\n<\/p>\n
Such has been Pollock’s impact that already children at rugby clubs across England have been spotted running around with black head tape on, scoring tries and imitating his pulse-checking celebration.<\/p>\n
Northampton’s club shop does a roaring trade in sales of black head tape, which Pollock wears to protect his ears.<\/p>\n
But his influence goes further than that.<\/p>\n
Former Ireland captain Brian O’Driscoll came home from covering last Saturday’s game against Italy in Dublin to find his son dressed as Pollock.<\/p>\n
Bordeaux Begles players mocked Pollock, who ended up in a final-whistle scuffle, in their post-match celebrations after winning last season’s Champions Cup final.<\/p>\n
“Pollock is an outstanding rugby player and I think he is brilliant for the game,” former Scotland scrum-half Andy Nicol told Radio 5 Live.<\/p>\n
“My daughters are 25 and 22 and they don’t know who Tom Curry or Ben Earl are. They know who Henry Pollock is.”<\/p>\n
In less than six months, he went from being an England Under-20 player to playing for the British and Irish Lions.<\/p>\n
“He is a great character and I got on well with him on the Lions tour in a weird kind of way,” said assistant coach Johnny Sexton, who received a tongue-in-cheek 40th birthday message on tour off Pollock.<\/p>\n
A number of solo tries – one which cut open Leinster in a Champions Cup semi-final win and a remarkable chip-and-chase against Sale Sharks – showed Pollock has the speed and finishing prowess of a Test winger.<\/p>\n
That ability to turn a game on its head, with a moment of magic, was missing for England in their defeat by Scotland last weekend.<\/p>\n
Former Ireland wing Shane Horgan added on BBC 5 Live: “He does things that few others can, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a spectacular moment by him [against Ireland] that galvanises England’s performance.<\/p>\n
“You’ve got an extremely highly skilled, massively talented individual who has enormous self-confidence, and that confidence has not been blunted by anything yet.<\/p>\n
“That is when you get those generational players. They have all the components but also this bullet-proof confidence, which means they can just keep on delivering throughout their career.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Such has been Pollock’s impact that already children at rugby clubs across England have been spotted running around with black head tape on, scoring tries and imitating his pulse-checking celebration. Northampton’s club shop does a roaring trade in sales of black head tape, which Pollock wears to protect his ears. But his influence goes further<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9118,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9117","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\/9117","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=9117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}