England’s injury crisis has deepened after Mike Williams became the fourth flanker to be ruled out of the entire autumn series.
Williams, who was in Eddie Jones’s thoughts for the openside slot, is out for up to three months after breaking his arm – for the third time in 12 months – during a tackle drill before Leicester’s Premiership game with Worcester on Saturday. The uncapped 24-year-old’s absence is the latest setback to hit England’s preparations for their internationals against South Africa, Fiji, Argentina and Australia.
Already without James Haskell and Jack Clifford, who have undergone foot and ankle surgery respectively, they lost Sam Jones after he broke a leg while practising judo at England’s infamous training camp in Brighton.
Now Williams has been added to the list of injured players who were under consideration to start in the back row, leaving only Maro Itoje and Chris Robshaw available either side of Billy Vunipola. That would mean breaking up Itoje’s successful second-row partnership with his Saracens team-mate George Kruis. On Williams’s injury, the Leicester director of rugby, Richard Cockerill, said: “Mike is in a cast and will take some specialist advice, but it looks like eight to 12 weeks and not four to six weeks. Unfortunately he’s refractured his arm that he broke last year. Historically, these things are notoriously difficult to clear up. They have a history of coming back. They are very difficult injuries to shake off.
“We have done all the right things and he has done everything he can do but it is purely bad luck. Mike felt he had done something and thought it was just a bang but the medical guys looked at it and Mike was pulled out before the kick-off. He is bitterly disappointed. You would have thought that had he continued the way he has been doing for the last couple of weeks he would have had a chance to play for England.”
The Zimbabwe-born Williams is used at blindside at Welford Road but was identified by Jones as a possibility to fill the void left by Haskell’s absence because of his defensive prowess. England have come under scrutiny from Premiership clubs after Sam Jones and Anthony Watson suffered autumn-ending injuries during their training camp and Jack Nowell is likely to be added to that list after tearing his quadriceps.
Jones is to meet the 12 Premiership directors of rugby at a pre-arranged meeting in London on Thursday with the recent spate of injuries sure to top the agenda.
Mark McCall, the director of rugby at Saracens, last week hit out at the timing of the Brighton camp, less than two weeks before the start of the European Champions Cup.
