Club climax may wreck Lancaster’s World Cup
STUART Lancaster might be inclined to spend the last two weeks of May hiding behind his sofa, hoping against hope that his World Cup plans are not wrecked by the business end of the club season.
England’s head coach will name a preliminary training squad of around 45 players in the middle of that month, before the semi-finals of the Aviva Premiership.
Clubs such as Northampton, Saracens and Bath — who provide large contingents to the national squad — are bound to be involved in those blood- and- thunder matches and there is a significant risk of untimely injuries as the league campaign reaches its anticipated explosive climax.
A day after the Premiership final at Twickenham on May 30, an England XV made up of emerging rookies will face the Barbarians at HQ.
The senior players will reconvene to begin their summer training camp in Surrey on June 22, and the two weeks from July 13 will be spent at altitude in Denver — Colorado’s ‘Mile-High City’.
A week off upon their return from the States will be followed by a return to camp as England prepare for one experimental encounter with France at home, followed by a return fixture in Paris which they intend to treat as a more full- on Test.
Lancaster must announce his final World Cup squad of 31 on August 31, before a final warm-up match, against Ireland at Twickenham.
Explaining the schedule of events as the tournament countdown intensifies, Lancaster said: ‘The training camp will start on June 22 and the wider squad will be about 45. It will be announced mid-May, before the Barbarians game, which is the same weekend as the Premiership final.
‘The side to play the Barbarians will probably be made up of younger players. No- one in the squad will play in that, though one or two who have had injuries might come back into the equation.
‘From a selection point of view, we will use the first warm-up match to look at wider options. As you narrow down to the second game, the World Cup squad and the Ireland game, they will be proper games then.’
However, England will not wait for their encounters with France and Ireland to assess their players’ credentials in match conditions. The plan is to host in- house matches of their own.
Lancaster explained: ‘We’ll spend a lot of time with proper 15-on-15 games internally anyway.
‘We’ll make sure the players are put under that sort of Test-match pressure.
‘We have two high-quality teams now and you can replicate the intensity on training alone. They will vary in intensity as we go through June and July.
‘When we go to Denver, we were thinking of bringing in opposition, but actually we’re probably better off having a bash against each other.’
One man who certainly ‘ had a bash’ against France on Saturday was Courtney Lawes. The Northampton lock was reportedly cited by the visitors after his monster hit on France fly-half Jules Plisson, but the match commissioner has seen no need to take the matter any further.