We need fewer one-liners and more contrition from Fast Eddie
ThE ‘Donald Trump of rugby’. Eddie Jones is rarely lost for words. his riposte to Bruce Craig, owner of Bath, would no doubt have drawn a few smiles from an appreciative crowd. he has kept their row going for a week now. Great knockabout fun. headlines every day. All very Fast Eddie.
So much so it is possible to forget that in the middle of it all is Beno Obano, who will not play for a year, Tom Ellis, who will miss nine months, and Sam Underhill, who is out for three months. All Bath, all injured on England duty. Then there is Sam Jones, a flanker with Wasps, who will never play again. Just four of 14 players who have suffered significant physical damage on Jones’s watch.
To which the proper response is maybe not a one-liner, but a little contrition and understanding. Jones may well be the expert in this debate, he may have forgotten more about elite-level rugby than Craig will ever know, but nowhere in any coaching manual does it say that if preparation goes right, careers will be ended and players will drop like flies.
Rugby is a brutal sport and the physical risks are huge, even in practice. What happens under Jones, however, suggests collateral damage and Craig is not unreasonable in describing the attrition rate as ‘totally unacceptable’. Leaving aside the human cost, how can it be conducive to best practice to lose so many players before big matches?
As well as the quartet, Dylan hartley, Ben Te’o, Anthony Watson, Jack Nowell, Dave Attwood, Tommy Taylor, Nick Schonert, Marcus Smith, Jonny May and George Kruis have all limped away from England training, whether out for a week, weeks or months.
‘I don’t have any concerns,’ Jones insisted. ‘We train appropriately for Test match rugby and Avoidable: Sam Jones’s ankle injury ended his career I haven’t seen any figures to suggest these numbers are unacceptable.’ Yet that isn’t correct. An injury audit — the Professional Rugby Injury Surveillance Project report — released in March and commissioned by the Rugby Football Union and Premiership Rugby, showed that the severity of injuries sustained in England training more than doubled during Jones’s first season in charge.
The PRISP report commissioned further evaluation of training volumes and contact exposure in the Premiership and with England, and promised further discussions with Premiership and England coaches, players and conditioners this summer. In the meantime, Te’o’s absence took the total of England players unavailable for the South Africa tour — either injured, or considered in need of rest — to 24.
Does that sound like a sport that believes it is dealing with acceptable numbers, as Jones insists? In 2016-17, 36 per cent of injuries occurred in training, with an average absence of over a month.
If it has not been an issue for England under Jones until now, that is because good results are a handy shield. When Jones led England to the Grand Slam so soon after the World Cup debacle under Stuart Lancaster, nobody cared how he worked his miracles. Jones claimed that he had improved fitness by 40 per cent and who wouldn’t want that, if a successful team also results?
The complication is that, as England have fallen away in the last 12 months, so the downside of Jones’s regime has been highlighted. Number one: a level of intensity in training that has left players exhausted or, worse, crippled. Sam Jones damaged an ankle joint so severely in a judo session at a training camp in Brighton that he was forced into retirement at the age of 26. It later emerged that the Wasps contingent had arrived late after playing a match, and had not received the safety briefing that accompanied the session.
Exeter Chiefs were equally upset that Jack Nowell returned from the Brighton camp with a 10cm tear in a thigh, sidelining him for two months. They claim the injury was undiagnosed while he was on England duty.
Yet by employing Jones, an Australian, as England’s coach, the RFU made their priorities very plain. They wanted to win and, frankly, they didn’t care what they had to sign up for to achieve that. So there has been a marked reluctance to question Jones over training injuries, even when the RFU’s own research indicates there is a problem.
In any other sport, there would be an inquiry, the coach would be required to give a full explanation — particularly as Jones is now saying he can get 20 per cent more out of his England squad. So, if anything, he wants the intensity to go up, not down. At what level will the RFU concur with Craig that the resulting casualties are unacceptable?
Maybe they think the problem will disappear after a few quick quips and the odd victory against the Springboks. It won’t. Jones may think he has got the last word, comparing Craig to Trump, but it is Bath’s owner the men with microphones will seek out, the next time practice costs England a body. And, unlike the President, he won’t stop at 140 characters, that is for sure.