England have been advised not to play Manu Tuilagi against Wales on Saturday, with the player’s coaches at Leicester insisting the centre is still a month short of optimum match fitness. Tuilagi was among the try-scorers in his side’s bonus point victory against Exeter on Sunday but Richard Cockerill, the Tigers’ director of rugby, still felt it would be an unwise call to select the centre on the bench at Twickenham.
After 15 months out of the game through injury Tuilagi has not played Test rugby since June 2014 and Cockerill believes there is limited value in rushing him back prematurely. “I don’t think he’s going to be ready to play Test rugby,” said Cockerill. “Even if you put him on the bench to be an impact sub, what happens if you have to put him on after five minutes? It doesn’t mean he won’t be involved but Manu’s still not played a huge amount of rugby. He’s probably five or six games away from being able to play 80 minutes for England at Test level.”
Cockerill has already had discussions with England’s head coach, Eddie Jones, but suspects his opinion will be disregarded when the Australian finalises his 23-man squad for the pivotal Six Nations fixture. “Eddie has all the power. If he wants to pick Manu he can pick Manu whether it’s the right thing or not. I’d love to keep him and look after him. At the moment he’s not doing a full training week because we need to save his load for game day. He wants to be back in the mix but he’s still finding his playing legs. That’s fine if you’ve got someone to play for the other 60 minutes should someone get knocked out in the first minute. That’s the danger. Toss a coin and take your pick.”
On the evidence of Tuilagi’s latest club outing there is indeed some way to go before England’s human cannonball is back at full bore. While he clearly enjoyed his first-half try it was merely an unopposed trot to the line and a brace of barely legal charges on Phil Dolman and Geoff Parling respectively may just interest Wales’s coaching staff more. It is all well and good Tuilagi rumbling on to run at people in the final quarter but, in a potentially tight game, Jones does not want him trotting off seconds later to the sin-bin.
Here his two shoulder-level hits, with only minimal arm involvement, attracted no censure on a frequently unsatisfactory day when all sorts of things went undetected by the officials. Exeter were too often the architects of their own downfall but they had reason to be aggrieved in the final quarter when, having been picked up for similar offences themselves, they were denied a potentially game-changing score by a blatant deliberate knockdown by Freddie Burns.
The Chiefs’ head coach, Rob Baxter, struggled manfully to conceal his frustration and, having seen his side fight back from 31-6 down to gain an unlikely losing bonus point, questioned whether the referee, Matt Carley, had been given sufficient support from his assistants. “We don’t expect the referee to adjudicate on things he can’t see but you’ve got three other guys there,” said a grim-faced Baxter. “That said, I’m not going to use the refereeing as an excuse for our first-half performance ... we didn’t play well enough to win today.”
What with the interminable delays for TMO decisions that never stood a chance of being resolved, this was a distinctly odd game in many respects, absorbing in a perverse sort of way but of variable quality for a contest between two top-four teams. Had Exeter won they would have overtaken Saracens at the top of the table; instead they have allowed the Tigers to climb back up to third, five points behind them. Only seven points now separate the six teams below the top two with seven games to play, so things are getting distinctly tight.
Leicester were particularly well-served by the industrious Harry Thacker and Lachlan McCaffrey but Exeter ultimately paid a heavy price for their early generosity. Gareth Steenson remains integral to the Chiefs’ enterprising attitude but, in the final analysis, the Irish fly-half’s wild offload thrown just before the half-hour was perhaps the day’s most decisive moment.
In a trice the ball was down the other end, Exeter had conceded a penalty try and Geoff Parling had been sent to the sin-bin for illegally stopping Thacker from scoring at the back of a rolling maul. Within two minutes lovely hands by Marcos Ayerza then allowed the Tigers to exploit their man advantage via Tuilagi’s score, leaving the previously optimistic Chiefs staring at a 17-3 deficit.
Things grew swiftly worse after half-time when Peter Betham capitalised on another turnover caused by Thacker putting pressure on Steenson and Adam Thompstone made sure of a bonus point via a smartly taken set move off the back of a lineout. The Chiefs did well to recover some ground through tries from Dave Lewis and Ian Whitten but were ultimately grateful for the last-gasp score from Kai Horstmann that preserved their record of claiming at least a point from all their league games this season.
Leicester Bell; Thompstone (Veainu, 78), Betham, Tuilagi, Goneva; Burns (O Williams, 64), Kitto; Ayerza (Brugnara, 59), Thacker (Van Vuuren, 78), Mulipola (Balmain, 71), Fitzgerald (Kitchener, 75), Barrow (M Williams, 64), Croft, McCaffrey, Slater (capt).
Tries Penalty try, Tuilagi, Betham, Thompstone. Cons Burns 4. Pen Burns.
Sin-bin Barrow 53.
Exeter Dollman; Jess (Bodilly, 74), Whitten, Hill, Short (Hooley, 75); Steenson, Lewis (Chudley, 59); Low (Hepburn, 58), Yeandle (capt; Taione, 70), Francis (Williams, 58), Atkins (Stevenson, 64), Parling, Ewers (Horstmann, 60), Salvi, Armand.
Tries Lewis, Whitten, Horstmann. Cons Steenson 3. Pens Steenson 2.
Sin-bin Parling 29, Jess 63.
Referee Matt Carley (RFU). Att 21,073.
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