Two years ago, Fin Baxter told Adam Jones, his scrum coach at Harlequins, that he wanted to become the best prop in the world. In the Welsh dressing rooms that Jones inhabited, such a comment from an uncapped 22-year-old would have drawn a clip around the ear at the very least.

But Jones detected none of the entitlement he has seen from many other young players of Baxter’s generation, only an earnest determination to reach the mountain top. “It is 100 per cent not from an arrogant perspective,” Jones said. “He is just driven not just to make himself better but to make Quins better and to make England better.

“He has that all-round game to get there. There’s some good looseheads out there. There’s a chap in South Africa [Ox Nche] who is doing pretty well. Sometimes it only takes a little bit of confidence or a trigger from a coach to set you off into that realm. I was a jobbing tighthead prop until Gats [Warren Gatland] and Craig White came in and changed my life, but Fin is already way more driven than I was at his age.”

The target for Baxter remains the same even if the trajectory has changed somewhat after 10 months on the sidelines with a complicated foot injury that first caused him to pull out of the club’s “Big Game” against Bristol Bears last December. Harlequins’ season subsequently went into a tailspin. No sooner had Baxter returned last month than Quins won back-to-back games after starting the season with three straight losses.

Baxter primed for England leadership role

England, too, have desperately missed him. It might be correlation rather than causation that Baxter played in 11 straight Test victories in 2025 and was absent for England’s five-game losing skid this year. Quietly, he had become one of England’s most influential players within the group and it would be no surprise if he enters the senior leadership group after the next World Cup, having already established himself in such a role at Quins.

“He is pretty quiet and does not speak for the sake of speaking,” Jones said. “What he says matters. He is a leader for us. He has a massive head, physically, which I like to remind him of, but he has a very good rugby head. He knows scrummaging is his first thing and he has been like that from day one, but he gets the bigger picture of the importance of the other components in the game.”

Clearly Baxter is a formidable scrummager. No less an authority than Phil Keith-Roach, England’s 2003 World Cup-winning scrum coach, says he is technically excellent, highlighting his high elbow bind, but also loves his no-nonsense attitude that keeps him in the referees’ good books. “He’s never yapping, complaining to referees, blaming opposition players,” Keith-Roach said. “He puts his own house in order so he is easy to referee. He rarely gives any chance to be blown up because he is so accurate in how strong he is and bright enough to stick to current law requirements.”

Of all England’s absentees in 2026, head coach Steve Borthwick considers Baxter as well as Will Stuart to have been the most telling, robbing him of the one-two punch he wants from his props off the bench. In the opening Nations Championship match against South Africa, England more than held their own at the scrum while starters Ellis Genge and Joe Heyes were on the pitch. But the Springboks turned the screw in the final quarter after they were replaced.

The mere presence of Baxter is believed to bring out the best of Genge, who shared the starting duties with him last autumn. Notably, Baxter started the fixtures against Australia and New Zealand with Test Lion Genge taking the No 1 shirt against Fiji and Argentina.

During his injury absence, Baxter threw himself into a tailored strength and conditioning programme and has put on significant weight. “It is no surprise he looks like a Test-match loosehead,” Jones said. His return from the foot issue had more than one false dawn, but Harlequins’ medical team, in conjunction with England senior physio Mike Lancaster, were careful to ensure he was not on the pitch before he was ready.

Even Jones was surprised by how effective he was on his return, which he took as an indication that he is ready for England’s autumn campaign. “Scrummaging is not as easy as coming back and riding a bike,” Jones said. “I remember I came back six months after the Lions in 2009. I was pretty pleased with how I did with the Lions and then in the first scrum [back] I gave a penalty away. You get brought down to earth very quickly.

“Pressure goes through everything when you are a prop. We had a return-to-play date for Fin and with props you build them up slowly through one vs ones, two vs ones, three vs threes, fives vs fives and then eights. It takes time to get up to speed and to feel comfortable, but he has been so professional and diligent with everything. He was excellent against Saracens and very good against a big Exeter pack.

“He is already a Test-match-quality prop. You can tell he is going to play a lot of times for England and I would be very surprised if he’s not in the mix for the next Lions tour. I’ll put no ceiling on how far he can go.”