Just 18 months ago he was scrabbling around for a pro contract... now McConnochie is off to Japan in vanguard of Jones’ rookie revolution
Setback but Nowell vows to be ready
JACK NOWELL is likely to have to go into the World Cup having played no competitive rugby for almost four months.
The Exeter wing was named in the squad yesterday but in the knowledge that he has only an outside chance of making the last of England’s warm-up games against Italy on September 6.
Nowell suffered what
Eddie Jones described as a “setback” in his return from the ankle and knee ligament injuries he sustained in the Premiership final and returned home early from the camp in Treviso.
“I pushed it a little bit too hard and it flared up a tiny bit but nothing too bad. I went back and saw the Exeter physios and they are happy,” said Nowell.
“I always had Italy in my head – but if I don’t make the Italy game I will be there or thereabouts.”
Jones has called up three of his standby players – Quins centre Joe Marchant, Bath second row Charlie Ewels and Exeter No8 Matt Kvesic – to join the World Cup 31 for Saturday’s game against Wales in Cardiff.
THE PAIN GAME: Nowell pushed himself AGE: POSITION: WINGER CLUB: BATH ENGLAND CAPS: 0 Won a silver medal in the rugby sevens with Team GB in Rio in 2016 and joined Bath last summer
Unveiled in the incongruous surroundings of a Spanish classroom at a Bristol school, you could have forgiven the uncapped 27-year-old for wondering if he was trapped in the oddest of dreams.
At any moment a teacher was bound to come along, clip him around the ear and tell him to concentrate on his tenses.
But it really was happening. McConnochie was in the 31 – the unknown bolter Eddie Jones had long wanted to summon from the shadows just as the world champion All Blacks did with Nehe Milner-Scudder four years ago.
In a World Cup squad surprisingly short on experience as Jones lost faith in his old guard close to the tournament, the former Nuneaton wing who appeared on Jones’s radar in March when he troubled Exeter for Bath at Sandy Park, is the definitive rookie.
Even he would not have believed it possible a year ago had someone mentioned the possibility when he was scrabbling around for a professional contract having stepped away from the sevens circuit.
“I wouldn’t have believed them. Not at all,” he said. “I’d love to say all the clubs were coming to me but it was a bit of both. We were asking around and Bath seemed quite interested. I didn’t know how the first year was going to go. It could have been that I gave it all I could and it just wasn’t meant to be but I have absolutely loved it and everything that has come with it has been great.
“My first World Cup memory was probably that Wilkinson drop goal in 2003 and stuff like Jason Robinson scoring in that final but also backing it up in 2007 – those memories stick out a lot and it’s cool to be part of that journey now.
“I don’t think you worry about the lack of experience. At the end of the day, you want your 31 best players there.
“It’s the 31 best guys on the plane at the moment so hopefully we go there and we do England proud and we do ourselves proud.”
Jones admitted himself after naming a squad with 1007 caps – 477 fewer than New Zealand mustered in 2015 – that its make-up had skewed further away from the tried-and-tested than he once envisioned.
But after revealing it at Blaise High School – part of the RFU’s