Jones ‘feared player burnout’ before Six Nations debacle
Coach warned that stars were overworked by clubs England Saxons side may be revived, says RFU chief
Eddie Jones feared before the NatWest Six Nations that some of England’s top players had been overworked on club duty and had voiced his concerns to Steve Brown, the Rugby Football Union chief executive.
Brown’s revelations come amid suggestions of fatigue in the wake of three consecutive losses for England and a fifth-place finish in the tournament, their worst return since a Five Nations wooden spoon in 1983.
Nine of England’s starting XV for their opening match against Italy, five of them British and Irish Lions tourists, had already accumulated more than 1,000 minutes in Premiership and European action for their respective clubs before the start of February.
Brown admitted that Jones had mentioned the workloads of regular internationals to him. Although he refused to be drawn on specifics, the inference was that the England head coach had been keen for certain players to receive greater rest. Brown confirmed that Jones had subsequently relayed his thoughts to the relevant directors of rugby.
Brown, who joined the RFU as chief financial officer in 2011, remained optimistic of a turnaround in fortunes for Jones’s side. However, he conceded that the professional game agreement between Premiership Rugby and the RFU, which was announced in July 2016 and runs until 2024, did not function without occasional hitches. It was put to him that Jones had not always had his own way since September.
“In those particular cases, perhaps not,” Brown said. “But mine is a more general point, which is that I’ve been around this environment for seven years and this is the best two or three years we have had of that collaboration.
“It’s better than it’s ever been in that respect, but there will be moments when there are pressures and tensions.”
Brown hoped that a detailed, data led evaluation of training and playing workloads as part of the Professional Game Board’s ongoing review into the domestic season, which is expected to be concluded at the end of April, would inform better preservation of internationals in the future.
Of England’s starters for the 24-15 defeat by Ireland, 10 were named to start in the Premiership this weekend. One more, Mako Vunipola, was among Saracens’ replacements yesterday. The remaining four were listed as either ill or injured.
Brown suggested that the PGB’s findings could help to shape Jones’s selection decisions for June’s three Test tour of South Africa and even lead to tweaks in a realigned global season schedule, with designated rest periods for international players.
“It’s not about resetting the [professional game] agreement,” he added. “It’s about the spirit of the agreement with a player welfare mindset. And not just player welfare.
“The perfect scenario is that the player is played in the appropriate amount of matches. They’d be fit and conditioned for England and also for their club. It’s got to require balance. That’s where we’ll hopefully get to with this. It doesn’t fundamentally change the agreement, it does change the application of it.”
One neglected tool in England’s bid to develop depth is a second-string senior team. There have been no fixtures for England Saxons since the summer of 2016.
Two wins over South Africa A, a 32-24 victory in Bloemfontein and a 29-26 triumph in George, punctuated the successful trip. Before that, the previous Saxons outing had been in January 2015, when Sam Burgess and a 20-year-old Maro Itoje featured in an 18-9 win against Ireland Wolfhounds.
If suitable opposition can be found, Brown is open to reintroducing Saxons games as a means to bridge the gap between Steve Bates’s Under-20 programme and the Test arena.
“Our focus at the moment is the Six Nations Championship and Under20s,” Brown said. “But there’s more to do on the Saxons, for sure. We need to get it sorted this season, really, because we’ve been in limbo for a while. It’s where it fits in the whole system which is key.”