Owen Farrell bares his soul: I just want to be happy

Owen Farrell wants to drop the public guard on his return to Saracens and fall in love with playing rugby again - Belinda Jiao for The Telegraph

Owen Farrell greets me in the car park of the Hertfordshire pub with a beaming smile. It is just a day since he arrived back from Paris. His new two-year deal with Saracens that secured his early release from his contract with Racing 92 has just been announced. There are removal boxes still to be unpacked at his house up the road, but the sun is piercing the blue sky, and the former England captain is eager to unpack something else, something much deeper and more poignant.

Dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, he looks the same as the player who left these shores at the end of last season searching for a fresh start, maybe even a sense of salvation, after stepping back from the international stage following the dark times that he had to endure during the 2023 World Cup.

Yet when he sits down for his first full-length interview since then, it is quickly apparent that this is a very different Owen Farrell. At least the public persona.

By his own admission he has never found it easy or enjoyable fulfilling the media demands that came with being England captain or the country’s leading points-scorer or the former captain of Saracens.

His measure of success and fulfilment came from earning respect from within. From peers. A younger Owen Farrell used to revel in proving people wrong, confronting critics through his performances on the pitch; that burning sense of defiance seemingly bringing the best out of him.

That remarkable reservoir of defiance would eventually run dry during the World Cup in France and the season with Racing offered little respite.

Which is why a very different Owen Farrell sits down at a table in the White Horse near Harpenden. He tells me as he approaches the final chapter of his playing career, he is determined to embrace and cherish every second. He wants to be happy, to fall in love with playing rugby again, and try as hard as he can to drop the public guard.

“I got to the point where I thought the best place for me was here,” Farrell says. “The opportunity to come back came up and I want to get back to enjoying myself. It is good that I have been away. I enjoyed the experience, and I am glad that I went, even though it didn’t work out the way that I wanted it to, and I am glad that my family had the experience of living somewhere different. But we love home.

“I think I can get back to enjoying myself here. It has been good for me to get away and come back hopefully having grown a bit, having had time to reflect and hopefully getting a better version of me back because of that. I am determined to make it a success and really enjoy it. Because that is how I will also play my best rugby.”

His sole focus is “getting myself in a good place. Everything else starts there. Nothing else matters before that”.

Within minutes a Saracens fan approaches our table and offers to buy him a drink. Later another, who is out with his mother for her birthday, asks him for a photograph. They are elated he is back. What is evidently clear is that Farrell is, too.

Saracens fans did not want Farrell to leave, and are ready to welcome him back - PA/Joe Giddens

He had hoped that the move to the Top 14 would facilitate the change he desired but reveals that he was plagued by a groin and abdominal injury that flared up in pre-season with Racing. It not only affected his form and forced him to stop goal-kicking, but required him to undergo surgery that did not seem to fix the problem.

It was only when he saw a specialist in Doha in February that he was given the reassurance that he could make a full recovery from the issue and given a rehabilitation plan to address what was a pubis overload issue.

But by then Stuart Lancaster, the Racing head coach who had brought him to the club, had been sacked and another injury setback followed.

During a game against Lyon, he attempted to tackle one of their second rows. “I went in too low this time,” he says with a laugh, a reaction to the criticism he has faced over the years for his tackle technique. He has not played for six weeks but is training again and confident the worst of the symptoms have passed.

A sequence of injuries disrupted Farrell’s time in Paris - Getty Images/Romain Perrocheau

‘People thought I didn’t care but stuff did hurt’

The irony is that Farrell had gone into the 2023 World Cup campaign with a similar thought process to the one that has brought him home. “I remember thinking: ‘I am going to make the most of this, I am going to do everything I can to love every minute of it.’”

Then, in the World Cup warm-up game against Wales, he was sent off for a high tackle on Taine Basham, and his world fell apart. He was eventually banned for England’s first two games in France, but the fallout over the process, which included World Rugby appealing against the independent disciplinary’s decision to downgrade the challenge to a yellow card, had in Farrell’s words, created the “perfect storm”.

England fans then turned on Farrell, booing their own captain before the quarter-final against Fiji, adding to the turmoil.

“I didn’t mean to make the tackle like that, it was an accident, but what came with it threw me because I had sat down before the World Cup and said I was determined to make it the best time of my career,” he says.

“I felt like I was playing well enough towards the end of that year and wanted to kick on and enjoy playing with England and do the best that I can. What came after was tough because it was a lot.

“But it was only me not being able to deal with it. It was getting on top of me a bit. The World Cup was tough and I felt that this was not like it should be playing for my country, playing for England. I have loved playing for England throughout my career.

“I found the games a time to get away from everything else. The weeks were hard enough. It was getting on top of me, and it didn’t feel right. It really didn’t feel right and I don’t want to ever make out that is what is it like to play for England because it was not. It was me. It was what I was going through. I don’t know. A build-up of everything. I don’t know how long for, it might have been years.

“I could make sense of it all individually. I could make sense of the criticism, I could make sense of the booing, and I could make sense of everything that was going on. But put it all together and it felt like it was non-stop. It was overwhelming.

“That was no one’s fault and I am not asking for anything. I am just trying to say how it was for me. In the past I would have just fought against it and that didn’t seem to fit anymore. It didn’t get the best out of me in recent times, now that I have been maturing.

“In the past, when I was younger, people thought I didn’t care. I did care. Everyone thinks that I didn’t because I was competitive. But stuff did hurt. I overthink everything anyway, but I always just thought it was all just part of it, and I would fight against it and suppress it. I had wanted to enjoy it, but everything seemed to hit the fan after that.”

That Farrell still managed to produce an outstanding performance for England in their last-gasp semi-final defeat by South Africa, despite everything that was going on, is remarkable.

“The one thing is that I am remarkably lucky to have the people around me, otherwise I wouldn’t have got there,” he adds.

Farrell was agonisingly close to leading England into successive World Cup finals - Getty Images/Antonin Thuillier

‘International rugby? Who knows what I’ll feel like in six months’

Now that he is back in England, he is qualified to represent his country again, and the question hangs in the air. Does he want to play for England again? Steve Borthwick, the England head coach, went to visit him in Paris.

“My only real thought so far is getting back to being happy and enjoying what I am doing and love my rugby again,” he says. “Getting back to Saracens and the Premiership has been my only real thought so far.”

It is an understandable position, but what is clear is that his decision in 2023 was not a retirement from international rugby.

“Who knows what I will feel like in six months or a year’s time,” he says. “The key behind all of it is that I am determined to be happy.

“I have changed. Not in a way that is unrecognisable from before. But I have changed. I have looked at myself a lot and am still doing now. This is what makes me so determined to get it right.”

He is keen, too, to move into coaching at some stage.

“I think I want to be a coach,” he says. “I can’t imagine not being involved. I don’t know what that looks like or when that is, but I’m interested in starting to get some exposure to it.

“I don’t know what that looks like. Like a lot of players towards the end of their careers, it’s all right having knowledge and experience, but being able to stand in front of people and being able to understand how things work and run properly is not the same.”

And what about the Lions? He is due to work with Sky Sports on Friday night when the Lions play their match against Argentina in Dublin, but would he be ready to answer the call if his father, Andy, the Lions head coach, gets in touch during the tour.

“I can’t say,” he adds. “It is all very hypothetical, isn’t it? A lot would need to happen, and I need to make sure I am ready to go if that does come around. That is the only point that matters.”

A new Owen Farrell maybe, but the competitor is still there.

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