Eddie Jones has been boosted by the return of England’s captain, Dylan Hartley, to Northampton’s starting lineup on Saturday but the Saracens lock George Kruis is the latest forward to be sidelined and is likely to miss the autumn internationals after having ankle surgery.
Hartley starts against Castres following a six-week absence with a back injury but Kruis is out for “a number of weeks” and joins James Haskell, Jack Clifford, Mike Williams and Sam Jones on the list of injured forwards when England begin their autumn campaign against South Africa on 12 November. Manu Tuilagi, Anthony Watson and Jack Nowell are notable absentees in the backs.
Jones is blessed with a deep pool of talent at second row, although with Maro Itoje in the frame to fill the void at openside flanker, England could line up against the Springboks without both their Saracens locks, so influential during the Six Nations and the series victory over Australia in the summer. Still, Courtney Lawes and Joe Launchbury are more than able deputies and Josh Beaumont, despite playing at No8 for Sale, has been earmarked as a second-row by Jones.
The Saracens director of rugby, Mark McCall, said: “After consultation with George and England, we are all in agreement that it’s in the best interest of the player to undergo this minor procedure now with the majority of the season still ahead of us. George is on the road to recovery and we look forward to his return to action sooner rather than later.”
Kruis’s absence comes as a blow to Saracens, who host the Scarlets in the Champions Cup on Saturday, having inflicted a first ever home defeat on Toulon last weekend. It was, according to Mark McCall, the performance that had everything and while Saracens are not much loved outside north London it earned them the sort of widespread acclaim they are often denied.
They were magnificent in the first 40 minutes, stretching the three-times European champions all over the pitch and scoring three wonderful tries, while after the break they demonstrated huge character to withstand a considerable comeback, during which Maro Itoje spent 10 minutes in the sin-bin.
Already it is hard to look beyond McCall’s side as the favourites to successfully defending their league and European Cup titles and in an ominous warning to their rivals, Itoje believes Saracens have plenty more fears to find. “We have come closer to having a fuller, more 80-minute performance before,” said Itoje. “But considering the quality of the opposition we were playing, the fact that we were at their home ground and they had never lost in Europe there ever – it was quite impressive. But the best performance – I don’t know. It was a step in the right direction.
“The coaches prepared us brilliantly beforehand. The players were really switched on from the minute one. When you play a game sometimes you get a feeling of the energy around the group and how switched on people are.
“From minute one we were confrontational, we weren’t sitting back, we weren’t waiting for anything, we went out there to win the game. Our motivation has never been about what other people think or other people say. We care a lot about how our group feels and the way they consider things to be going.”
The Scarlets are the only Welsh representative in the Champions Cup this season and an indifferent start to the Pro12 season means they sit seventh in the table but their starting XV features seven Wales players named in this week’s autumn internationals squad and it is not in Itoje’s nature to take them lightly.
“They’re an awesome team who have some quality individuals,” he said. “They’re a well-drilled, well coached team and if we want to beat them, we have to be on our game. No match in Europe is easy and Scarlets showed what a quality team they are last week against Sale. We’ll have to be on our game.”
