Back-row stars, a Puma sensation & more Premiership talking points

With England’s players - Henry Slade apart - locked into autumn preparations, this weekend's Premiership action gave space for others to press their Test case to Steve Borthwick.

And it was the back row players that were front and centre.

There was pain for one young gun as 21-year-old Guy Pepper - a stand-out with struggling Newcastle last season, whose form has continued to run hot at Bath -limped out of the win over Sale, while Henry Pollock, just 19, was busy for Northampton, racking up more metres, carries and tackles than any other Saints forward in defeat by Bristol.

It was those further up the age range though that really caught the eye.

Tom Pearson combined rock-solid shoulders with feather-soft hands, superbly laying on tries for Josh Kemeny and George Hendy in the opening 20 minutes against Bristol, while Fitz Harding, fresh off a hat-trick last week, was a key part of the Bears' fearsome comeback.

Jack Kenningham and Will Evans, who top the league's turnover stats with 11 and nine respectively, continued their Hooper-Pocock tribute act in Harlequins' win over Exeter, while Newcastle's Callum Chick raged against defeat at Gloucester.

However, Ted Hill and Tom Willis - the most obvious omissions from England's initial squad last week - made the most obvious claims.

Bath's Hill mixed glorious galloping breaks with an unstinting dedication to the grunt work, while Willis punched a 96m-deep black hole in Leicester's defence in a display reminiscent of his Saracens' number eight predecessor Billy Vunipola.

Hill was called up to England's squad on Sunday evening as cover for the injured Ollie Chessum. Willis, meanwhile, still waits.

"You don't get trophies six weeks in and second in the table."

Michael Cheika attempted to temper growing expectations with a big, damp dollop of realism, but the Tigers bounced into the international break on the back of four straight wins after their victory over Saracens.

Physicality has been the first on Cheika's to-do list. Leicester's lack of it in the first half of their narrow win over Gloucester last weekend inspired a paint-peeling half-time team-talk and subsequent comeback.

Cheika later claimed there were plenty of higher heat settings on his hairdryer. They weren't needed at the StoneX, where the visitors made more dominant tackles and secured more turnovers to put a spanner in Saracens' spokes.

Izaia Perese typifies the head-down, horns-up style. The Australian swatted aside Sarries' wing Tobias Elliott with a brutal handover on his way to the line and, from outside centre, made more metres than anyone else on his team.

The meeting with Bristol at Mattioli Woods Welford Road just before Christmas is already looking like a cracker.

The mini-mullet, the Conquistador moustache, the beef-fed bulk - Rodrigo Isgro is an Argentine wing straight from central casting. And there is no way Harlequins are going to be sending him back any time soon.

The 25-year-old has made his name on the Sevens circuit, featuring in his country's Olympic campaigns in Tokyo and Paris and being named the shortened format's player of the year in 2023.

But in his first two games in the Premiership, the 25-year-old is acclimatising perfectly to the increase in profile and decrease in space.

He scored two tries in last weekend's defeat by Bath and followed up with another in Sunday's win over Exeter, burning hooker Dan Frost for speed before barging through Olly Woodburn.

Good under the high ball, he also showed a sublime piece of slipper to go with the bomb disposal skills, chipping infield for Tyrone Green to waltz in. Unfortunately for Isgro, the try was chalked off for a forward pass earlier in the move.

Still, his stats stack up impressively. As well as his three tries, he has beaten six defenders and made seven clean breaks, averaging nearly 10m a carry in attack.

Harlequins put together a little video of the club's previous Pumas congratulating him on his start for social media. Intriguingly, Marcos Moneta - a fellow jet-heeled Sevens star - was also included despite not, yet at least, playing for Quins., external

Sometimes you need something on a rugby pitch for a sense of scale. A stray, scurrying physio highlights the speed of a stampeding backline. A pitch-side pundit's attempt to punt back a pre-match ball highlights the snap in the younger players' hamstrings. For Rory Hutchinson's pass, it is difficult to say what would be the measure.

Perhaps a full-size basketball court. Or a queue of London buses. A gaping fault-line chasm maybe.

The Northampton centre's fizz-flung bullet soared across several Bristol postcodes on Friday night before touching down so perfectly in James Ramm's hands it was as if on a parabola plotted from mission control in Houston., external

The Saints came away from Ashton Gate without a victory or any losing bonus points, but beauty like that defies the bean-counters.

Hutchinson is in a rich vein of form and back in the Scotland squad for this autumn's Tests, more than two years on from his last cap. The possibility of him pairing up with Sione Tuipulotu in midfield is intriguing.

Spare a thought for Tim Swiel.

Everyone's been new to a team, trying to bluff your way through plays and remember names. Few have to do it on such an unforgiving stage.

Swiel, whose globe-trotting career has included stints in Scotland, South Africa and Japan, trained with Saracens informally at the end of last season, but was only brought back to north London on a short-term contract last Wednesday after an injury to fly-half prospect Louie Johnson.

Even allowing for Johnson's injury, Swiel arrived as Saracens' third-choice stand-off behind Fergus Burke and Alex Goode. But injuries to Burke in the week and Goode in the warm-up against Leicester, set Swiel on a bends-inducing rise straight into the first team and a spot occupied by Owen Farrell just a few months before.

"Tim Swiel hadn't run a play with us and for him to get thrown in at the deep end wasn't easy," said Saracens boss Mark McCall with understatement.

"The lads were making calls and Tim didn't know what they were. It's not a great situation, but he managed his way through the game and I thought he did really well."