DYLAN HARTLEY
Trips to the Algarve are no holiday with Jones!
ENGLAND should be well set up for tomorrow’s Six Nations key match after spending the week preparing in Portugal.
All my friends associate the Algarve with nice holidays — beach, golf, pastel de natas — but it just reminds me of damn hard training.
It’s a bit like a Big Brother environment. You can’t drive home to switch off and see your family at the end of the day. You’re on site and available to the coaches the whole time. For any young guys coming in, of which there are a few, it’s a pretty sharp learning environment.
You find out what the international work ethic looks like. You watch the players around you and buy into it or you get found out and probably never come back. It’s sink or swim. The club environment is quite comfortable but the international environment is anything but. Comfort is the enemy of progress, that’s how Eddie Jones thinks.
You need to be off the floor a little bit quicker. You need your hands up looking like an option even if you know you’re not getting the ball. In the review, it might be ‘Dylan you weren’t getting off the floor quick enough so you’ve got to do 15 minutes of fitness’. When you’re chasing a kick, it’s head down sprinting for the first five metres because you’re all out.
Every player is judged on how they carry themselves, how they speak, how they recover, how they warm up, how they react to a dropped ball. You’re constantly judged throughout the day and that’s fed back to you. That’s what England camp is like.
We had a meeting once at Pennyhill Park and the coaches didn’t turn up. They were watching us on camera just to see how we reacted. These are the sort of curveballs you’re faced with.
I remember opening with: ‘Look, it’s obvious what’s going on, break into groups, talk about your unit’s area and come back with the critical three points.’
This was just one tool Eddie used to develop the leadership of the team, instead of coaches leading meetings and players being spoonfed information. As players we started to take ownership, which I think was a great exercise, as ultimately it was us on the field who had to problem-solve.
There’s no big Portuguese p***-up because you want to be in the best shape possible. Eddie always makes beer available — he leaves a bucket of iced Heinekens in the room — but everyone would have Diet Coke or orange juice with an eye on training the next day.
In my case I had the nutritionists breathing down my neck about skinfolds and the boss on to me about being a bit lighter and more mobile, so I was never going to drink socially! That’s where rugby has really changed. Front row forwards turning down a beer! There’s always a meal out but you’ve probably got half an hour to get your best gear on and head out. Anthony Watson will always make an effort with the latest trainers on and Ellis Genge will don a lovely matching Boss tracksuit but most of the guys will just wear their comfiest gear possible. Mako Vunipola takes this to the extreme and turns up in what looks like a sleeping bag. He will wear flip-flops, pyjama shorts and a snuggle suit/stadium jacket, while Jonny May ( left) will be wearing recovery leggings and some sort of prescription- only corrective shoes.
Meals out aren’t really a leisurely experience. It’s not like going out with your friends or your missus at the weekend. You just want your food on the table. You want to eat and get home because you’ve been busting a gut all day and you need to lie down.
In camp, you get institutionalised to buffet-format food. Walk up, fill your plate, smash it and go back to your room to lie down. We got to a point where, if we go out for dinner, we preorder at any restaurant to have sharing platters ready on the table when we arrive. The guys are animals! Boys stuff their face on starters then order a main and dessert.
It’s nice to get out for a change of scenery, but you get straight on the bus and head back to the hotel. A holiday it is not.