Eddie Jones promised his England players this past week to prepare for chaos in the buildup to the 2019 World Cup and the first instalment of mayhem will arrive shortly in the form of a contested set-piece session in Bristol against their Wales, when the head coach will tell his forwards not to worry about getting injured.
Jones is set on toppling New Zealand from the top of the world rankings by the start of the tournament in Japan and the fierce training paddock encounter with the Wales pack is rare to the point of unheard of in professional rugby, since today’s coaching teams are usually highly secretive about their training methods.
The organised set-to a week on Monday will be overseen by the Welsh referee Nigel Owens and will include scrums and lineouts, as England prepare to face Argentina the following Saturday, when Wales take on Australia. Jones and his coaching team came up with the novel idea of a contested forwards session as they plotted ways of challenging the All Blacks, who have won the past two World Cups.
Jones said: “We have narrowed the gap with New Zealand in the last two years but it is still 20%. Fitness is part of it and in the tight five the game is very much going towards repeat intensity, repeat accelerations and repeat collisions: it is about how quickly you get back on your feet and get involved. At the moment, the players are not fit enough to win the World Cup.
“The scrum is another area. New Zealand’s is the best in the world and we are going to scrum against Wales because we need to prepare for Argentina. It will be exactly what we need because you improve by scrummaging against sides that are better than us: you cannot get better doing it against each other.”
The link-up with Wales was brokered by the forwards coach, Steve Borthwick, who had been part of the Lions’ coaching team in New Zealand in the summer, headed by Wales’s Warren Gatland. Jones said: “I was talking with Steve Borthwick and Neal Hatley [the scrum coach] about how we could take our scrum to the next level and we asked ourselves who close to us had a good scrum. We thought about Georgia, but it is a bit far to go for a day – although the Georgian coach will spend some time with us in the last week – and then Steve gave Warren a ring to see if he was up for the idea. He was.
“We worked out we would go halfway to Bristol to do it. There will be a match of 12 large scrums and 15 lineouts. We wanted Wayne Barnes to referee but they asked for Nigel Owens and we bowed to their wishes.”
The break with tradition is certainly bold considering Jones faced a torrent of criticism after a three-day England training camp in Brighton last October led to Jack Nowell tearing a quadriceps and Bath’s Anthony Watson (broken jaw) and Wasps’ Sam Jones (broken leg) also returning with injuries to their clubs, the last of these following a bruising judo session. But Jones said: “Everyone will rip into it and there will be physical stuff.
“It will be a good contest that has a bit of feeling in it and there is the risk of injuries, but we need to improve our scrummaging. The set piece has gone from a penalty shootout to the best possession to break the line. We still want to scrum like England and gain penalties because that gives players confidence, but we want to be able to use the ball quickly because we have great backs.”
Jones has asked his players who were on the Lions tour to New Zealand to write down their observations of the six weeks there after the series drawn and the All Blacks suffered their first home defeat this decade. “We got the players to write reviews of the Lions,” he said, looking at it from a learning point of view, how they prepared for big Test matches, what they found out about the Kiwis. “I have got a big folder and it is really important.
“Some of it is outstanding and there is a lot of positive stuff from what is one of the greatest sporting events. Our players, and Steve Borthwick, learned a lot and grew a lot. They have to retain that knowledge and pass it on.”
