Ollie Sleightholme: I put on a stone and a half in four weeks, but I couldn’t play rugby heavy

Ollie Sleightholme, the Premiership’s top try-scorer, has revealed that he lost around a stone ahead of his title-winning season with Northampton Saints after overdoing a summer bulk-up.

The 24-year-old wing, who has travelled out to Japan with England and will compete for a first cap, scored a 15th try of the Premiership campaign on Saturday as Bath were beaten at Twickenham.

Steve Borthwick was promptly in touch, ringing Sleightholme on Sunday morning just before the latter left for Northampton’s celebratory open-top bus trip. Of the 16 backs in a 36-man England squad, six are from Saints. Fraser Dingwall, Tommy Freeman, George Furbank, Alex Mitchell and Fin Smith will join Sleightholme.

A year ago, Northampton embarked on a collective bid to gain weight over their extended pre-season, under the guidance of Tommy Bullough, their head of athletic performance. Sleightholme, though, was forced to reassess.

“It’s a fine, fine line between being too big and being right, in a good spot,” he said on Tuesday at Twickenham. “At the start of the year, I was probably a bit too bulked up and through the year I found where I needed to sit with my body. Then I got into a rhythm after that, really.”

“I put on eight [kilos]. I went from 90 kilos to 98 kilos in four and a half or five weeks. It was just loads of gym, loads of eating, basically. I got to the end of it and the S & Cs [strength and conditioning coaches] were all like, ‘Well done for doing it’, and I was like, ‘I can’t play like this. I can’t play this heavy, it’s not going to work’.

“Then it was a case of starting to get back into training and it all sort of drops off.”

Sleightholme settled at around 92kg (14st 7lbs), which is still around 2kg heavier than he was at the end of last season. Trimming down after pre-season, he believes, was vital for his agility.

‌“The turning is the difficult bit,” Sleightholme explained. “When you’re a bit heavier, turning and moving and changing direction, that’s when you feel it. Running in a straight line it’s not too bad because once the weight is moving, it’s moving. Changing direction and reacting to stuff I found difficult when I was a bit heavier.”

‌Earlier this week, Borthwick declared himself excited by the potential of Sleightholme, who was first brought into a senior England camp by Eddie Jones three years ago. As well as highlighting Sleightholme’s “incredible pace”, and finishing prowess, Borthwick pointed to attributes that should suit the blitz defence of Felix Jones.

‌“You can see how important this defensive system has been to us, over just five games in the Six Nations,” Borthwick said. “And we see [Sleightholme] fitting into that system very, very well.”

‌Jamie George heralded the “scary” speed of Sleightholme after training on Tuesday, with the man himself crediting Ben Rhodes, the senior strength and conditioning coach at Saints, as a major influence. Sleightholme’s acceleration was in full view at the weekend as he chased his own kick down the left touchline to put Northampton 15-3 ahead.

‌A wobbly strike curled perfectly into Sleightholme’s path, though there was an admission that the ball was propelled somewhat fortuitously by his shin.

‌“My only miss would have been to kick it out. So I thought if I try and aim in-field for Mitch [Alex Mitchell] and it comes back to me, it comes back to me,” smiled Sleightholme. “Luckily it did.”

‌Freeman, Immanuel Feyi-Waboso and Tom Roebuck are the other potential wings among Borthwick’s group and Borthwick has stressed that all 36 players are available for the Japan game before England move on for a two-Test series against the All Blacks in July.

Any involvement would cap a magnificent year for Sleightholme, who celebrated appropriately on Saturday night before taking a more measured approach to the open-top bus parade through Northampton on Sunday following Borthwick’s call, as thousands of Saints supporters lined the streets.

“It was unbelievable,” Sleightholme said of the parade. “That just shows what Northampton is like as a town. It’s a rugby town and everyone there is mad for it and the support we got out, here [at Twickenham] on Saturday, every week at the Gardens and up there for the parade was unbelievable.

“I got into bed on Saturday night after the game and I obviously knew the bus tour was going ahead. I was thinking about how many people were actually going to turn up. You’re in the unknown and it could be an absolute flop but it was an unbelievable turnout.

“You couldn’t hear yourself speak half the time. Saturday [had been] as expected and then I got the call from Steve on Sunday, so Sunday was a pretty low-key one.”

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