We are slightly early in the year for Spotify Wrapped reveals as Noah Caluori, 19, reels off his top-three most listened to artists this year. Drake, the British rapper Nemzzz, and then he pauses. “I’m going to have to look at my phone.” Then a smile. “Can I have four?” Much like defenders in the Prem trying to tackle Caluori, I am not going to stop him. Raye and Olivia Dean round out the group.
The chances are that before September you had never heard of Caluori, the 6ft 5in winger who left Mill Hill school this summer and is now a sensation. That change in status will happen when you score five tries in a single Prem game, as Caluori did for Saracens less than a month ago.
He is a self-confessed goal-setter: goals for the season, the short-term, setting markers to hit in his notepad. At school he would write them on the whiteboard in his boarding house.
This season, his first as part of the senior academy at Saracens, he set the following targets: make his debut in the Prem Cup, then the Prem itself, to score in certain games and, by the end of the year, be on the radar for England ‘A’. We are not even midway through November and all of those targets have been hit, with Caluori making his England ‘A’ debut on Saturday against an All Blacks XV, having trained with the senior England squad over the previous two weeks.
“Some of them came a bit earlier than I expected, which is a good thing, but it’s just making the most of it, making the most of every opportunity. And the big thing is just enjoying it as well."
Caluori grew up in Forest Hill, south London, with a Swiss-Italian father and Nigerian mother. His older brother, Josiah, is a model, who so far has not had to offer any advice to Caluori regarding his increasing number of photoshoots. “If I looked ridiculous in something he would be like, ‘don't do that next time, instead do this’. He would help me out.”
His debut try in the Prem against Newcastle must be one of the more outrageous in recent memory – chasing after an Owen Farrell kick, connecting with a bouncing ball on the volley before leaping off the ground to regather and score. With a big dive, of course. Watch his five-try haul against Sale and there is so much to like; the burst of pace, brushing off tacklers as if they are not trying. The confidence. As one source describes Caluori: “He is fearless.”
All of that is before getting to Caluori’s super-strength. Combine that height with his astonishing ability to get off the ground, and you have a mis-match in an age where there has never been a greater emphasis on winning the ball back from restarts. Which is why England effectively used Caluori in training last week ahead of facing the Wallabies as a shadow of Joseph-Aukuso Sua'ali'i, the cross-code Australian sensation who tore England apart in the Wallabies’ win at Twickenham the previous November. A source added: “He believes in his ability so much. He believes he can win every aerial contest, and that scares players.”
Caluori was always one of the bigger children at school but it was only in his final year, following conversations with the England Under-18s coach Will Parkin, that his aerial skills were turned into a major weapon. “If you can jump higher than the other kids and then catch above your head, it's going to be undefendable,” Parkin told him. Based on the evidence so far, he has a point.
There is an art to it, as Caluori explains. Accelerating to meet the ball, then decelerating to get his timing right. Exploding upwards, trying to meet the ball at the highest point. Rotating in the air to then continue running when he hits the ground.
Cristiano Ronaldo, with his penchant for impressive headers, is an obvious reference point and one of Caluori’s idols – “His mentality when he's working is crazy” - as is Beauden Barrett, who scored in the 2015 World Cup final just as Caluori was getting into rugby. “I thought, this guy is so cool.”
Based on our conversation it is hard to imagine Caluori feeling nervous about anything, yet on that initial drive into Pennyhill Park, England’s training base in Bagshot, it hit him. “It was a bit like ‘I can't believe this is happening’, because my first call-up was a bit unexpected, the day after the Sale game.
“There was a moment where I thought ‘I’m going to flick the switch, I’m going to go for it all’. On the high intensity Tuesday, Maro, my captain at Saracens and with England, told me to not let this opportunity go to waste. He said a lot of people come into camp for the first time and think ‘I’m just going to cruise by this, not do anything, not make any mistakes’. And he told me that while he knows I’m not that type of player, just to go for it. That really motivated me.”
Refreshingly, given his new life in a high-performance environment, Caluori is still very much a teenager. Working on his golf game, watching films, playing Pro Clubs on EAFC. Before our conversation he had lost in the last minute to team-mate Billy Sela on NBA 2K, dropping him down the team pecking order from second to third (with Bath’s Max Ojomoh the player to beat).
He also has a fairly unique support system. Grace, Caluori's mother, works as a psychiatrist and therapist, naturally helping after a bad game or during an injury, giving Caluori the tools to reset after a mistake.
"A big thing that she's helped me do is treating every opportunity the same, no matter what level I'm at. So there won't be any differences in my performance or the way that I approach the game."
Which explains why this season, whether it has been for Ampthill in the second tier or now playing senior international rugby with England 'A', Caluori has seemed so comfortable, so accomplished. No opportunities wasted. He truly is going for it all.
Photograph by Tom Pilston for The Observer