England’s most capped rugby player and a former Premier League star were in Bermuda last weekend aiming to attract the next generation of sporting talent to schools in the United Kingdom.

Ben Youngs, who played 127 times for England and started the 2019 World Cup final and former Blackburn Rovers, Birmingham City and Nottingham Forest player Matt Derbyshire have made the transition to teaching high performance sport at boarding schools in UK.

For Youngs, the move to being Director of High Performance Sport at Gresham’s School is not all that far removed from playing in some of rugby’s biggest games.

“I’d honestly say the elite game is no different to the community game and the school game in the sense that you have bonds and make friends for life,” Youngs said.

“Of course, it’s different in terms of how you play, but in terms of the bond and what rugby brings to people, it's exactly the same. The highlight of my career is the great people I’ve met and I’m fortunate to have done it for that long that I met so many good people.”

Youngs, a former pupil at Gresham’s, decided to return to the school after retiring from rugby last year and he says that the switch in careers has proved pretty smooth.

“I feel like I owe a lot to the school as it certainly opened the opportunity for me to play multiple sports as a kid,” Youngs said.

“I have no doubt that they played a huge part for me and my brother to be able to go on and achieve what we want to do. The opportunity to move back to Norfolk was a big draw as my wife’s from that area, so it made sense.

“Then after speaking to Douglas Robb, the head, and hearing his vision, I just felt that it was a real opportunity for me to help and I’m doing as much off the pitch as on it.

“I just want them to have a really enjoyable experience of playing sport, but also take some learnings from it in terms of how they prep, how they review, how they handle pressure, so that they can transfer that into whatever they do next.

“I feel really passionate about just trying to help anyone in any way I can. It could be getting back from an injury or someone that's struggling with being a captain and losing confidence. Every week’s exciting because there's something new.”

When Youngs was at Gresham’s, social media was in its infancy and part of his role now is helping student athletes to navigate the pitfalls of technology while embracing data.

“The biggest thing for me and the biggest thing that I try and remind all the staff is that we have a chance to make a real positive impact on that child,” he said.

“From a sporting point of view, your job is to bring enthusiasm and to impact them so that when they come off, they have an enjoyable experience. That’s been a massive shift because when I played sports at school, it was more probably criticism than encouragement.

“Technology is one of the things that can be a help and a hindrance for this next generation of players. The one thing I tell all the students is that nowadays everything is trying to distract you. Everything's trying to take you away from whatever task you’ve set out to do and that could be in the classroom or on the sports field.

“It’s about trying to mitigate all that or get rid of as much external noise as possible. That takes time because culturally they’ve grown up with phones from an early age and it’s part of how they interact with people all the time.

“So you’ve got the technology distracting but then you’ve got the technology actually improving performance. One’s really helping and the other one is just getting in your way.”

Youngs underwent two-hour open heart surgery operation in 2024 and believes that his life in sport helped in how he coped with the diagnosis.

“The heart thing came out of the blue,” he said. “I’ve got to say I was very lucky because I had great medical care but sport does teach you to be resilient.

“Sport is never a straight line and there are as many lows as there are highs. But, ultimately, it will shape you and it’s your choice always how you respond to things. For my career in sport the choice was to roll your sleeves up, keep on going and believe in what you’re trying to do.

“So with the heart thing it was, right, OK, I didn't think I was going to have this, but I can have an operation and it’s going to take me a little while to get back on the pitch. I’ve still got my little device in here.”

Youngs recently presented a programme on BBC called Ben Youngs investigates, which looked at safety in rugby with recent high-profile former players Lewis Moody and Steve Thompson diagnosed with long-term neurological issues.

But after delving into the data, Youngs insists the game is safer than ever before and has no hesitation in recommending the sport to young people

“My programme literally came out last week and I spoke to Lewis and Steve Thompson,” Youngs said.

“At the elite level, I’ve never felt safer with the protocols but it’s the community game we need to know about. With Motor Neurone Disease and the research that I’ve done there, association isn’t causation and that’s what the experts I spoke to said.

“We are now so close to having affordable technology on the sidelines where you can swab test or take a fingerprint test of blood to check the proteins for concussion.

“A lot of work is being done and there’s been a massive cultural shift around it and the awareness of it is far greater. Is rugby impactful? Of course it is, but from a schoolboy point of view, you play probably eight games of the season with a bit of training in between with hardly any contact. So actually your exposure is far less.”