Sam Warburton backs Maro Itoje to captain Lions on South Africa tour
Sam Warburton has backed Maro Itoje to follow in his footsteps and captain the British & Irish Lions this summer in South Africa. Alun Wyn Jones is the favourite for the role but his compatriot Warburton, who captained the Lions on their two previous tours, believes the England and Saracens lock is the best man for the job.
Warburton’s ringing endorsement comes in spite of Itoje’s on-field discipline problems during the Six Nations as well as England’s fifth-place finish. Warren Gatland has warned that England’s dismal championship could count against Eddie Jones’s players when it comes to selection but Warburton sees Itoje as a guaranteed Lions Test starter and the ideal leader.
Counting against Itoje is the fact that an agreement still has not been reached over players based in England being granted early release to join the Lions’ preparation camp in Jersey and play in the pre-tour Test against Japan in Edinburgh. Compounding matters, the Championship final second leg is scheduled for 19 June, meaning Itoje would miss the first week of the camp even if a deal is struck between the Lions and the Premiership clubs.
Also the lack of match fitness of England’s Saracens contingent was highlighted by the RFU on Tuesday as a key reason for their dismal Six Nations campaign. Warburton, however, sees Itoje as one of few guaranteed Test starters for the Lions.
“Everybody looked at the first game [of England’s Six Nations campaign,
against Scotland] when he gave away four of five penalties, but I think that was just a little bit of rustiness,” said Warburton. “I think Warren will want him to be primed and ready to go because he’s one of the players who will be a guaranteed Test starter and I was extremely impressed with him in 2017. I think given his age … a lot of the other captaincy candidates are a little bit older and I’d question whether there’d be too much pressure to get through a tour like this at the end of the season.
“I think Jamie George, Maro Itoje and Owen Farrell will 100% go on tour. Warren really backs his training methods of getting players match-fit before they play. He did it with a lot of players, including myself, over the years. I think he’ll take comfort that he has four or five games to get those players ready for the first Test. But I do worry about Elliot Daly and Billy Vunipola, whether Elliot’s form has dropped off or whether Billy would take too long to get up to match fitness.”
Warburton urged the Premiership clubs to engage with their players over early release to join the Lions preparations once their domestic seasons have finished. “I do question sometimes whether players are in the foreground of conversations. If they had a conversation with the players’ association in England and said: ‘What do you want to do?’ I think they’d be surprised to hear what the players want. It’s hard to ask for more money [for player release] at the moment, I think you have to be a little more sympathetic.”
Meanwhile, Premiership Rugby announced the shock resignation of Darren Childs as chief executive on Wednesday only 20 months into the job. Childs, an unpopular figure within the league, will join CVC – the private equity firm that owns a 27% stake in the Premiership, where he joins his predecessor Mark McCafferty. It is understood senior figures at Premiership Rugby were not informed of Childs’s decision until moments before it was announced and his departure ends a turbulent tenure that has included the Saracens salary cap scandal and the fallout from the pandemic. PRL will reveal succession plans in due course with Nigel Melville, recently appointed executive chairman, among the favourites.
Sam Warburton was speaking as Canterbury launched the British & Irish Lions Test jersey, available atwww.canterbury.com
and I understand it will take time for the scars to heal, I am personally committed to rebuilding trust and learning from the message you delivered with such conviction.
“In seeking to create a more stable foundation for the game, we failed to show enough respect for its deep-rooted traditions – promotion, relegation, the pyramid – and for that we are sorry.”
Earlier Liverpool’s principal owner, John W Henry, had apologised to fans, Jürgen Klopp and the players for “the disruption I caused” by signing up to the proposed breakaway.
“They were the most disrupted and unfairly so,” Henry said. “This is what hurts most. They love your club and work to make you proud every single day.I hope you’ll understand that even when we make mistakes, we’re trying to work in your club’s best interests. In this endeavour I’ve let you down.”
At Manchester City the chief executive officer, Ferran Soriano, sent a message to fans in which he said the board deeply regretted its actions. “We believed that being part of such an initiative could give us a voice that might be imperative to our future ability to succeed and grow. However, in making that choice we failed to remind ourselves of the unbreakable link between the passion of our fans and the right to have the opportunity to earn success.”
The extent of the harm caused by the Super League project was underlined by some of the responses to the apologies. Joe Blott, chair of the fan group Spirit of Shankly, said Henry’s message felt “very weasel-word-like” and added: “They’re not sorry. The only reason they are sorry is because they have been caught out yet again.”
FSG has made a habit of backtracking and apologising for controversial decisions during its ownership of Liverpool. Executives performed a U-turn over plans to hike ticket prices in 2016 following a mass walk-out of fans at Anfield, and after receiving a barrage of criticism for looking to furlough some staff at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The former chief executive Peter Moore also issued an apology when an attempt to trademark the city of Liverpool’s name was rejected by the Intellectual Property Office.
A spokesperson for Manchester United Supporters’ Trust said of the Glazers: “We all know until they felt forced to withdraw they were determined to proceed with their Super League project regardless of opposition. Ultimately Joel’s silence since 2005 says more than this message. We cannot just carry on as if nothing has happened. This is a watershed moment and we need to see genuine change as a result.”
There were calls from the Chelsea Supporters’ Trust for the chairman, Bruce Buck, and the chief executive, Guy Laurence, to leave but it is understood the club have no intention of making changes in their boardroom. Tottenham fans held a demonstration against the owners before the game against Southampton.
Agnelli said European football needed to change and had no regrets about the way the breakaway attempt was made. “I remain convinced of the beauty of that project,” he said, stating it would have created the best competition in the world. By Wednesday evening only Juventus, Barcelona and Real Madrid had not officially abandoned it. A source told Reuters that those clubs could enforce break-up fees on the teams that had withdrawn.
United’s U-turn regarding the Super League precipitated the resignation on Tuesday evening of Ed Woodward, who had expected to continue as executive vice-chairman until at least 2026. A week ago the 50-year-old, who will leave his post at the end of the year, believed the European Club Association could agree a deal with Uefa that would have prevented the Super League’s launch, with United then represented by the body and Woodward an executive member.
When this did not occur United along with the other 11 founder members lost patience with European football’s governing body and the ESL was announced. When Woodward was forced into embarrassingly having to pull United out he resigned.
Meanwhile, the Paris Saint-Germain president, Nasser Al-Khelaifi, has been appointed as the new European Club Association chairman in place of Agnelli. The Uefa president, Aleksander Ceferin, said: “I would like to congratulate the ECA for choosing Nasser as their new chairman.
“Football needs good people in senior roles and Nasser is someone who has shown he is capable of looking after the interests of more clubs than just his own – which should be a prerequisite for the position of ECA chair. He is a man I can trust.”