England head coach Eddie Jones and his Harlequins counterpart Paul Gustard have shone a spotlight on substitutes in recent months, by dubbing them “finishers” and “game changers” respectively. It led pundits and spectators to note how New Zealand and Australia blur the line of demarcation between starters and replacements even further, simply listing the players from 16 to 23 without a separate title, directly below the names of the run-on team, when they announce their line-ups.
Reserves, non-starters, shiners of the pine – whichever description you favour, and for whatever reason, Ben Spencer knows the job involved, inside out. The 26-year-old Saracens scrum-half had a magnificent season in 2017-18, appearing in every one of his club’s 24 Premiership matches as they captured their fourth league title, with a top-scoring 11 tries along the way.
Add in another two tries as Spencer played in six of Saracens’ seven European Cup matches, and a senior debut for England in South Africa in June, when he came on to replace Leicester’s Ben Youngs in the first and second Tests, it was not only a standout campaign for the Stockport-born No.9 but also an illustration of the workload faced by a modern player. In his 32 matches for club and country, Spencer started on the bench 18 times, and played the full 80 minutes just twice – against Leicester in December and Sale Sharks two months later.
“The thing you know when you go into the game as a substitute is you’ve got to raise the level,” Spencer says. “You can’t come on and perform at a lower intensity than the guy who’s coming off. Winning or losing, you’ve got to raise the intensity, so the whole team does the same. You can’t come on and say the game’s won and stay at that level. You have to immediately be at that intensity and in five minutes’ time, the level has to go up.
“I think ‘finisher’ is a good term. ‘Game changer’, I’m not familiar with – although it sounds like you have changed the game, as an individual, when it’s up to the seven or eight guys who come on, to raise that level.
“Finisher, game changer… they all mean the same thing. I feed off the hard work of others. If you look at a lot of my tries, it’s everyone else doing the hard work and I just run it in. It’s being in the right place at the right time. Speed is one of my best attributes and I’ll continue to work hard on that.”
The fast-breaking Spencer shared Saracens’ starting scrum-half position with his England colleague Richard Wigglesworth last season, while Henry Taylor and Tom Whiteley, aged 24 and 22 respectively, were occasional back-ups, with four substitute appearances between them. That could change this year if Spencer is required more often by his country. He was alongside Youngs and Wasps’ Dan Robson in Jones’s most recent England training squad, with Harlequins’ Danny Care omitted, as he had been in South Africa.
“Every player wants to be in the England squad and be in a World Cup,” says Spencer. “I had my opportunity in the summer and I felt like I trained well, and when I came on I did the best I could to keep the intensity that had already been played at. I’ve just got to put my best foot forward at the start of the season and go from there.
“The good thing about Saracens is we don’t set goals. We don’t sit in a meeting at the start of the season and say we want to be Premiership champions or we want to be European champions. It’s always been about the next game and the next week and how we can prepare best for that team.
“My mindset’s no different. It’s all about how I can improve for the next week. I feel if I do that, then come the end of the season, individually I’ll be in a good place and as a team we’ll be in a good place.”
Spencer kept a club-based memento from South Africa: a photo of the 10 Saracens players in the England squad, with the new boy, who played England under-20s with Robson six years ago, and therefore had to bide his time in another sense, happily wearing his cap.
“There was the usual initiation of everyone filling their glasses, you get toasted, then it’s your turn to get up and sing,” Spencer recalls. “That was interesting. Mine was ‘Follow Me’ by Uncle Kracker. I made sure I picked one where the lads could sing along pretty soon.”
A lyric in Uncle Kracker’s chorus sounds like an apt one as a big season for Spencer is about to begin: “Follow me, and everything is all right…”
