Luke Cowan-Dickie puts gaming ‘career’ on hold until England duty is done

Cowan-Dickie once occupied top spot in the war-based video game’s global rankings and he sees his skills with a control pad as a possible future once he hangs up his boots.

The Exeter Chief hooker was forced to miss the Six Nations victory over Scotland because of the premature birth of his son Arlo, but he is back in contention for Sunday’s visit of Ireland.

“At one point I was the best in the world, on the remastered one. There are different game types – pro and publicly,” Cowan-Dickie said.

“Publicly I was 26th in the world, but on hardcore session I got to No 1. That’s just a lot of playing. I was injured at the time and I didn’t have a girlfriend. That’s the key to success in gaming!

“Streaming games on Twitch is now probably where it’s at – you don’t have to be too good a gamer, just have to be likeable.

“I watch players who have 25-30,000 people watching them. It could be an area I’ll look at after rugby. Might get my boy into it!”

Apart from Call Of Duty sessions, Cowan-Dickie has been using his pursuit of becoming England’s first-choice hooker to distract him from being away from home so soon after Arlo’s birth seven weeks before his due date.

“It’s on my mind. We are doing what we think is best at this time and if we are both happy with the decision then things will be all well and good,” he added. “I speak to her quite a bit about how he’s getting on and about how she’s getting on.”

Cowan-Dickie has won all but three of his 22 caps off the bench, playing second fiddle to Jamie George, but there were rumours he was set to displace the Saracens front row against Scotland until his withdrawal.

“For everyone it’s your goal to start a Test match. We didn’t know what the team was going to be against Scotland,” he said.

“Whatever my role will be this week I will do the best of my ability.”