade says, is the secret to his longevity. He has played under Stuart Lancaster, Eddie Jones and Steve Borthwick, coming out of the other side of injuries and non-selection. Missing out on the 2023 World Cup hit him the hardest but he keeps coming back for more.

‘It’s not always plain sailing,’ he continues, shuffling the rust-orange cushions that add some autumnal warmth. ‘There are so many things that don’t go your way – injuries, selection, form. All you can control is how you turn up each day, physically and mentally. It’s one person’s opinion on whether you play or not and you’ve just got to do your best to influence that opinion.

‘The last World Cup selection was the biggest one for me. I was p***ed off, annoyed, gutted. I found out the morning after the first warm-up game, a Sunday, and I was back in training with Exeter on the Monday.

‘I needed to let off some steam, so I went to the pub with my brother and Ollie Devoto. The Imperial Wetherspoons in Exeter, where you can order drinks to your table. I didn’t move for about 12 hours. Sitting in the beer garden, drowning my sorrows. I went home and cut the hedge. When I woke up the next morning, it was wonky.

‘When I was at the pub, straight away I was like, “F*** this, I’m going to France”. I woke up the next day, I thought about it and I was like, “No, I’m not. I want to play for England. What am I going to do about it?”

‘I did everything I could at Exeter to get myself back in the mix and I was named player of the season. I was quite proud of how I came back from that.’

Slade made the England training squad for the 2023 World Cup but did not make Steve Borthwick’s final cut

‘There are so many things that don’t go your way – injuries, selection, form. All you can control is how you turn up each day. It’s one person’s opinion on whether you play or not’

Slade often turns to his two brothers when the going gets tough. The youngest, Albert, played rugby for Barnes in south west London and works in student events. 

The middle, Seb, is an actor who recently appeared in Hamlet at the National Theatre. ‘I had one line in our Grease production at school but that was enough for me,’ Slade says.

Managing type 1 diabetes remains one of Slade’s biggest challenges. He lifts up his shirt to reveal the Dexcom glucose monitor attached to his abdomen. It sits beside a tattoo he got on a trip to Ibiza with Nowell and Dave Ewers – an M for ‘Ministry’, the nickname they gave to their Exeter academy house.

‘The diabetes has been an ongoing challenge,’ he says. ‘It was all finger prick testing back when I started. You were doing it 10 to 15 times a day to get a snapshot of what your blood sugar is.

‘At the 2015 World Cup, I had one training session where I was really low. It was a big session and it was hot. We were doing fitness – running out and back. I consider myself pretty fit and would normally be around the front, but I was way, way back. I was like, “What is going on? I feel f***ed”. I could barely run. I couldn’t do anything.

‘I felt so fatigued and I went in to check my blood sugars. It was 1.3, which is really bad – most people are at five or six and anything below four is low. At one you are nearly dead, basically. If I was like that for much longer then I could have died.

‘You have to be disciplined as a diabetic, otherwise you’ve got no chance of playing professional sport. It’s a challenge every day. Every five minutes you think about your blood sugar.

‘Now I’ve got a Dexcom which shows you which way you’re going. It helps you control it so much. It’s linked by Bluetooth, so I always train with my watch on. I warm up on game days right until I’m about to go on the pitch and then I take it off.

With Jack Nowell, with whom Slade came through the Exeter academy to represent both their boyhood club and England

‘You have to be disciplined as a diabetic, or you’ve got no chance of playing professional sport. It’s a challenge every day. Every five minutes you think about your blood sugar’

‘I’m always worrying what my blood sugar is. Here, you come in, have breakfast and then 20 minutes later you’re into a team activity. In an ideal world, a diabetic would let their blood sugar settle for an hour or two before training.

‘I often have to skip the snack breaks because there’s not enough time to settle. If you train with insulin in your system then you plummet.

‘It stops you eating a lot of s***. You need to be hyper-aware of what you’re putting in your body. In a way, it’s been beneficial. But it just makes things so much harder. I find it hard but I don’t know any different.’

Slade’s social media content, posted to 230,000 followers on Instagram, often features diabetes management tips.

‘My algorithm brings up a lot of golf, DIY, gardening and rugby too,’ he says. ‘An Exeter match from 2016 popped up on YouTube recently and I watched the whole thing. It looked a bit like a game in the park! It was physical but now everything is a lot sharper.’

These days, says Slade, midfield bonding sessions are more likely to take place in the sauna than the pub. Seb Atkinson is Slade’s current centre partner and they are hoping to combine against the Wallabies next Sunday.

England have lost five of their last seven Tests but Slade is hoping things will pick up in the latest chapter of his storied career. His next cap will be his 78th, and move him above Haskell and Matt Dawson to joint-17th on the England all-time leaderboard. Only six backs would be ahead of him.

‘Results-wise it’s not been an ideal year, has it?’ he admits. ‘I think we finished the tour in the summer pretty well. We haven’t quite pulled it together, but we’re in a good spot and we have a tightly connected group.

Slade scoring his first international try, in a dead rubber against Uruguay at the Etihad Stadium in the 2015 World Cup

And his 11th and most recent try, against Argentina at Twickenham a year ago

‘I don’t want to jinx anything,’ he says of going to a third World Cup next year. ‘I know how quickly things can change’

‘One of the main things is having a good environment. I’ve seen what it’s like when a group splinters. It was a bit like that in 2015, when heads start to go and people start doing their own thing. It was a bit nuts.

‘When I look at the midfield, most of the centres here now have been in camp together for quite a while. We all offer something slightly different. One of my main work-ons has been my power and strength in the carry. I definitely think that’s improved since 2023.

‘Everyone knows the World Cup is on the horizon – 2015 didn’t go so well but it was a great experience for me as a youngster. Getting to the 2019 final in Japan was amazing. It would be amazing to go again.

‘That’s been my goal ever since I didn’t make the last one. I don’t want to jinx anything though. I know how quickly things can change.’