Eddie Jones will on Friday reignite the debate over player welfare by naming the vast majority of his British & Irish Lions stars in a 33-man England squad for next week’s training camp in Oxford. Jones had indicated he might rest some Lions for the autumn series but it is now understood most will be involved at some stage during November.
Virtually all the Premiership-based Lions are back in action for their clubs and key men such as Owen Farrell and Maro Itoje, who played prominent roles in the summer drawn series against New Zealand, will have precious little scope for a lengthy break next year. England are due to play a best-of-three series in South Africa in June and four further autumn Tests at Twickenham in the buildup to the 2019 World Cup.
Several high-profile figures have expressed concern at the proposal to extend the domestic season until the end of June from 2019-20 but last season’s Premiership-winning coach, Rob Baxter, said on Thursday that the country’s top players are not overworked and dismissed talk of the top clubs failing to protect their biggest assets as “codswallop”.
Baxter, whose Lions wing Jack Nowell is set to be among those included in Jones’s squad, believes some of the pronouncements on player welfare ignore just how carefully today’s professionals are managed, particularly at more successful clubs. “It’s not something we suddenly sit here and make up,” said Baxter, whose table-topping Exeter play Wasps on Sunday in a repeat of last season’s final. “From my perspective the management of your playing squad is something you do constantly. We spend a lot of time and money on dedicated, high-quality scientific work at Exeter University doing this properly, not just pulling things out of thin air as seems to have been happening in recent weeks.
“Good clubs manage their players every day. You don’t suddenly say: ‘Oh, there’s a Lions tour, there are England games.’ That’s codswallop, it doesn’t work like that. Jack Nowell is a perfect example. He had his second Premiership start for us last season on Christmas Eve. Even if you include the Lions tour that’s not a huge season’s loading. Is there a mental issue with the intensity of some of the big games he was involved in? Of course there is. But you manage that differently by giving guys breaks during the season. It sometimes surprises me when I read things. If clubs run things in different ways and players feel overloaded they’ll feel overloaded and they’ll make comments. We look at it totally differently.”
Exeter made sure most of their players had three clear weeks away from the club during the actual season last year. “It isn’t something that just changes when there’s a Lions or England tour,” Baxter said. “The hardest issue I have with Jack is keeping him off a rugby field. I know there are reports of other players at other clubs saying differently but I don’t have an issue standing in the dressing room going: ‘Which guys want to play?’ When I phone players to tell them they’ve been left out, none of them say: ‘That’s OK, I fancied a rest.’ Most of them are livid.”
Baxter also cited the example of England’s Luke Cowan-Dickie, who had knee surgery in the summer, missed the June tour to Argentina and is still two months away from full fitness, in effect ruling him of the November Tests. The injury is apparently similar to the one that ultimately forced Alex Corbisiero to retire prematurely but Baxter is confident the 24-year-old will make a full recovery. “He’s got an injury that’s going to take a decent bit of management. It’s similar to what Alex Corbisiero had … if it doesn’t heal properly it becomes an ongoing issue. We’re determined to make sure it becomes a one-off injury.”
With Jack Yeandle and Phil Dollman the latest Chiefs players nursing injuries before the Wasps game and Dave Ewers not expected back before late November, there can be no disputing rugby’s attrition rate. Manu Tuilagi remains the most prominent name on England’s injury list, with George Kruis, Tommy Taylor, Dan Robson, Sam Jones, Nick Schonert, Piers Francis and Danny Cipriani also currently out.
