Crunch time: Sutton’s Harry Aikines-Aryeety flexed his muscles with dance partner Karen Hauser in last week’s Strictly Come Dancing
It’s crunch time for two local sports stars tonight on Strictly Come Dancing, as Chris Robshaw and Harry Aikines-Aryeetey face an elimination vote for the first time in this year’s pro-celebrity dance nonsense.
And it’s fair to say after the first week’s performances that Robshaw, the former England rugby captain, is in greater peril of being voted off.
Assessing his own dancing skills as “stomping like an elephant”, at 6ft 2in and nearly 18st, Robshaw, 39, will need to up his game tonight after he and his professional dancer, Nadiya Bychkova, scored just 14 out of a possible 40 last Saturday, putting them at serious risk of facing an elimination dance-off this weekend.
At least Robshaw has used the opportunity to big-up his first rugby club, Warlingham, having been filmed for last week’s show rehearsing with Bychkova in the Hamsey Green club house.
Clubhouse vibe: Chris Robshaw practised his first week moves with Nadiya Bychkova at Hamsey Green
“Chris first picked up a rugby ball here, and now we’re proud to be the place where he kicks off a brand-new journey on Strictly Come Dancing,” the club said on its socials this week, politely avoiding mentioning Robshaw’s performance under the glitter ball.
It means Warlingham must be the first (and only) rugby club to have had two of its former players take to the BBC dancefloor. JB Gill, former member of boy band JLS, also played some club rugby at Warlingham, though that was long before he won the 2012 Strictly Christmas special, or finished runner-up to Chris McAusland in last year’s series.
For Sutton’s Aikines-Aryeetey, the former Olympic athlete-turned-Gladiator, his place in the dance show looks a better prospect (for now at least), as he flexed his ample muscles on the first show and wowed the studio audience with a cha cha that included his dance partner, Karen Hauer, standing on his back as he did some press-ups. Though as Strictly’s strict judge Craig Revel Horwood pointed out, “push-ups are not a recognised cha cha move”.
The clip has gone viral and even made it into the edit of Gogglebox’s weekly TV review.
Which all suggests that Aikines-Aryeety is a sprinter who is in Strictly for the long run…
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