England centre Manu Tuilagi ruled out for six months by torn achilles
Manu Tuilagi’s injury curse has struck again after Sale revealed he will be sidelined for six months with a torn achilles, ruling him out of England’s forthcoming autumn campaign as well as next year’s Six Nations and dealing Eddie Jones a huge blow.
Tuilagi will undergo surgery next week and will miss Sale’s Premiership title push, England’s bid for the 2020 Six Nations title against Italy on 31 October, and their Autumn Nations Cup campaign. The 29-year-old is also due to sit out the 2021 Six Nations, meaning he will play no Test rugby before the British & Irish Lions tour of South Africa. Indeed, he is likely to only be in the early stages of his comeback when Warren Gatland names his touring squad.
Tuilagi sustained the injury in the early stages of Sale’s victory at Northampton on Tuesday – his seventh appearance for the Sharks – in an innocuous collision with Dan Biggar and looked in immediate distress. A subsequent scan has confirmed the worst for Jones, who is also likely to lose Courtney Lawes to an ankle injury sustained in the same match.
It is a hammer blow for Tuilagi, who had hoped to put his injury problems behind him when making the summer move from Leicester to Sale. His decision to stay in the Premiership, rather than make a lucrative move abroad, was born out of a desire to remain available for England but he is now unlikely to feature for his country for more than a year.
Steve Diamond, Sale’s director of rugby, said: “Hopefully the surgery will be next week. It’s a torn achilles. He’ll be out for six months. It’s brutal what we’re playing at the minute. Dan Biggar fell on him, so it was an accident. These things happen. I think it might have been a jinx me saying before the game that we’ve got [so many] games out of him and boom, that happens. So I’ll keep my trap shut in future.”
Tuilagi appeared just once in Jones’s first 34 Tests in charge because of groin, hamstring and knee problems but he has featured in 17 of the subsequent 20, missing just one because of injury. Last year he was able to rekindle his best form in the buildup to and during the World Cup, most notably in the warm-up match against Ireland and the semi-final victory against New Zealand. In his absence, Jones does at least have options at outside-centre, including Henry Slade, Jonathan Joseph and the Worcester youngster Ollie Lawrence.
For Sale it is a short-term headache, with the Sharks set for a play-off spot if they achieve a bonus-point win against Worcester on Sunday, but as Diamond pointed out it is England who will suffer most. The truncated nature of next season means Premiership clubs will be without their England internationals for 11 of the first 14 matches next season so Sale would only have been able to select Tuilagi sparingly anyway.
“Manu will be a loss to England and Sale,” Diamond said. “Rather selfishly, after this game and the play-offs we probably wouldn’t have seen Manu until April with the England commitments and EPS [elite player squad] rest periods.”
Tuilagi’s latest layoff also raises questions over his long-term future. After his acrimonious departure from Leicester, he joined Sale on a cutprice deal, which is due to expire next summer. “I’ll be looking to chat to Manu, definitely,” said Diamond. “We had a very good shaking hands agreement that he would sign until next July and we’re in no rush to sit down and sort something out. He’s cool with that, if we can come up with the numbers then I think he’d be delighted to stay with us. We’ll probably get eight, nine, 10 games out of him next season anyhow, which is all we would have got. It’s England’s loss more so than us.”