The 2018 Six Nations Championship does not start for another 10 days but is already shaping up to be the survival of the fittest. England are increasingly concerned over the availability of Chris Robshaw and Mike Brown for their game in Rome on Sunday 4 February while Wales, who kick off the day before, may yet be without Liam Williams for the tournament and injuries are inconveniencing the other four sides, too.
Instead of parading the captains and coaches at the launch in west London it might have been easier to invite the six team doctors. Including Robshaw and Brown, who have back trouble and blurred vision respectively, England have 18 players on their casualty list with Jack Nowell now confirmed as a non-starter for the Italy game, Henry Slade out with a shoulder problem for a minimum of three to four weeks and Kyle Sinckler out until late March with hamstring trouble.
With Maro Itoje also unable to train because of a hip injury and Courtney Lawes battling a flu bug it is possible England’s back-row resources will become even more stretched with Billy Vunipola, Nathan Hughes, James Haskell and Tom Curry already unavailable.
Eddie Jones has not yet given up hope of kicking off against Italy with Itoje at six, Robshaw at seven and Sam Simmonds at eight but Sam Underhill, Gary Graham, Zach Mercer and Nick Isiekwe, who have six caps between them, are edging steadily closer to making their Six Nations debuts.
One plus for Jones is the return to full fitness of his Lions centre Ben Te’o but once again Six Nations injury stats after a Lions tour or a World Cup make uncomfortable reading. Warren Gatland, already without Dan Biggar for at least three games and Rhys Priestland for the entire tournament, is among those concerned by the attrition rate, with Williams potentially the next candidate for an operation if a concerted rehab programme does not cure an abdominal problem.
“It’s the way rugby’s going at the moment,” the Wales head coach said, expressing his relief that the tournament schedule still has two “fallow” weeks.
“I don’t think the Celtic nations could survive the intensity of five internationals in a row and be able to compete against England and France who have so much more depth of numbers,” he said. “It’s an attritional tournament because of the big games played beforehand.”
Both he and Jones, however, have been around long enough to understand the futility of making excuses. Jones regards injuries as an inevitable hazard – “I’m not Donald Trump, I can’t build a wall between us and the clubs and ring-fence the players” – and wants England to compensate by being “the hungriest” team in the competition.
“That’s why we don’t mind other teams being spoken about as the darlings of European rugby, because it gives us something to chase. Are we ever the darlings? I don’t think so. “All I can remember is that last year we won every game apart from one and people still said our rugby was rubbish.” Following the tentative trial last year the use of bonus points has been retained.
France, now under the command of Jacques Brunel, and Conor O’Shea’s Italy would kill for Jones’s problems but Jones remains wary of the Azzurri and their “mischievous” Irish head coach, who claims he already knows England’s starting XV. “He must have cameras in our training centre,” Jones said. “We’ve got more security guys than the CIA and we still find people know our team.”
It does not require significant insider knowledge either way to regard Joe Schmidt’s Ireland and Gregor Townsend’s fast-improving Scotland as potentially tricky obstacles to English ambitions of securing a record third title in succession.
The tournament may have a new title sponsor in NatWest, while France will host Italy in Marseille rather than Paris, but it continues to be devilishly tough to win.
