With a little more than three minutes left on the clock and England trailing by seven points in Auckland, the ball is tossed wide to Ollie Sleightholme. He advances towards halfway, ball in both hands, before the briefest of shimmies and a burst down the left that leaves Sevu Reece floundering like the proverbial kipper. Hook, line and sinker.
Ultimately England could not avoid a second defeat by the All Blacks but Sleightholme’s cameo stood out as one of the brightest moments of the series, as someone taking their chance on a tour of missed opportunities. And it turns out Reece is not the first to take the bait, because Sleightholme – who capped a stunning season with his first two England caps in New Zealand this summer – is an avid angler.
The 24-year-old likes nothing more than to head to nearby Olney, or to the River Wye and cast his line. Coarse fishing is his speciality and it bodes well for Northampton that this summer Sleightholme landed his biggest catch to date – a 10lb barbel. He might have finished last season as the Premiership’s top try-scorer, helping the club to a first title in 10 years, but Sleightholme has bigger fish to fry.
We will leave the puns there but it is refreshing to hear a twentysomething sportsman talk so passionately about a hobby, something that helps with the lows that invariably accompany the highs – all the more so when Sleightholme was on the sidelines for nine months in 2023 with concussion and a hamstring problem.
“I try to get away from rugby so I go once or twice a week if I can,” says Sleightholme, who has his uncle to thank for introducing him to fishing. “I don’t actually mind if I don’t catch anything, it’s more just being able to reset myself after a long week or if it’s midweek, just take myself away. I was using it when I was injured and trying to rehab and stuff, just something else to focus on, get away from it all.
“I’ve got a bug for it so any free time I’ve got, I’ll go fishing. All weather, no matter what it’s like. My missus thinks I’m a bit weird. Sometimes, it’ll be lashing it down and I’ll say: ‘I’m going out.’ It’s just getting out and refocusing.”
Indeed, he was able to showcase his talents in more ways than one in New Zealand as the squad enjoyed some down time in between Tests. “We caught a load of red snapper and the chef cooked them all for us for lunch,” he adds. “It was a really good experience.”
On the field, Sleightholme struck as someone desperate to make an impact, eager to make up for lost time, which is understandable when you consider he was first called into an England squad by Eddie Jones in the summer of 2021 (he sustained another concussion in camp) – almost three years before making his debut. He had seen his Saints teammates George Furbank, Tommy Freeman, Alex Mitchell and, more latterly, Fin Smith given their shot under Steve Borthwick, all the while waiting patiently for a first cap.
Though Borthwick is well-stocked with wings, last season’s form for Northampton made Sleightholme impossible to ignore, however. His partner, Lucy, gave birth to their first child just a couple of weeks before the tour so he did not have any family in New Zealand to witness his exploits. Suffice it to say that his father, Jon, who played for Bath and Northampton and won 12 England caps, was a proud spectator from afar.
“He was buzzing,” he says. “I couldn’t get many words out of him. They were all sat together watching it. I got a FaceTime call in the changing room, which was cool.
“It was my dream to make my debut for England and I did that. Obviously the results weren’t what we wanted but you can’t take away from the fact that was what I wanted to achieve all my life and I did that. I think there’s a sense of ‘finally I have done it’, all the work I’ve put in to get to this point has paid off.”
Sleightholme was among the Northampton players to bulk up at the start of last season – he thinks a bit too much – but sees 93-94kg as his ideal playing weight, allowing him to marry electric pace with an uncanny ability to burst through contact. “Sam [Vesty, the head coach] talks a lot about beating people – whether you go through them, round them, step them, just beat them. And I found that I can go through people or around people whatever the situation is.”
Northampton begin their campaign on Friday night, travelling to face Bath in a repeat of last season’s final, with Sleightholme aware that Saints are now up there to be shot at. It has been a summer of change at Franklin’s Gardens with the senior figures Courtney Lawes, Lewis Ludlam as well as Alex and Ethan Waller all moving on, ensuring a fresh feel as Northampton defend their title.
“I actually feel a bit old now, having a child,” he says. “There’s only a couple of us that have kids. I think it’s just me and Burger [Odendaal]. Our little ones are similar age, only about two months apart, so we’re in it at the deep end really. We lost a lot of dads over the summer.
“Every week we’ll have a target on our heads, whether we’re at home or away and that’s a really good challenge to have. It’s the position that everyone wants to be in. You don’t want to be chasing, you want to be the chased, you want to be the target that everyone has got and it’s what everyone strives for in the game.”
• This article was amended on 19 September 2024. The 10lb fish Ollie Sleightholme caught this summer was a barbel, not a chub as an earlier version said, owing to a transcription error.
