Marcus Smith: My childhood in Asia was privileged – Brighton was a culture shock

“I reckon I’m a six-and-a-half,” says Marcus Smith, with disarming precision. It is a modest self-appraisal for a 25-year-old feted as England’s most potent creative force, but you can tell he means it.

A bruising autumn series has left him in the mood for some searing honesty. “I feel middle-aged, but there’s loads of growing left. Whether that’s attacking, taking the ball to the line, the deception in my passing, my defence. I want to say I’m a super-strong defender. Aerially, I want to improve. All areas of my game. That’s going to be the thing that drives me.”

So much for Eddie Jones’s waspish warning against Smith believing his own publicity. On a bleak winter’s afternoon in the Surrey Hills, he is anything but the hubristic type, instead offering such sincere self-criticism that it seems almost a pre-emptive strike against anyone suggesting he is overhyped. He meticulously compiles a journal, on occasion updating it with his thoughts the moment he leaves the pitch. “Sometimes I get triggered and go straight to the book,” he explains. “I write down how I’m feeling. The more I can remind myself of the feelings, the more I can implement strategies to ensure they happen more often – or don’t happen again.”

What first strikes anyone who encounters Smith is how polite he is. Each member of the crew that has assembled here for a four-hour photoshoot can attest to his scrupulous manners, to the fact that he wishes everyone a merry Christmas. At his rarefied level in sport, that is hardly a given. True, the setting for this interview – a sprawling, made-for-Country Life house, not his own but often rented for fashion photography, featuring opulent white sofas and a couple of golden retrievers – leaves you in little doubt you are meeting a star. But even with his trademark bouffant hair and a Charles Tyrwhitt suit, he wears all the fuss lightly. “Wanting to be a style icon?” he smiles. “I wouldn’t say it’s at the forefront of my mind.”

He has just returned from a restorative break in Dubai, where he and his girlfriend, the model Beth Dolling, paid a surprise visit to his younger brother Luc, now playing sevens for the Philippines. Smith’s south-east Asian ancestry, via his Filipina mother Suzanne, is a valuable guide to understanding his character, especially his tendency to seek solace through religion. While his upbringing in Manila and Singapore was comfortable, courtesy of his father Jeremy’s job in commercial real estate and Suzanne’s work as a stewardess for Cathay Pacific, he was immersed from an early age in the significance of faith.

“My mum’s family are very religious,” he says. “I still pray with her regularly, I continue to read my Bible. It makes me feel grounded, makes me believe that everything’s going to be all right. In the ups and downs of professional sport, you need the ability to stay as neutral and level as possible. Don’t think you’re world-class if you win one game, and don’t think you’re the worst player on earth if you lose one. It’s the biggest thing I’ve learnt these past couple of years.”

There have, he admits, been lapses in his observance. “I probably went away from it between the ages of 14 and 19 – there were other things I was interested in,” he reflects. “But when I was 21, I was struggling for form a bit, trying to get in the England mix. So my mum suggested bringing it back. Now I take Holy Communion, I pray every night and every morning. I haven’t stopped. It gives me peace.”

‘In Asia, we were privileged’

Smith might be the most extravagantly gifted fly-half in the country, with his feints and sidesteps crucial to unlocking England’s leaden attack, but his path to this point has not been seamless. He talks of a difficult time when he was 13, with his family’s uprooting from Singapore to Brighton proving fraught. “That was probably the most challenging period. In Asia, we were very privileged. We had drivers and, I guess, a very easy life in terms of people helping us. The standard of living was probably a lot higher than we had in Brighton.

“We arrived in early September, and soon enough the routine of going to school in the dark, coming back in the dark was quite miserable. Mum was sad at the time, she didn’t have many friends here. She left a lot behind, to be honest. But my brothers and I often talk about how grateful we are to have come back when we did. Asia was a little bit of a bubble. But in England, with the exposure across the sports that we loved – rugby, football and cricket – it was the perfect moment for the three of us to challenge ourselves again, in a bigger fishbowl.”

As a 10, Smith’s point of difference does not take long to discern. He is slippery, elusive, electrifying, with his speed of thought among the few highlights in England’s grisly autumn campaign of three defeats in four. Take his contribution to England’s solitary try against the All Blacks. Having made the interception on the 22-line, he showed the poise to resist three covering defenders before delaying his pass to George Furbank with the cleverest show-and-go. Before you knew it, Immanuel Feyi-Waboso was over in the corner, with Smith the toast of an enraptured Twickenham. It was just a pity the optimism could not last.

“I would say I’m predominantly an instinctive player,” he says. “But I do watch a lot of rugby. In fact, I get told to stop watching rugby by my girlfriend. I’m obsessed with it. I enjoy the nuances – not just of union but of league, too, which I’ve learnt a lot following. The preparation allows you to be instinctive. I front-load my week so that I go into the game with a clear mind, knowing that I’ve done the analysis. I try to foresee what’s going to happen, to decide, ‘If he does this, then I’m going to do this.’ That comes down to understanding your enemy. Then it’s about being relaxed and ready to pull out the tool you need, whatever the situation in front of you.”

Smith has long been smitten with the 13-man game: last year at Harlequins, he arranged to watch a training session at Leeds Rhinos to help augment his craft. “I like watching the ball players, the way they show and manipulate defences,” he says. “It’s a different game with numbers to rucks and numbers in the defensive line, but it’s the way they show the ball inside, outside, inviting runners on to the ball. I enjoy seeing that, because it puts defences on the back foot. I’ve tried to integrate it into my game.”

Unfamiliar as the names might be to an English audience, he happily offers examples of league backs he admires in Australia. “Nathan Cleary, Adam Reynolds. Reece Walsh is quite explosive out of the back of shapes. I’m looking for guys who are physically extremely gifted, but who are smart enough to do the right thing at the right time.”

‘I’ve got a responsibility to help Fin’

While statistics indicate that consistent selection at fly-half is vital to any team’s success, England’s predicament is that they have three jostling for the jersey. It is not just that a 31-year-old George Ford still has the ear of Steve Borthwick through their Leicester connection, but that Fin Smith is emerging, at 22, as a younger alternative, with his late cameo against Japan visibly lifting England. For Marcus, the thought of competing with his namesake sharpens the reality of time passing. “I guess I’m the middle-aged one now, out of the three of us,” he says, ruefully. “Getting older, mate. Too quick.”

Not that he rejects the notion of a mentoring role. “I’ve got a responsibility to help Fin if he needs it. You saw the great style that Northampton played with last year, and he was at the forefront of that, in terms of how he moved and distributed the ball. It was impressive. I’ve learnt that from playing with him. As for George, I remember doing my first kicking session with him at Brighton College when I was 17. He gave me some good, honest feedback. And he was willing to share all his ideas.”

The relationships might be cordial, but the fight to nail down the 10 jersey threatens to be brutal if England’s Six Nations goes rapidly off the rails. That prospect is all too real, with Ireland awaiting in Dublin on the opening weekend. But for all the fatalism around this team, Smith is adamant that the margin between hope and despair is slender. “Had we won that first autumn game against New Zealand, the whole picture would have looked different. We would be building momentum, and everyone would be a bit happier. You’ve got to perform though, and we hold our hands up. We’re not happy with the results. For ourselves, for the staff, and for the people who come and support us, it’s not good enough.”

Under such relentless scrutiny, Smith craves the odd escape. He is drawn back to Brighton, he says, for bracing walks along the seafront. He shows a keen interest in boxing, having spent his Manila days at the height of Manny Pacquiao’s fame. And he is working quietly on improving his golf, aiming for a handicap of 14 by the end of next summer. The only impediment to fulfilling that ambition is a message from Andy Farrell, and a call-up for his second British and Lions tour.

His first experience was, it would be fair to say, bizarre. For a start, South Africa in 2021 barely provided a tour at all, with all three Tests held in the empty, soulless swathes of Cape Town’s 58,000-seat stadium, after both sides took the ridiculous decision to press ahead despite a pandemic-enforced ban on fans. Plus, Smith arrived late as injury cover for Finn Russell, only playing a single match against the Stormers. Still, it has whetted his appetite for more.

“I was only 22, and it was a pinch-myself moment,” he recalls. “In a few weeks I went from winning my first Premiership to earning my first England cap to going on the Lions tour. I couldn’t really celebrate each one too much, because they were almost rolling into each other. But to represent the Lions has always been a dream of mine. Sharing the field with a legend like Alun Wyn Jones? Great days, and ones I’ll never forget. It has made me even more desperate to achieve it next year.”

A triumphant tour of Australia could make for another compelling entry in his ever-expanding journal. “When I feel the time’s right, I do go back to my journal,” he grins. “I just like writing interesting things that I hear or read. They’re almost triggers for me to push me back on the path I want to be on.”

Conscious though he is of his age, he is determined to stay at the summit of his sport for another 10 years at least. Whether he accomplishes it is a moot point, given England’s travails. But an afternoon in his company is persuasive evidence that he will not die wondering.

Marcus Smith is a Charles Tyrwhitt ambassador. Men’s Clothing & Formal Menswear | Charles Tyrwhitt