Henry Pollock and Eddie Hearn have a fight on their hands

The very short list of breakout stars in rugby union teaches us that Eddie Hearn and Henry Pollock have a fight on their hands if they are going to smash the conservative barriers surrounding the sport.

As Pollock’s Northampton Saints beat Saracens at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Saturday, we witnessed his already familiar line in jumping around, celebrating tries with faintly amusing gestures, and grabbing the nearest person for a grapple whenever a fight breaks out.

It will take more than this boisterous shtick to cut through in the kebab shops and gambling dens and blocks of flats along Tottenham High Road, where they can all name Harry Kane but wouldn’t know a rugby player from a deathwatch beetle.

English rugby union suffers from an impenetrability to people who have never played it or don’t understand it, or are put off by its public-school heritage – and Pollock is a prime example, as a posh-accented product of Stowe.

If it’s boxing-style trash talk that Hearn’s Matchroom agency think will work for Pollock, his mouthing off at opposition players on Saturday was not caught by the referee’s microphone, as he also made the “stop your chirping” sign with his fingers, so we couldn’t judge the quality or otherwise of the sledging.

There was also a clumsy naivete as the 21-year-old said on TV he had signed for “Matchmaking”, while Matchroom’s website said: “Eddie Hearn believes Henry Pollock has a bright future and expects him to become a household name – and promised more bog-name [sic] signings.”

Rugby has bags of physicality but unlike, say, the players in ice hockey ripping their gloves off for a pre-arranged fight, or the staged theatre of UFC or Saudi Arabia-based boxing, the aggro tends to be uncontrived.

Also on Saturday, a clip went viral of Leicester Tigers’s head coach and ex-England second-row toiler Geoff Parling swearing at and shoving the TNT Sports presenter Craig Doyle for participating in a daft kick at goal during the Tigers’ pre-match warm-up at Villa Park.

Social-media comments were divided between laying into the TV types, among whom Doyle does a great job of preaching to the converted with his clearly genuine enthusiasm for rugby, and slating Parling for overreacting (on Sunday he issued a public apology).

It left Saracens for their evening kick-off wondering whether their headline warmer-upper Dizzee Rascal would get cleared out by angry players as he strode across the pitch performing “Bonkers”.

That would have got plenty of clicks but instead we had rugby’s busy rascal, as Pollock belted out of the tunnel, hopping and skipping and whooping as usual.

His rugby talent is based on great pace and dexterity and strips in possession, though some critics worry over the hard-nosed tight areas of his game.

It will take something extra to become a transcender.

Jonah Lomu trampled England singlehandedly, just as rugby union went pro in 1995.

Siya Kolisi and Francois Pienaar had symbolism as South African World Cup-winning captains.

England-wise, I’d nominate Jonny Wilkinson, for a dropped goal that gave the illusion of winning the 2003 World Cup on his own; the Underwood brothers Rory and Tony, briefly, when their lovely mum went arm-wavingly crazy over their tries at Twickenham; Will Carling for his association with the late Princess Diana; and, much more recently, Joe Marler, the Mohawked finalist on TV’s Celebrity Traitors.

In short, you need a big contribution to England winning a World Cup, or for your mum to do something outlandish in public, or a royal connection, or fix your hair in an eye-catching style and banter with better-known personalities in a scripted game show in a Scottish castle.

So far, Pollock has got the hair – bleached blond and with a black headband – to complete a look that youngsters have been turning up with at rugby grounds; I also spotted three middle-aged men playing the imitation game at France versus England a couple of weeks ago, although it was more reminiscent of a “get rid of your grey” advert gone wrong.

While the Stellar agency will continue to handle Pollock’s rugby contracts, Hearn might chase commercial crossovers.

I remember punning about HP Sauce in these pages last year, and if young Pollock starts gurning over bottles of brown condiment, I promise not to demand my 10 per cent.

Saturday closed with Marler as a guest on The Jonathan Ross Show.

The former prop self-deprecatingly said his world-class gift on the field was his wind-ups, and he riffed to the comedian Roisin Conarty that, if she was running with the ball, he’d say: “Nice lipstick!” At which Romesh Ranganathan sliced into him: “Just to be clear, that’s world-class, is it?”

Star quality sometimes hides cynicism and maybe this is what rugby, for any of its faults, charmingly lacks.

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Indirectly, there was guidance for Pollock at this formative stage.

“I’m just trying to ride the wave for as long as I can,” Marler said.

“Until what happens, that my wife says is going to happen. She said just go and do your thing, make hay whilst the sun shines, because you’ll soon become irrelevant and/or cancelled.”