Maro Itoje in injury scare as Six Nations becomes a story of survival following spate of injuries
All sides are having to make do without a number of big hitters due to injury
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Your support makes all the difference.Maro Itoje and Courtney Lawes have not trained this week due to injury and illness respectively, with England fronting up to one of the most injury-hit Six Nations before it starts next month.
England head coach Eddie Jones has 18 players that are either doubtful or ruled out of the opening encounter against Italy next weekend, and that number doesn’t even include Itoje or Lawes – though both are expected to recover in time for the trip to Rome that sees the reigning champions begin their campaign to make history and win a third consecutive title.
“Maro isn’t training; he’s carrying an injury from Saracens,” Jones said at Wednesday’s Six Nations launch in London. “Courtney’s not training; he’s carrying a bug from the Midlands.
“Maro has got some sort of hip problem – nothing too significant but we need him to get back to full fitness.
“Apart from that we’ve got a lot of players training!”
Jones’s sarcasm comes in that he published a 13-player list last week of unavailable players, which has since seen Kyle Sinckler, Henry Slade and Jack Nowell added to it and both Chris Robshaw and Mike Brown ruled doubtful for the game with Italy.
But Jones doesn’t believe that the dreadful run of injuries that his England side have suffered this season has anything to do with the British and Irish Lions tour, or the demands that are being put on Premiership players.
“You just have these runs,” Jones added. “I don't think it's anything significant. You have ups and down in the game and at this particular time there are a number of injuries.”
Surprisingly, Jones is not the only one who believes that. Ireland’s Joe Schmidt feels that, despite missing Lions players in Sean O’Brien and Jaryd Payne – plus Jamie Heaslip, Craig Gilroy, David Stockdale and Dave Kilcoyne – he has seen far worse injury runs during his time with the national team, with the Kiwi preparing to head into his fifth Six Nations campaign.
“I don’t think they [injuries] are significantly higher,” said Schmidt. “Certainly, for us we have had higher levels of injury in past Six Nations. Our worst was two years ago post the World Cup. We had the combination of retirements. Even one of those, Paul O’Connell’s retirement, that wasn’t going to take place except he got injured in the tournament.
“Therefore for us that particular Six Nations was probably tougher than this one with the number of injuries we have. It tends to be that things ebb and flow a little bit in so far as the injury situation is concerned.”
No coach is better placed to see this than Wales’ Warren Gatland. Having taken a total of 47 players to New Zealand for the tour series against the All Blacks last summer, Gatland will know what those exploits on the other side of the world and the subsequent five months have taken out of those named in the Six Nations squads.
Gatland offered a similar opinion to Jones and Schmidt, but added that more focus should perhaps be put on the matches that lead into the Six Nations, given the domestic and European games that have filled the December and January months.
“It’s an attritional tournament because of the big games played before it, teams have come from in the Pro14 some serious derbies over Christmas and then play in Europe and then you come into the Six Nations,” Gatland said. “It’s the perfect preparation from a competitive point of view but the likelihood is that you’re going to pick up a number of injuries too.”
But despite the coaches agreeing that there is no real reason behind the large number of injuries, there is clearly something that is pushing players to breaking point too often.
A select XV of Six Nations players currently sidelined would throw up a team very capable of winning the entire tournament – a back-row of Sean O’Brien, Sam Warburton and Billy Vunipola, Dan Biggar at fly-half, Jonathan Davies in the centre and Elliot Daly, Jack Nowell and Liam Williams making up the back three to name but a few. And with players experiencing fewer rest periods than ever before, all signs point to more and more injuries when the action finally gets underway.
This will be a Six Nations of attrition – as always – but for once, it may also be one of survival.
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