Five legends inducted into the Premiership Rugby Hall of Fame
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Neil Back, Hugh Vyvyan and Mike Tindall were inducted alongside Mark Cueto and Richard Hill have been inducted into the Premiership Rugby Hall of Fame at a glittering gala event in London.
The five new additions join the likes of Jonny Wilkinson, Lawrence Dallaglio and Martin Johnson in the elite club.
Richard Hill and Neil Back’s biggest achievement on the pitch was winning the 2003 World Cup with England, but it wasn’t just with their national side that they shone.
Hill, now the England team manager, was famously a one club man and racked up 275 appearances in a 15-year career for his beloved Saracens, before retirement came in 2008.
Back was a teammate of Hill’s for England, but the pair were rivals on the Premiership Rugby pitch when the 47-year-old pulled on the Leicester Tigers shirt.
The open side flanker also played for Leeds Carnegie and Edinburgh Rugby, but it was in his time at the Tigers, where he scored a club record 125 tries, that his impact was felt the most.
Vyvyan’s career ran parallel to both Back’s and Hill’s, and the former Saracens and Newcastle Falcons back row was no less valued at his club’s than his international counterparts.
The No. 8 could also play in the second row and won the Tetley Bitter Cup with Falcons in 2001, before captaining the side to the Powergen Cup three years later.
A third member of the 2003 World Cup-winning side to be inducted was Tindall, a man with more than 100 appearances for both Bath Rugby and Gloucester Rugby.
And after captaining his country during the 2011 World Cup, there was no doubt that Tindall would go down in the sport’s history books.
The first man to be inducted on the night was Cueto, like Hill a one-club man, and the player who still leads the Premiership Rugby try-scoring charts with a remarkable 90 during his 15 years at Sale Sharks.
He signed off in style in 2015, touching down his final try in his final Premiership rugby fixture and setting a bar that only Tom Varndell currently looks like surpassing.