There is a scene in the Avengers franchise where Bruce Banner, the alter ego of the Incredible Hulk, is asked how he unleashes his inner green monster. “That’s my secret,” he replies. “I’m always angry.”

This too would appear to be the case with Ellis Genge, the Leicester Tigers prop who has left a comparable path of destruction since being unleashed on the Premiership last year. Channelling aggression is among rugby’s trickiest arts. Being passive is not an option, yet as Kyle Sinckler’s recent seven-week suspension for gouging Michael Paterson demonstrates, it is an easly line to overstep in the heat of battle.

Genge arrived at Welford Road as a one-man cloud of red mist. Growing up on the Knowle West estate in Bristol, Genge was naturally drawn to confrontation. As such, rugby was a perfect vehicle. “I was quite a temperamental kid and a lot of my mates didn’t understand why I was angry all the time,” Genge said. “Rugby was a good way to suppress emotion.”

That fury still drives every bone-rattling tackle and earth-shaking carry. Earlier this season again Northampton, Genge left England captain Dylan Hartley and two other defenders strewn on the floor, which led Alastair Eykyn, the BT Sport commentator, to compare him to “a baby rhino with a dart up its backside.”