Skipper’s remarks off the table, for now
Chris Robshaw is captain of the England touring team.
By all accounts he is a decent fellow and according to the team handbook emulated Williams Webb Ellis as a 7-year-old when he “picked up a rugby ball and has never really looked back”.
He has been capped 25 times by England as a flanker since getting into a regular playing and leadership role with the national side in 2012. Like many of the England pack he is a decent unit at 1.88m and 110kg and is one of the side’s workaholics.
We’d like to tell you more after he sat down and talked to us last night.
However, under the team rules of media engagement, England are catering to their own correspondents first and have laid down strict embargoes about publishing players’ comments.
So while we could listen to Robshaw’s thoughts about Saturday’s opening test with the All Blacks at Eden Park we are not allowed to reproduce them until 9am tomorrow morning.
There was no such restriction telling you what Jonny May (he is a centre) had to say but it’s fair to say, while he was very polite, May does not command the same interest as his team captain.
So we honed in on Joe Launchbury, one of the new breed of locks in the England squad who has been at the coal face for both of the contests against the All Blacks on coach Stuart Lancaster’s watch.
Launchbury stretches up to 1.98m and takes 115kg out of the weighting machine. The 23-year-old was originally a “tweener”, someone who played lock or blindside flanker depending on team needs.
He made his way through the IRB under 20 championship when he was named as England’s player of the tournament and began his 19-test journey in 2012. He has played the last 16 straight and is becoming one of the rocks England need in the run to the World Cup.
Launchbury and Courtney Lawes, who arrives with the 16 reinforcements today, have become England’s go-to locking pair.
The cavalry helps stock the team bus with a 47-strong playing squad backed by 22 coaching and support staff for their three tests and one midweek match with the Crusaders.
“In more recent games I think we really came on in the Six Nations, obviously after a shaky start but to build the way we did and bring our attacking game, we were pleased with that,” he said.
“It is the ultimate challenge really to come over here and play a threetest tour against New Zealand.”
The All Blacks had the best defensive lineout in the world and a dynamic pack and this series was about England testing themselves against the best, he said.