Louis Rees-Zammit could have been forgiven for casting a few envious glances Henry Arundell’s way. This can’t have been what the Welsh wizard thought he was signing up for when he made his much ballyhooed return to rugby after an NFL sojourn.
There was little he could do as his Wales team were outfought, outclassed and humiliatingly outscored at Allianz Stadium, Twickenham to kick off a 2026 Six Nations campaign that looks worryingly like it will be just as fruitless as the previous two.
On the day that their presumed wooden spoon rivals Italy were holding on for a hard-fought and thoroughly well-deserved victory over Scotland in Rome, Wales were proving not even the slightest match for an England side that didn’t need to get out of second gear.
A 29-0 half-time deficit became 48-7 by the final whistle. For those keeping count at home, that’s an aggregate score of 116-21 in the past two fixtures between the sides. The Welsh malaise has been well-documented yet the sheer scale of the climb back to competency that they face is becoming alarmingly apparent.
But back to Rees-Zammit and Arundell. There are undeniable similarities between the pair – explosive back-three athletes with pace to burn and a remarkable highlight reel of tries. Yet both have faced questions over their defensive and aerial ability and thus their capacity to be truly effective Test performers over the long term.
In the short term however, Arundell is getting an armchair ride in a team on the up that suddenly knows its identity and has an attack that is clicking, while Rees-Zammit is fighting for scraps in a young, overmatched squad flailing around in the dark.
On Saturday, Arundell had a hat-trick inside 35 minutes – taking him to 11 tries in 12 matches for his country. George Ford’s fizzed flat pass put him over for his first before he had the simple task of waiting for Ford’s kick-pass to drop into his hands in the in-goal area for a second dot down. He would’ve had a hat-trick by 24 minutes but vacated his usual left-wing channel and watched Ben Earl barrel down the line and power through a tackle instead for the third try. No matter.
Ten minutes later, the 23-year-old did have his treble when a misplaced Ben Thomas pass, seeking Rees-Zammit who also overran it slightly, hit the deck; Fraser Dingwall pounced and released Arundell to show his pace down the line.
The game-breaking ability with ball in hand has always been there for the English speedster – famously demonstrated in his viral, length-of-the-field solo try from his own line for London Irish against Toulon back in 2022 – but he has focussed on bringing consistency to the party.
“Something I’ve grown on and learned is you don’t really want to be a confidence player,” Arundell told the assembled press after the game. “There’s a risk you can fluctuate too much emotionally.
“Never too high, never too low. It may sound a bit cliche, but I think you need that in professional sport. You can have a great week today but next week you can have the worst game of your life.
“It’s trying to stay emotionally balanced and knowing that whatever happened today, I still have to wake up tomorrow and have breakfast and do some recovery and be ready for the next training week. I try to stay fairly level headed with all that.”
England head coach Steve Borthwick believes other elements of the winger’s game are starting to come to the fore as he tries to develop into an all-round rugby player.
“Henry is a player who has incredible ability running with the ball,” explained Borthwick after the win. “His ability to find the try line is excellent but what I’ve been really impressed by is his attitude to improve other aspects. He has worked exceptionally hard on other areas of his game since the autumn and he has come back to the Six Nations an even better player.”
Jamie George concurred with. “He’s been brilliant,” added the hooker. “He really reminds me of [former England winger] Jonny May in so many ways in terms of his diligence and preparation. The way that he trains and the way that he’s gone away and developed so many different areas of his game.
“When you’ve got a player like that on the field, it gives everyone else so much confidence that if we work hard in the middle and create space for someone like that, he’s going to capitalise on it. I thought he was fantastic today in all areas.”
Arundell qualified to play for Wales through his ancestry, while Eddie Jones once had a call with a young Rees-Zammit to try and convince him to declare allegiance for England. Neither man will regret the decision they ultimately made regarding their international futures but there may have been a part of Rees-Zammit wistfully watching his opponent at Allianz Stadium and reckoning that he would do exactly the same damage in that impressive a team.
Instead, the Welshman suffered a day of frustration, where mistakes were mixed in with the flashes of quality he clearly possesses.
It was an inauspicious start as he had a kick charged down in his own half after just 75 seconds and then found himself knocked backwards by Arundell – not exactly known for his tackling – in the fourth minute, to rumbles of delight from the crowd.
After Earl’s try on 24 minutes, Rees-Zammit’s shoulders visibly dropped in disappointment as he was unable to get across to make a covering tackle, while the exasperation of the day became apparent three minutes from time when he zoomed sideways across the field and tried to dink over the top of the defensive line, only to chip the ball straight out of play, causing a roar of frustration.
Yet there were moments scattered throughout the clash that showed what a talent he is. On 25 minutes, he caught a high ball, stepped neatly inside a defender barrelling towards him and darted over halfway line. On 55 minutes, he expertly collected an awkward kick in his own 22, beat two men in a phone box and then accelerated between more tacklers before bumping a defender off him to gain 25 metres and find a pass.
There is no one else in the Wales squad with Rees-Zammit’s game-changing ability. Even on what will go down as a dismal day for his country, the 25-year-old made more metres than Arundell on the same number of carries and beat six defenders, compared with the Englishman’s two.
He was stationed at full-back rather than on the wing and coach Steve Tandy reserved praise for how he coped.
“In Test match rugby there’s not much space anyway,” explained Tandy. “But I thought Zammo, the way he adapted to full-back and some of the aerial battles, he’s a big man but he did light the game up in moments.
“It’s looking at how we can excite that and give him a few more moments on the ball but, in his first start in a while at 15 for us, I thought he did really well.”
Yet the scoreboard following Allianz Stadium’s tale of two finishers showed the gulf between the them currently – the talent may be comparable but their futures look very different.
