Don’t tell me what to do, blasts Jones
England coach fuels club v country row by slamming critics of his training methods
Eddie Jones, the England head coach, escalated a club-versus- country row by telling Bath owner Bruce Craig that he had no right to dictate his training methods.
Craig went on the attack last week after prop Beno Obano became the fifth Bath player to suffer a serious injury in England training under Jones. Obano may be out for up to a year after severely damaging his knee ligaments, leading Craig to describe the attrition rate as “totally unacceptable”.
Figures within the Rugby Players’ Association are also known to harbour concerns over Jones’s methods, and one source close to several England players claimed they were being “flogged to death”.
Jones’s training methods are notoriously intense and at least 14 players have sustained injuries in camps during the Australian’s 2½year tenure, but yesterday he made no apology for pushing his players to breaking point.
“We prepare players for Test matches,” Jones said. “I don’t think anyone at a club has the right to tell a coach how to train a Test team. I haven’t seen any figures to suggest they are [unacceptable], no one in our staff has suggested they are, but Bruce is obviously an expert in training-ground injuries, so I’ll have to be subservient to his greater knowledge.
“I don’t have any concerns. We train appropriately for Test-match rugby. The only reason I’d alter it is if we need to train harder, or we need to train lighter, to be at our best for Test matches.”
The latest victim, Worcester centre Ben Te’o, aggravated a pre-existing thigh-muscle injury in the gym, rather than on the training pitch. It has ruled him out of the three-test tour to South Africa. With the first Test at Ellis Park on Saturday week, England also have doubts over No8 Billy Vunipola, who is still nursing a tight hamstring.
Jones has claimed that he has made England 40 per cent fitter since taking over after the 2015 World Cup. He also believes there is scope for a further 20 per cent improvement within the squad before the 2019 World Cup in Japan, by which time he wants England to be the fittest team on the planet.
Yet there has been disquiet among Premiership directors of rugby at what is viewed as a dereliction of care. As The Daily Telegraph first revealed, Wasps flanker Sam Jones missed a safety briefing before suffering an ankle injury in a judo accident at a camp in October 2016 that would ultimately end his career aged just 26.
Exeter Chiefs were also furious after wing Jack Nowell was sent back from the same training camp with an undiagnosed 10cm tear in his thigh, which put him out for two months.
As England’s performances and results have dipped in the past 12 months, resulting in a chastening fifth-place finish in the Six Nations, concerns have magnified that Jones has been overloading the players in training, particularly off the back of a gruelling Lions tour. Eight of those Lions will miss the South Africa tour, and 24 players in total are listed as unavailable.
Jones, however, is adamant that the only way to condition players for Test matches is by training at maximum intensity, even if that means injuries occur along the way.
“You never want to get players injured, you’re always looking to train appropriately for the game, but we play a collision sport,” he said. “As you see on the tour, 17 players from the Lions and we’ve got nine available and a lot of those injuries have happened in games, not training.”
Jones is a disciple of the tactical periodisation method of training, also employed by Jose Mourinho, the Manchester United manager, which emphasises combining technique and fitness work in short, sharp sessions.
Fly-half George Ford told The Daily Telegraph this year that the autumn internationals were “nowhere near as hard” as training under Jones, who says no player has communicated any concerns to him. “I listen to anyone, mate, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I act on it,” Jones said.
The controversy over Jones’s method feeds into a wider debate around installing limits on contact training. The last Rugby Football Union injury audit revealed that 36 per cent of injuries from the 2016-17 season occurred within training, with an average severity of 33 days.
While in the NFL there are strict rules governing the length of contact sessions, there are no such limits within rugby union, which may become the next big battleground for the RPA.
“Limiting training is possible and in some ways it is desirable, but you can’t do everything overnight,” Christian Day, the former RPA chairman said. “I am a massive fan of the NFL and they have a union guy on the touchline with a stopwatch and a whistle. If they go over the limit, they blow the whistle.
“We are not going to get there overnight in rugby and, frankly, I don’t think anyone wants to do it overnight in rugby, but in the future, can I see limits on pre-season games? Yes. Can I see limits on contact training? Yes. Can I see limits on scrummaging and mauling? Yes.”