England’s Tom Curry has been ruled out of the remainder of the autumn campaign with the ankle injury which saw him limp out of the opener against South Africa on Saturday.
While there will be no further details until Curry sees an ankle specialist this week, Steve Borthwick, England’s forwards coach, revealed that he would be out for the remainder of the remaining three games.
England face New Zealand, Japan and Australia at Twickenham on the next three Saturdays. Borthwick, like Eddie Jones a day earlier, named Sam Underhill and Mark Wilson as options to replace Curry on the openside, while adding Zach Mercer – who performed impressively off the bench on debut on Saturday – to the list.
“Tom Curry’s not available for this weekend,” said Borthwick on Tuesday afternoon. “He’ll be ruled out of the rest of the series too. As you know he injured his ankle. Beyond that we don’t know how long, but it’s not within the next three Test matches so he won’t be available for us.
“He’s a fantastic young player, you saw that in the summer and saw that at the weekend in the gametime that he had. He’s got a fantastic future ahead of him, it’s disappointing and we don’t know how long he’ll be injured for, but this injury is an opportunity for him to improve as a player and get better, it’s an opportunity to get working and I know with his attitude he’ll come back in even better shape than what he is in right now.”
Borthwick says everyone else is fit, including Courtney Lawes and Manu Tuilagi who missed the 12-11 victory over South Africa.
