It’s been quite the recent adventure for Ollie Allan, this Friday’s England No9 in the World Rugby U20 Championship final versus France in Cape Town. Thirteen months ago, he was suddenly made redundant. London Irish collapsed, leaving the senior academy member at an awkward loose end that was eventually tied up via a trial at Leicester and a subsequent contract offer from them to complement his university studies at Loughborough.

Then came his ill-timed injury. A hamstring tore on the Oval Park training ground and it ruled him out of Six Nations selection with England. He was delighted that they went on and won the title without him but all the same, until he got the call to come back in from Mark Mapletoft there would have been a fear that his spell of unavailability had tanked his selections chances.

Not so. Named as the starting scrum-half for the June 29 opener versus Argentina, he has gone on to be one of only two players named to start in all five England games at the Championship – skipper Finn Carnduff is the other. He has enjoyed the challenge of repaying this selection trust.

“It was exciting to be able to push myself hard because I wanted to continue what they had done well in the Six Nations,” he told RugbyPass, seated in the same hotel lobby corner in Cape Town where Junior Kpoku, Asher Opoku-Fordjour, captain Carnduff, coach Mapletoft and Nathan Michelow have all said their piece to this website over the course of the tournament. “I knew the job I had to do to come in so that I could keep up the pace.

“You got that sort of trust from the coaches so you have got to go out and prove it and prove to yourself that you deserve to be out here, and also remember that we speak a lot about the brotherhood so remember that we are in the one collective growing up through whatever, the last three years, so we have got to do it together.

“It’s been good form, consistent form. I’d say we still haven’t reached our full potential, which is a positive going into the last game – we know we have more in us. We know we have got to start quicker, earlier, not put ourselves on the back foot and when we get into patches where it’s a stalemate, making sure when you are in the trench someone will come out firing.”

Allan adores the brotherhood culture. “It’s off-field, behind the cameras, none of the rugby stuff. Just how we integrate as a group, how we always get behind each other if one bloke gets injured or someone has had like a s**t training session, and then just the small things like around the bus, at dinner, meetings. Good craic.”