In this day and age, when we are told that rugby players are morphing into gym monkeys, we mention tentatively the fact that the highest scorer in power testing on a weights circuit in the England camp this week was Matt Banahan. Banahan by a significant margin from James Haskell, with Ayoola Erinle and Dave Wilson not far behind.

We say “tentatively” because it would be misleading to label this new England wing simply by his shape and size. He would hate to be labelled anyway. He is an atypical rugby man; for starters, he is a quiet bloke. And it would be safe to say that he will be the only player on the pitch today whose life and attitudes have been shaped by the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands. Certainly within rugby we know him for his size and power and the curious identity crisis that took him from full back into the forwards and finally out to the wing. But a more essential identity was forged from his childhood in Jersey when he would ask older generations, like his maternal grandmother who still lives there: how could we have lived with the Germans? Did Jersey put up a resistance?

“I was growing up with that and the story of Winston Churchill and the liberation of Jersey,” he said. These impressions were reinforced vividly every year when history returned at the Battle of Britain air display and, with it, his paternal grandfather, from Barrow, Cumbria, who flew Lancaster bombers in the war and would come to Jersey and walk his grandsons round the planes in which he fought.

“It’s massive, you can’t forget where you are from,” Banahan said.

Which is why the story adorned in tattoos down the left side of his body is of Jersey and the Second World War. Banahan has a Spitfire tattooed on his chest, his brother, Paul, has a Mustang, and when the pair stand together a picture is completed.

People, naturally, often ask them to bare torsos together but they tend not to. “I normally keep a long-sleeved shirt on, too,” Banahan said. “Tattoos aren’t for other people, they’re for us.”

This fierce sense of identity, pride and independence goes to Banahan’s core. “It’s a lot easier for people in England to get on to the rugby academies,” he said. “I had to sacrifice a lot by moving away from Jersey. As soon as you achieve anything in sport in Jersey, you have to move away. It’s quite hard to get back.”

Leaving the island to achieve is a fact of life in Jersey. Banahan saw Paul leave for the United States to pursue his dreams with his punk band, Bothered Face. “They saved their own money to go to America and within the first week they got asked to support one of the biggest bands in America — Sublime, renamed the Long Beach Dub Allstars — a massive California ska band,” he said. “A lot of adversity was put in front of him and I see what he achieved. That motivates me to do well.”

The brother connection is extremely strong. Paul is 26, four years the elder, now no longer a musician and playing fly half for Waterloo, and he rings and texts him regularly, encouraging him in pursuit of his goals.

“I think some people are envious of our relationship,” Banahan said.

Last summer, Paul needed a car and so Banahan gave him his and bought a motorbike instead. “I love him to bits,” Matt said. “I’d do anything for my brother and he’d do anything for me.”

Paul’s support was most required when Banahan left Jersey for the academy at London Irish. When he was there, he was no longer a back, but a second or back-row forward. It was only when he hooked up with the RFU’s junior national academy — under Brian Ashton, the former England head coach — that the wing became his future. “We were playing a game of touch at Bath University,” he said. “Someone gave me the ball on the wing and I just went past everybody and scored. Brian, who was Bath coach at the time, said, ‘You’ve got some attributes of a winger.’ ”

Indeed, Ashton was so sure of his judgment that he signed Banahan to Bath in order to play him on the wing. It did not take him long to get noticed; during his first pre-season, Danny Grewcock was already asking: “Who’s that big tall lump? He’s got jet shoes.”

Pretty much everyone at Twickenham now knows about the tall lump with jet shoes, at least they will when today is done. In Jersey, they have known for a long time. “As long as I’m making my mum and dad proud back at home, that’s my main goal,” he said. Them and, you suspect, the whole island, too.

Does size matter?
John Kirwan (New Zealand, 6ft 3in, 15st 4lb): Early version of the big fast men, scored 35 tries in 63 international matches from 1984-94.
Va’aiga Tuigamala (Samoa and New Zealand, 5ft 11in, 14st 11lb): Those dimensions now look utterly ordinary, but it was to “Inga”, as a breaker of tackles, that Lomu was compared.
Lesley Vainikolo (England, 6ft 1in, 16st 9lb): Tongan-born, UK-domiciled Kiwi, billed as the English Lomu but proved in last year’s RBS Six Nations Championship that big and fast alone is not enough.

The other extreme
Shane Williams (Wales, 5ft 7in, 12st 8lb) has scored 48 international tries, more than all the above.