Ireland v England: Tadhg Furlong and Kyle Sinckler's battle at prop
But back in 2006, aged 13, he was helping make the calls, rather than being subject to them.
"We picked anyone absolutely massive, anyone winning 100m or 200m at sports day, and the kids who got in the football and basketball teams," explains Anastacia Long, who taught Sinckler at Graveney School in south London.
"We had to do a bit of a PR job on some of the boys and their parents. Some of them had completely the wrong impression of rugby, thinking that as soon as they played one game they would have cauliflower ears, that kind of thing."
A few weeks earlier Sinckler, who started playing at nearby Battersea Ironsides, had approached Long to ask her to set up the state school's first rugby team.
It soon became clear the two would have to collaborate.
"I said to him I could arrange the fixtures and drive the minibus but that I knew nothing about rugby," said Long.
"He was captain and fly-half. He did a lot of the tactical stuff early on, sorting players' positions and when things went wrong in games he would coach his team-mates through it."
The team was a success. They beat most of their state counterparts before ruffling feathers among south London's fee-paying and facility-rich schoolboys.
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