PLANNED OF THE RISING SUN
Jones lines up ‘heat camps’ to prepare stars for Japan
ENGLAND will have two ‘heat camps’ before they head to Japan for the World Cup next year.
Eddie Jones is concerned his players will struggle to cope with the conditions, when the tournament kicks off next September, and believes Treviso in Italy will provide the perfect place to prepare.
He said: “There’s all the science bits about when you train and when you don’t train, how you recover – that’s all the fancy stuff.
“But the common-sense approach is that, if you’re going to be playing in warm weather, get used to it. Physically, mentally and skill-wise, you need to know how to play in those conditions.
“The climatic synergy is good in Treviso, we can get a hotel and training ground that is going to be very similar to what we’ll have in Japan, and it’s a rugby town.”
The first heat camp will be held in mid-July with the second one in the week leading up to England’s final World Cup warm-up game against Italy. It is at St James’ Park, Newcastle, on September 6, just before they depart for Japan.
England road tested their squad’s ability to adapt to Japan’s potential extremes in May by super-heating their indoor training facility at Pennyhill Park to 38 degrees. The results were of concern to Jones.
“The usual players did well – the Farrells and Fords. The good players always find a way to react. But there were a number who have negative reactions to heat, so we have to do more work in getting them right to cope,” he said.
“You struggle to retain your work rate and then struggle to retain intensity in terms of your skill execution. They’re the two factors.”
England’s decision to spend eight days in southern Portugal before flying home next week, 48 hours ahead of facing South Africa, is an attempt to mirror the start of their World Cup.
“We’re trying to dress-rehearse it,” added
Jones. “We’re going to have an eight-day camp before the first game in a warm location [Miyazaki], so this is a bit of a test run to see how the players handle it.” OWEN FARRELL has played down fears that England’s co-captaincy plan for the autumn internationals could lead to confusion. Farrell (below) will jointly lead the side with Dylan Hartley and he said: “We are usually pretty aligned anyway, probably because of the amount of conversation we have off the field.”
But what if there is a difference of opinion between the two over whether Farrell should kick a penalty for goal or for the corner in search of a try? “They are joint decisions between a kicker and a captain anyway,” he added. “There can be a debate before a decision is made.”