Trampoline fights and rare athleticism: the making of Asher Opoku-Fordjour

Ash-Beast they call him, Joe Marler’s replacement in the England squad: Asher Opoku-Fordjour, the powerful, dynamic prop built by Ghanaian cooking and being made to fight on the trampoline with his brother.

Marler’s retirement on Sunday signalled a changing of the guard, as it gave Opoku-Fordjour, the Sale Sharks 20-year-old, his first senior call-up.

There are often calls for patience with props, as they need time to learn the art and science of their trade, yet speak to anyone who knows Opoku-Fordjour well, and watches him regularly, and they have complete conviction that he is not just here to make up training numbers, but to dominate.

Opoku-Fordjour has had self-belief, and power, from a young age. “It’s amazing watching Ash,” says David Opoku, his 21-year-old brother who plays on the wing for Coventry in the Championship.

“His mentality is amazing. He would come home to me and say, ‘I’m dominant.’ He just wants to be the best. I feel like, God willing, he will play for England. When it comes, it’s going to be sick. My mum is so happy right now. If he plays we’ll have to come and watch the little bro tear up.”

David remembers that he and Asher were made to fight on the family trampoline as kids, by their two older brothers, the youngest of whom is eight years David’s senior.

“Asher won’t like me saying this but it was most definitely me who would come out on top,” David says, laughing. That did not last too long.

Opoku-Fordjour’s father, Charles, is a financial consultant who works in Accra, Ghana, the family’s homeland, and his mother, Rebecca, was a nurse but is now a foster carer in Coventry. Together they moulded their youngest boy into a mighty rugby player.

It was Charles who took David and Asher down to Broadstreet RFC as kids. The boys had been much more into football — most of the family are Chelsea fans — but Asher “kept getting bigger” so rugby seemed a better fit.

He started on the wing, then moved forward to the back row and then hooker when he joined Kenilworth and played a year up, alongside David. He became a prop when Wasps took him into their academy after Worcester Warriors had turned him down.

All the while Rebecca’s Ghanaian meals were fuelling her son’s seemingly exponential growth. “My mum’s food is just different — fufu, jollof rice, kokor and beans, plantain and beans — it’s the key to becoming a superstar,” David says.

While with Wasps as a teenager, Opoku-Fordjour attended the City of Oxford College, and then went into an academy house with other prospective players. His brother saw him less, so was more stunned when he did. “He kept coming back more massive,” David explains. “He was taller, stronger, everything. He put on a lot of size.”

Now Opoku-Fordjour is not a man mountain compared with other props, at 5ft 11in and 18st, but it is his dynamism that coaches and team-mates find scary. His big, tree-trunk legs give him the power to fire into scrums, and his smaller height means he can get underneath opponents and drive them upwards.

This is why Alex Sanderson, the Sale director of rugby, has been so excited about Opoku-Fordjour since he burst on to the scene. “He’s a tight-head prop with fast twitch. You just don’t get them. Rare as teddy-bear shit,” Sanderson has said.

Sale picked up Opoku-Fordjour when Wasps went bust in 2022, and since his debut for them in that year, he has been loudly going about his business, winning scrum penalties and plaudits everywhere. In the summer he was part of a frighteningly physical England Under-20 pack that won the junior World Championship too.

Those at Sale, where he picked up his “Ash-Beast” nickname, have noticed how he has become steelier, more determined, less nervous and more relaxed as he has established himself. He loves scrummaging, and takes it personally when he has a bad day at the set piece. Tarek Haffar, the Northampton Saints 23-year-old, bested him at the scrum in October and the word is that Opoku-Fordjour has been fizzing for revenge ever since, Michael Jordan style.

“The feeling of going forward is so good,” Opoku-Fordjour told The Times in 2023. “It makes you feel on top of the world. You have to keep that feeling in your head and keep doing the stuff people aren’t seeing.”

Now he is in England camp, Opoku-Fordjour is under the watchful eye of Dan Cole, the wise old man of the scrum. The quirk with Opoku-Fordjour is that for Sale he plays at tight-head, his preferred position, but England see him as a loose-head, where he has played for the under-20 side. That was again signalled by the fact that he replaced Marler, a loose-head in the squad.

Cole is impressed that Opoku-Fordjour can do both. He grew up playing loose-head himself, before playing the rest of his career at tight-head, and says that if he was asked to change again now “it would be like wiping my arse with my left hand”.

“As a tight-head your left shoulder is in with the hooker, and you bind with your right arm. Your left inside foot is back, your right foot moves when you bind. At loose-head it’s totally the other way round,” Cole explains. “They are different skill sets. Having some basic understanding of how to play loose-head can help you play tight-head. If I don’t like what is happening loose-head-wise, I can do that to the tight-head.

“It good for young players coming through to play both sides and have an appreciation of both; they’ll find a position rather than going, ‘I’m a tight-head.’ I think Asher will dabble in both. Physique-wise, he’s powerful on the engagement, and he’s obviously very strong.”

All of this makes Opoku-Fordjour such an exciting prospect. He may have to settle on one position, but the fact that he can play both — like the Springboks Thomas du Toit and Trevor Nyakane, or Ireland’s Andrew Porter — can be celebrated for now. It makes him highly valuable too.

It always seems that it is other countries, particularly South Africa, who have the deepest reserves of props. Yet with Opoku-Fordjour, Fin Baxter of Harlequins, Gloucester’s Afolabi Fasogbon, Vilikesa Sela at Bath and Haffar, England have a chance — if they play their props right — to close that gap.

It seems inevitable that soon, whether with the England A team against Australia A on November 17, or the senior side, Opoku-Fordjour will step up.

“If an opportunity does come I’m ready to be there and thrive, not just fit in,” he told The Times last year — so when it comes, and England release the Ash-Beast, do not expect his Test introduction to go quietly.