Oi, Italy! The Mitchell brothers are coming to get you
It will be like watching Phil and Grant Mitchell from EastEnders when Ellis Genge and Kyle Sinckler start together today. i can’t wait to see it.
Ellis and Kyle are good mates who are cut from the same cloth. in one of their first training sessions, we were doing a 15-on-15 run through and those two were running around trying to rip everyone’s heads off. the senior guys were thinking: ‘Come on, lads, we’re too old for this!’ they’re fiery characters and passionate blokes, which is exactly what you want on the rugby pitch.
As poor as italy’s results have been, the one thing they always pride themselves on is their scrum. there’s a video of me getting bent in two against them in 2013. i lost the hit and my head was basically folded into my crotch — it looked like something out of the Kama Sutra! Ben Youngs and Dan Cole still send me that clip on whatsApp if they want to get under my skin.
the scrum session against Georgia will have been really beneficial for Ellis and Kyle. it was no surprise to hear that it all kicked off. the boys will have ramped it up because they absolutely hosed us last year. it was tasty. we had our reverse lights on from scrum one — so much so that wayne Barnes moved us across the pitch because he was worried that we were going to get driven back into the posts. i’d have come out of retirement just to be in involved last week!
Outside of the scrum, i don’t think italy’s skill levels are high enough to trouble England. i hate to say it because Conor O’Shea is my old mate and he’s doing good things there. He’s the most positive man you will ever meet — and italy’s long losing streak in the Six Nations will not change that.
England will come out like a wounded animal. they have just lost to wales, so they will have a point to prove, and the title’s still up for grabs. Eddie Jones has not rested any of his big guns and there are heavy units all over the pitch in Ellis, Kyle, Billy Vunipola, Manu tuilagi, Ben te’o and Joe Cokanasiga.
i will be watching the game at home with a spicy romano pizza. thin crust and drowned in balsamic syrup. i’ll bet my dough balls that it will be a 50-point drubbing by England.
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RUCK ’N’ ROLLEDPEOPlE still ask me about italy’s ‘no ruck’ tactics at twickenham two years ago. i really enjoyed seeing James Haskell take all the flak after asking Romain Poite what the rules are.
the truth is that none of us had any idea what was going on. All i’m good at is scrummaging and hitting rucks — with ruckgate i didn’t even have any rucks to hit! i ended up hitting my own team-mates because i didn’t have anyone else to hit! there’s a clip of Mike Catt wetting himself about it in the coaching box. we were clueless.
EYES ON MURRAYFIELD?tHE standard answer is ‘we are just focusing on ourselves’ but of course the players will be keeping an eye on the Scotland-wales game. they will be hoping Scotland do a job because England still want to win the tournament.
there will be a handful of players watching it in the team room and there will be others who don’t care. they will catch the first half in the hotel but they will probably miss the end because they have to set off. they will not see the result because phones are a no-go in the changing room before kick-off.