{"id":24719,"date":"2025-01-06T14:20:50","date_gmt":"2025-01-06T14:20:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/premiership-tom-willis-marcus-smith-ollie-hassell-collins-five-talking-points\/"},"modified":"2025-01-06T14:20:51","modified_gmt":"2025-01-06T14:20:51","slug":"premiership-tom-willis-marcus-smith-ollie-hassell-collins-five-talking-points","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/premiership-tom-willis-marcus-smith-ollie-hassell-collins-five-talking-points\/","title":{"rendered":"Premiership: Tom Willis, Marcus Smith, Ollie Hassell-Collins &#8211; five talking points"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">He may not the best back row in his family, but he is clearly the best in the Premiership right now.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Tom Willis, whose brother Jack continues to tear up trees for European champions Toulouse, has been in superb form all season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">His display in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/rugby-union\/articles\/c9384n99kdno\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">Saracens&#8217; 35-26 win over Bristol<\/a> was a tour de force.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He scored two tries, gaining 44 metres and beating five defenders from 12 carries, while also making 23 tackles and securing two turnovers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">His first try was a battering pick-and-go from the back of a breakdown. His second was from longer range, seeing him scorch around Noah Heward and Viliame Mata on his way into the corner.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">At one point in defence, he picked up Rich Lane, put him under his arm like a beach brolly and casually carried the Bears&#8217; full-back back towards his own line.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Bristol, who have conceded more points than everyone except bottom side Newcastle, have a propensity to make the opposition look good.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But Willis&#8217; campaign is a serious body of work. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He has beaten more defenders than any other player in the Premiership. He is the only forward in the top 10. He is eighth on metres made, without racking up the &#8216;easy&#8217; kick receipt yardage. Again, he is the only forward in the top 10.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He is Saracens&#8217; leading tackler, seventh overall in the league and turnovers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">His only England cap came as a 54th-minute replacement in a World Cup warm-up defeat by Wales in August 2023.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">More are surely coming. And soon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/rugby-union\/articles\/cvgm24gy8v4o\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>He may not the best back row in his family, but he is clearly the best in the Premiership right now. Tom Willis, whose brother Jack continues to tear up trees for European champions Toulouse, has been in superb form all season. His display in Saracens&#8217; 35-26 win over Bristol was a tour de force. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24720,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24719"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24719"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24721,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24719\/revisions\/24721"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}