How a four-year-old Welsh boy won the rugby internet
Engaging a B2C rugby audience
Why Rocco was rugby’s lockdown hero
When the world shut down, social media cranked up and influencers, celebrities and brands fought for timeline supremacy, but in the rugby Twittersphere it was a four-year-old from the Welsh valleys that entertained with his impressions
Just over a month into lockdown, four-year-old Rocco Lock was watching a re-run of a British & Irish Lions tour match with his dad Jonny. Taken by captain Alun Wyn Jones’ taping, he insisted on replicating the look immediately in the garden. “I’m the Lion one,” he says, ears taped up brandishing his favourite rugby ball. “Alun Wyn Jones,” he adds, before explaining why he needs the tape.
Within two days, he gets a response from his first celebrity fan, Alun Wyn Jones who sends a personal message as the video on godmother Jemma’s Twitter feed [@jemmadmountcomp] hits the timeline of rugby fans the world over. “Once he saw Alun Wyn with the white tape, he was asking why he had it on, and then he wanted it on his ears,” explains dad Jonny. “He was just messing around, saying he was Alun Wyn Jones, so we filmed him, and my missus sent it to Jemma because none of us were on social media. Next thing we know it’s gone crazy, Alun Wyn Jones has sent a video response and we’ve got a private message from Ken Owens asking if Rocco could do ‘The Sheriff’.”
The second video of Rocco playing up to Ken’s nickname of ‘The Sheriff’ saw the views rocket again to 70k. “Ken did a Zoom call with us to say thanks, he was chatting to Rocco for half an hour which was a nice thing for him to do.”
Another video, Dan Bigger ‘I’m a kicking machine’, saw Rocco reach six figures with 120k views, and others following on Shane Williams, Gavin Henson, and Adam Jones.
By now Sporting Eric had snapped him as an ambassador for Rhino, ensuring he was fully kitted out for future videos with rugby balls, clothing and equipment.
Our next step was to bring two icons of Welsh rugby together: British & Irish Lion Adam Jones and Rocco (together with friend Max, another new Rhino ambassador) for a training session at Mountain RFC, the club Jonny still plays for. “Everywhere we go someone comes up to us now and says, ‘wow, are you that kid off the telly?’,” explains Jonny, “and when it was his birthday [he turned five in February] he had birthday wishes from so many people. It’s great.”
He’s since appeared several times on BBC, S4C and ITV, and even branched out into darts, with an uncanny impression of World Champion Gerwyn Price.
But while his talent for impersonation has helped win the rugby internet during lockdown, and even attracted the interest of a talent agent, dad Jonny says he won’t be turning to acting. “He only does videos that he wants to,” he explains, “and when he was asked if he wanted to do acting, he wasn’t interested. To be honest, he just loves his football, he’s mad about all the players, the teams, he collects the cards and everything.”
And with Rocco now back at school and the rest of the world slowly starting to get back to normal too, his videos remain a permanent reminder of the kind of content that we all love: genuine, funny, and off the cuff. “You can’t script a four-year-old,” says Jonny, “you tell him a few things and he just makes it all his own.
“He’s too young to know who all these players are,” he concludes, “but one day he’ll be old enough to realise how famous they are [and he was] during lockdown.”