'As long as I'm ready': Yorkshire RFU Academy graduate Tye Raymont on England Under-20s grand slam bid and playing Premiership for Sale

A Premiership debut in Sale Sharks’ front row, a try for England in their victory over Scotland before last night, playing at Cardiff Arms Park on Friday night as his national team attempt to defeat Wales and sew up an Under-20s Six Nations grand slam.

It is set to get better as well, with a return to Sale to try and get more experience in the first team and then back with England for the summer as they bid to win the IRB World Championship out in Italy.

Not bad for the 19-year-old Yorkshireman, the latest example of how the absence of a Premiership team is not holding back the cream of the White Rose crop from rising to the top.

Born in north Leeds between the union hotbeds of Bramhope and Otley, Raymont has been playing rugby since he was four. West Park Leeds were his club then and remained so all the way up to 16.

“I tried football but that didn’t work out, I was too big,” smiles Raymont, who now stands at 6ft 2in tall, weighing 115kg.

“I was always a big lad but then I shrunk a bit in my teenage years.”

What football lost was certainly rugby’s gain. He was spotted early by a Yorkshire Academy that was trying to reinvent itself out of the ashes of Covid and the collapse of Yorkshire Carnegie.

Along with Tom Burrow, who has captained England Under-20s in this Six Nations campaign and is his team-mate at Sale, Raymont is a product of a golden cohort of Yorkshire Academy graduates who are proving no Premiership club is no barrier to talent being unearthed.

“I saw Yorkshire Academy as my best opportunity to get somewhere in rugby,” says Raymont, who was schooled at Bramhope Primary, then Prince Henry’s Grammar in Otley, before going on to rugby college Bishop Burton.

“And it definitely accelerated it. While I was at Bishop it was rugby full-time with my education on top of that, but everything revolved around rugby.

“I’d be doing three sessions with Bishop plus three gym sessions and then two with Yorkshire Academy as well.

“The way that Yorkshire play and the stuff they do with you is only to benefit you. There’s no secondary element where they’re wanting you to sign with a Yorkshire team, it’s very much a case of ‘let’s give you the best coaching, the best training and the best opportunity we can to go and play well and if you’re lucky enough you can progress’.”

England had taken notice of a player his team-mates call ‘physically dominant’ and he represented them at Under-17s, 18s and 19s. He was due to go to an age-group World Cup but injury thwarted him.

Undeterred, Raymont redoubled his efforts on his return and has been reaping the rewards this season.

He had played senior rugby before, on loan at National Two North side Fylde, turning out for the Lancashire side against Leeds Tykes at the Sycamores where he had played so much junior rugby for West Park.

“That was a special one, that,” he says. “Pretty cool playing there and only a two-minute drive from my family home.”

All of that - the senior rugby, the Yorkshire Academy education and England age-group development, stood him in good stead for the moment he was handed his Premiership debut against Bath in late January.

“That was definitely a step up, the physicality and the speed of the game, but I felt like I dealt with it pretty well,” says the tighthead prop.

“As a substitute you’re thinking might get on for the last 20, but I had to go on after 20 and had 60 still to play, so it was nerve-racking but I didn’t have much time to think about it, just go straight onto the pitch and do what you’ve been doing in training. When the opportunity came it felt unreal and I felt like I did a good job. And it made me hungry for more.”

His fellow Yorkshire Academy alumnus Burrow told The Yorkshire Post last month he wants to be a regular in the Sale first team and with England in five years time. But Raymont is not putting deadlines on his own development.

“I just take it as it comes,” says the Yorkshireman who is also studying business management.

“Being in the front five I think you have more time to develop than other positions, but for me it’s just taking it week by week, month by month, doing everything I can to make myself better, so when the call comes I’m ready - like I was when the call came to from Sale.

“I’m not putting a time limit on my ambitions. As long as I’m ready that’s the main thing.”