England are not fit enough to win the World Cup, says Jones
Coach will put his players under revolutionary regime Forwards singled out before ‘Battle of Bristol’ with Welsh
England’s players are to be subjected to a revolutionary fitness regime after Eddie Jones warned his squad were currently not fit enough to win the World Cup in Japan in 2019.
Jones insists his forwards must face an intense conditioning programme to be able to cope with the changing demands of the modern game.
He intends to bring in a host of fitness specialists including Dave Reddin, England’s strength and conditioning coach when Sir Clive Woodward’s side won the World Cup in 2003, to help draw up the plan.
“They’re not fit enough to win the World Cup, and we want to win the World Cup,” said Jones of his squad, who have just returned from a warmweather training camp in Portugal.
“You don’t have to be fit enough now to win the World Cup, you have to be fit enough to win the World Cup at 19:59 on November 2, 2019. We’ve got some great plans in place to fix that.”
The move comes as Jones prepares to take his forwards to an unprecedented scrummaging and line-out session against Wales at Clifton College, with England prop Harry Williams warning that the confrontation between the two international packs could “all kick off ” and billing it as “the Battle of Bristol”.
“There’s no reason to hype it up because everyone will be full steam ahead,” said Williams, who is likely to make his Twickenham debut for England against Argentina next Saturday.
“Tom Francis [his Exeter Chiefs team-mate and Wales rival] sent me an article about it last weekend, saying ‘See you in Bristol’.
“You get used to training against your team-mates and you very rarely go absolutely full-on. If you’re against a different team or nation there’s a lot of added intensity. It could very easily kick off. We should have armed policemen as we’re walking out – chains and stuff. Let’s really build it up: the Battle of Bristol!”
Courtney Lawes, who is expected to feature as a second row for England on Saturday despite playing at blindside flanker for Northampton, warned it was important for the players not to get carried away by their pride tomorrow.
“It’s a good idea and we have to make sure our egos don’t get in the way of the session,” Lawes said. “We are rivals, we will play them in the Six Nations next year – but not now.
“It will be full-on. It’s always full-on. We always have teams in that we play against in training. So it’s a bigger version of that. I know a few of the boys now from the Lions and I hope we all get something from it.”
England’s front-five forwards look set for the greatest scrutiny in Jones’s intensive fitness campaign to ensure they are in the right condition to carry out his game plan as he tries to close a “20 per cent” gap to world champions New Zealand. “In the tight five the game’s going very much towards repeat intensity – repeat accelerations, repeat collisions – and it’s very much about how quickly you get back to your feet and get involved,” Jones added.
“In a game of rugby you’ve generally got two players on the ball, and then you’ve got the off-the-ball people. It’s working individually with the players, getting the players to understand the changes that they’ve got to make.
“We’re going to have a presentation about where we see the changes in the game going and what then are the implications for the players, because they’re players that have been in the game for 10 years and they’ve done the same thing, and they’ve got to change the way they train now.”
Eddie Jones is a man with a plan to turn England into World Cup winners – and it is going to hurt.
England’s head coach offered a brutally honest assessment of where his team stand two years out from the tournament that may come to define his time in charge.
No one disputes that England have improved immeasurably under his guidance but to kick on to the next level may prove their greatest challenge. Ahead of them now lies two years of intense hard work on the training pitch.
Jones insists his forwards, in particular, must be reconditioned to be able to cope with the demands of the modern game. He intends to bring in fitness specialists, including Dave Reddin, England’s strength and conditioning coach when Sir Clive Woodward’s side won the World Cup in 2003, to help draw up the fitness plan in conjunction with the Premiership clubs.
Jimmy Radcliffe, the University of Oregon’s highly respected strength and conditioning coach, and former mixed martial arts fighter Dean Amasinger, will also be involved.
“They’re not fit enough to win the World Cup, and we want to win the World Cup,” said Jones of his players, who have just returned from a weeklong training camp in the Algarve.
“You don’t have to be fit enough now to win the World Cup, you have to be fit enough to win the World Cup at 19:59 on November 2 2019 [the date of the final]. We’ve got some great plans in place to fix that.” The move comes as Jones prepares to take his forwards to an unprecedented scrummaging and line-out session against Wales at Clifton College, with England prop Harry Williams warning that the confrontation between the two international packs could “all kick off ” and billed it as “the Battle of Bristol”.
England’s front five forwards also look set to bear the brunt of the heaviest workload of Jones’s new intensive fitness campaign as he bids to close what he perceives to be a “20 per cent” gap to world champions New Zealand.
Jones insists his forwards must be conditioned to be able to cope with the changing demands of the modern game, and has tasked his coaching team to predict the type of game plan that is likely to be the most dominant at the World Cup in Japan to ensure they plan the fitness regime accordingly.
“In the tight five the game’s going towards repeat intensity – repeat accelerations, repeat collisions – and it’s about how quickly you get back to your feet and get involved,” said Jones. “In a game of rugby you’ve generally got two players on the ball, and then you’ve got the off-the-ball people. The forwards have got to have that ability to do at least two efforts at absolute intensity and with execution, and these guys here have then got to be able to execute with skill and with pace, and they only get one chance to do it.
“Then that ball moves, that ball now goes here, and these guys [forwards] have got to be able to spread and do the same thing in this area and repeat it, and then these guys [backs] have got to move over here and be looking for the space. So for the tight five it’s about that repeat acceleration, repeat collisions, whereas the outside backs it’s more about repeat speed.
“We’re going to have a presentation about where we see the changes in the game going, and what then are the implications for the players, because they’re players that have been in the game for 10 years and they’ve done the same thing, and they’ve got to change the way they train now. ” The England players received their first taste of the new regime with wrestling sessions overseen by Amasinger at Vilamoura.
“We’re always looking for advice from outside because there’s always smarter people than us, and we’re not afraid to get smarter people to come in and tell us we’re dumb,” Jones added. “We’ve been to the University of Oregon and Jimmy Radcliffe, one of the most brilliant strength and conditioning coaches. We’re getting him to come over for the last week against Samoa to look at what we’re doing.”
Those players who had been on the British and Irish Lions tour of New Zealand did most of the wrestling as Jones put them on a different conditioning programme to take account of the physical demands of the tour. The players still found it a punishing schedule.
“We were up at 5.30am as our first session was at 6am, and then we’re wrestling by about 6.30am. It’s been challenging, but fun,” said Courtney Lawes, one of the Lions tourists.
“Dean has been teaching us some stuff that relates to rugby and it always ends up with wrestling. I watch a lot of UFC [Ultimate Fighting Championship]. I think Maro [Itoje] went well when he did some things, he’s the strongest – I’m probably more technical. And we’ve been down to the beach to do some line-outs, so it’s been good.”
One of the criticisms of England’s conditioning programme ahead of the 2015 World Cup was that it put too great an emphasis on endurance, which did not pay dividends as the matches did not involve as many multi-phase attacks as expected and were instead decided by attacks based on short, powerful bursts and collisions.
“It is difficult,” conceded Jones. “The World Cup is the only time you have got the team for three months. You see sides go to the World Cup, they are either overprepared or under-prepared. It is getting that balance right. How do you get it right? Speak to as many smart people as
‘The game’s going towards repeat intensity – and it’s how quickly you get back to your feet’
you can, get the balance right between physical training, tactical training, social rest. We are up to draft 10 on our World Cup plan now of how we are going to do it. We’ve had a discussion about the ‘cycle of fastness’ now and how we project it is going to be. I said, ‘No, it might not be like that because we don’t know’ so we have to be careful.
“There is a base level that you need, and then you have to be looking individually at how you can improve players, and then the specificity of where the game is comes in the last three months.”