Six Nations - England Rugby

On Friday morning Twickenham Stadium played host to an Open Training session and 12,000 spectators had the opportunity to watch England’s squad train in the glorious February sunshine. The session wasn’t one that was conjured up for an audience instead  it was exactly what the players would have done if they had they been behind closed doors as Steve Borthwick made clear afterwards; 

“That’s exactly what we’d do at Pennyhill, it was no change to it because we were at Twickenham. We train at the level we want to play and that’s the way the training plan is created by Eddie.”

A 40 minute block, largely consisting of passages of play reacting to unstructured ball and what is often referred to as ‘chaos’ situations, was followed by 20 minutes of unit work and after that individuals did their own extras. Recently Eddie Jones provided us with a clear insight into one of the key techniques that he’s employed to take the squad to the next level;

"We use a methodology which I've borrowed from soccer called tactical periodisation," England’s head coach said following their Test match against Wales. 

"Every day we train a specific parameter of the game. We have one day where we have a physical session and do more contacts than we would do in a game. Then we have a fast day where we try to train for at least 60 percent of the session above game speed.

"We don't do any extra fitness. It's all done within those training sessions. Because of that we've improved our fitness enormously.”

England’s fitness is clear for all to see and it allows them to build and build during matches while their opponents find themselves in fifth gear with nothing left. Without question this will be one aspect that enables those selected to ‘put Italy to the cleaners’ in just over a week’s time. From my perspective next Sunday’s Test match is an intriguing one; the intrigue surrounding the match is not regarding the outcome instead it’s surrounding the selection choices that will be made. We know that Eddie Jones doesn’t hand out caps willy-nilly and instead every decision is made for a reason. Following their victory in Cardiff the Australian made it clear that that he wants to tweak a few things next time out;

“I’m looking at it all. We’ll look at playing a different sort of team. I’ve got some ideas of how we want to play against Italy; we will change it up a bit. One of the things I would like to do is to develop multiple ways that we can play so if we have a game where we want to play a certain way we have done it once and the players can do it again. This is all about building a plan for the World Cup.”

When you think about the detail of a ‘different sort of side’ here’s where the intrigue lies because England’s head coach has options available to him. Take the centres as an example, with Owen Farrell, Ben Te’o, Jonathan Joseph, Elliot Daly and Jack Nowell in the squad there are multiple avenues that could be explored. At full-back he has already said that he wants to see Elliot Daly there, Mike Brown is the incumbent and Anthony Watson may be fit to play a part in that position too. In the forward pack there are choices to make too given Jamie George’s form, James Haskell’s fitness and equally the prospect of potentially providing Jack Clifford with more air-time. In summary Eddie Jones has possibilities aplenty in front of him and as a result we should see his experience come to the fore when it comes to deciding which avenues are worth pursuing.

Already we've seen England's head coach’s experience manifest itself in a number different ways but none more so than regarding the timing of substitutions mid-game. Suffice to say making replacements by numbers is not Jones’ style as Steve Borthwick highlighted;

“That’s Eddie’s ability to recognise when to make a change and to make the right change – whether that is tactically, whether that is to bring a finisher on – has had a tremendously positive effect on the performance.

“I think he has got tremendous ability to read the game, which I have not encountered before. His ability to watch, understand and observe players, the flow of the game and the opposition of tactics, and bring them together quickly and make great decisions is tremendous.”

In the Twickenham sunshine England’s head coach was in the middle of the park driving the agenda and watching every single move made by his squad. While down time has been enjoyed by all this week their focus to keep improving and building remains stronger than ever. Despite such a strong winning run Eddie Jones and his team aren’t even remotely satisfied yet and those selected to face Italy will do everything in their power to impress and take another step forwards on the Twickenham turf.