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In his quieter moments Paul Brown-Bampoe has a recurring daydream. A packed Twickenham international stage, with him playing on one wing for England and his Exeter teammate Manny Feyi-Waboso on the other. “Of course I’ve imagined that day,” he says, smiling broadly. If the double-barrelled whizz-kids continue their current form it might just happen sooner rather than later.
Admittedly it is early days in the new Prem season but something potentially thrilling is stirring out west. Feyi-Waboso, after an injury-curtailed year, is back fit and firing with five tries in his opening two league games. The top-drawer Wallaby Len Ikitau has arrived to link up with Henry Slade in the Chiefs midfield and also lurking with intent is the 23-year-old Brown-Bampoe, a serious athlete with numerous strings to his bow.
Not unlike Feyi-Waboso, who combines rugby with his medical studies, Brown-Bampoe is a world away from your run-of-the-mill pro. He has just completed a masters in finance to add to his BA in mechanical engineering and came close to pursuing a career in the City. As the Durham University graduate puts it: “I have that perspective of having been an intern at an investment bank, working 18-hour days and getting four hours of sleep a night. If this [opportunity with Exeter] didn’t come I was going back there.”
Since then his subsequent on-field numbers have more than added up, with 21 tries in 23 games for Exeter in all competitions last season. Most striking of all, perhaps, is his firm belief that if he can develop his all-round game he is well placed to represent England at the highest level. “If I’m feeling supremely confident in all those other areas I really think that opportunity will come for me. Because, physically, I believe I’m there.”
The Croydon-born Brown-Bampoe is also not the type to be intimidated by big-name opponents, unconcerned whether, say, the similarly hyphenated Louis Rees-Zammit might have outpaced him had the latter been fit to play for Bristol at Ashton Gate on Saturday. “It’s about what I can do to them, not what they can do to me. What I find works for me is realising I’m the superpower. I’m the one who’s going to be wreaking havoc on my opponents. That’s my aim anyway.”
By now a couple of things should be becoming clear. Not only is Brown-Bampoe an endearingly entertaining character but a smart cookie intent on going places. He is even keener to fly the flag for late developers everywhere, having never even made a club academy as a scrawny youngster. “I really hope that’s inspiring for the late bloomers of the world who got rejected at a young age. Rugby is a late-developer sport.
“There were boys I played with at school – great guys, my friends still – who were academy players and at 16 had the world at their feet. As a young lad who always wanted to be a professional sportsman I’d look at them and think: ‘I’m never going to get there.’ So I just focused on my academics. In a really roundabout way, I’ve ended up where I assumed they’d end up in life.”
In his case his horizons changed when he grew seven inches during one teenage summer holidays, fuelled by his mother’s Ghanaian-influenced home cooking. “She’d make a whole chicken every two days and I’d be demolishing it.” Now, at 6ft 3in and 99kg, he has even Feyi-Waboso casting envious glances in his direction. “It’s definitely healthy competition,” he says. “When I was out injured and was seeing Paul fly, it was crazy. I was just like: ‘Give the ball to Paul. Give it him.’ In training we do a lot of reps together to help each other. Yes, we’re fighting for the same position but we want each other to get better. It’s really good.”
None of this will hugely surprise Brown-Bampoe’s classmates at Reed’s school in Surrey, where he was head boy. “Quite arrogantly I’d like to think they would have thought I was going to be prime minister,” he says. As it happens he wouldn’t be entirely averse to dipping his toe into politics one day: “I’m sure at some point politics is something I might be interested in.” So, not unlike the England captain Maro Itoje? “He loves his politics doesn’t he? Yeah, me versus Maro. We’re all the same party.”
For the moment, though, he has other priorities, his talent most strikingly underlined by the spectacular length-of-the-field try he scored at Sandy Park against Bordeaux in last season’s Champions Cup. “I never doubted I made the right decision to play professional rugby from the minute I arrived here.” And his next overriding motivation is to follow his mate Feyi-Waboso into the Test arena. “Absolutely. 100%. Manny’s an inspiring player on the pitch because he takes control [of situations].
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“That’s something I am trying to learn from him. One of the best things that has happened to me in my career is that I get to be around an international winger day in day out. Straight away I knew I’m physically capable. In fact I might even be more physically capable. Then it’s about how do I upskill myself to make sure I’m an all-round threat.”
Mix everything together – Feyi-Waboso revealed this week he has put on three to four kilograms which has made him feel “physically fitter and faster” – and it is little wonder Exeter’s director of rugby Rob Baxter is cautiously optimistic: “You don’t have to be a genius to look at the group and say: ‘This looks better than last season.’ Without doubt it’s an exciting group to be working with.”
Which leaves opponents staring straight down the double barrel, so to speak. If Feyi-Waboso doesn’t scorch past you, the chances are Brown-Bampoe will. And as they seek to blaze a trail for more players of West African heritage, Exeter’s twin threats are also demonstrating to every youngster that rugby and intellectual rigour can still smoothly coexist. “Limiting your opportunities at 16 years old is a terrible thing to do, in my opinion,” Brown-Bampoe says.
“I like that feeling of being multifaceted and not being pigeonholed as a rugby player or an academic. I know I need something off the field. Otherwise I’ll just be thinking about rugby all the time and that’s not a good thing.” Future prime minister or not, don’t bet against him doubling up with Feyi-Waboso for club and country.
