, external<\/span><\/a> before he was named in England’s squad to tour Australia.<\/p>\nHowever, London Irish went into administration in June 2023 and Arundell opted for a move to French club Racing 92.<\/p>\n
It didn’t turn out as he had hoped.<\/p>\n
Injury and iffy performances checked his progress. Former England coach Stuart Lancaster, who had brought Arundell to the club, was sacked in February 2025 amid some miserable results.<\/p>\n
“There were moments where your form is not great or you have injuries – and that can have an effect,” he says.<\/p>\n
“You find the most growth in adversity and there were definitely things I gained – a lot of skill stuff and understanding from working with [All Black legend] Joe Rokocoko as a back-three coach and attack stuff from [former France fly-half] Freddie Michalak.<\/p>\n
“You learn a lot from the players around you, the likes of Siya Kolisi, Gael Fickou, Josua Tuisova. You’re playing with huge names.<\/p>\n
“When Owen [Farrell] came for my second year that was someone English that I could chat to and really learn from.<\/p>\n
“At the end of the day though, I was a 20-year-old kid out in France living on my own and sometimes you do need family around you.<\/p>\n
“I’m seeing my family every week now, rather than every few months. Having that support system is very special and I probably didn’t appreciate that enough when I was a bit younger.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The match will be Bath’s first Champions Cup semi-final in 20 years. Arundell too has taken a longer-than-expected route to this point. As a rugby-mad schoolboy at Beechen Cliff in Bath, the club were the obvious career choice. Arundell’s team-mates Miles Reid (four years above), Tom de Glanville (three years above), Ethan Staddon (a year<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14524,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rugby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}