England internationals Max Malins and Ben Earl are going to need to be brought back up to speed when they return to Bristol Bears having been starved of competitive rugby, Pat Lam believes.
Off the top of his head Bristol director of rugby Lam told the gathered media on Wednesday that Malins has played just 27 minutes and Ben Earl 45 minutes in the Six Nations as England head coach Eddie Jones has stuck to mainly fielding a favoured core of players, including Bristol prop Kyle Sinckler.
Malins and Earl have both been in all three of Jones’ matchday squads for the 2021 Guinness Six Nations, but only on the bench.
With Jones taking a squad of 28 players for the entirety of the Six Nations campaign, including the fallow weekends to try and create a tight Covid secure bubble, England players have not been able to return to their clubs to play in between the international fixtures like in normal years, although paradoxically Welsh and Scottish players like fly-half Callum Sheedy have.
Bears director of rugby Lam said he is becoming increasingly worried his star men will return for club duty under cooked.
Lam said: “Max Malins has played 27 minutes in 10 weeks and Ben Earl has played 45 minutes of rugby in eight weeks, so by the time they get back it is going to be 12 weeks, although I hope they are going to get so more game time [in the final two games of the Champions], but if not that is going to be our biggest challenge.
“I think that is the longest break they will have had.”
Malins’ lack of rugby has been further exasperated by a hamstring injury before his call-up which means he has not played in 2021 while Earl had two weeks on the sidelines before going into national camp with the final two pool stage games of the Heineken Champions Cup postponed.
Lam continued: “The challenge is when we get them back we will be going into the home stretch in Europe and the Premiership and people will expect them to be at their best but that is always going to be difficult when they haven’t had much game time.
“We will deal with it, the good thing is we understand it and we will do the work to deal with that challenge.
“We knew it was going to be like this, it would be great if they could have come back and got rugby time like players from Wales and Scotland but England’s big concern was getting Covid in the camp, it is a challenge.
“We are already putting plans in place as to how we will manage them when they return because we can’t just expect them to go right back in with their lack of game time and play 80 minutes of full on rugby at a crucial stage of the season.
“We will build them back in and work with England to make sure we get the balance right.
“Obviously Kyle [Sinckler] is fine, he is getting a lot of rugby.”
