Maro Itoje has a mantra: “Keep the main thing the main thing”. The Saracens and England lock can’t quite recall how he first came across these words of wisdom but in a career now extending into a second decade, they have served him well.
For there would be plenty to distract a true lock polymath, from a love of African art, to his charitable efforts with the Pearl Fund and his passion for politics. But his true obsession, he insists, is rugby – and, more specifically, winning.
