While most are talking about nothing other than the opening match of the British & Irish Lions series, in London a new England squad are solely focused on their own challenge ahead.
The squad’s maiden outing together against the Barbarians showed tremendous promise and gave us all a glimpse of the real depth housed in English rugby. This depth is something that we’ve all banged on about for a long time now but Sunday afternoon’s victory highlighted it clearly on the park in a real Test situation. With so many players away in New Zealand this period of time is a real bonus for Eddie Jones in his journey to 2019, as the head coach himself explained on Thursday lunchtime:
“We have got a great opportunity in a real Test match environment to find out how many players are pushing forward to the next step and not many teams are allowed that opportunity. We have got this opportunity so we don’t intend to miss out on it. As you can see from our selection we have really tried to embrace that challenge.”
If the approach of selecting ‘youth’ is as successful as he would like it to be then England’s head coach could finish the summer with another group of tremendously competitive players at his disposal. A group of players that will push those that are more experienced than them in the Premiership and have individuals that emerge and take the same trajectory of improvement and velocity as Maro Itoje for example. Yes, heads have been turned with the inexperience of the players that England will field in Argentina but we can't forget Eddie Jones' record of bringing through talents at a young age... I'll just leave the name George Smith here shall I!?
Equally the next few weeks will valuable for those more established players that are tasked with leading this tour. Eddie Jones has often commented on the lack leadership depth in this squad and here is an opportunity to work on that element too. In this period of time the likes of Danny Care, Mike Brown and George Ford will progress as leaders themselves and as a rseult become even more valuable to the national squad.
Inside camp this week the group have been split into four mini teams of eight players that are competing against each other in the gym, on the field and in quizzes. On Wednesday evening Wayne Barnes arrived in camp and took part of their quiz focused on the laws. Alongside side one of the gym elements was called a 'Mantathlon'! The management’s ambitions here is to speed up the development of the two key focus areas as Eddie Jones explained:
“There have been two things we’ve wanted this week, one is to drive competitive desire because we want everybody in the squad competing for a spot. We don’t want anyone to think just because they’re a young guy they can’t play in this team. The other thing is unity off the field, to bring everybody together. Guys have come back with a Premiership trophy, some with no Premiership trophy and we’ve put them all together, it has been good fun.”
The long and the short of this tour to Argentina is that it is a chance for England’s coaching staff to take good look at some of England’s potential gems. Eddie Jones is clear that to win the World Cup his side will need ‘five or six players in the World XV’. Developing world class players and questioning the Australian on whether he has any in his squad has been a hot topic ever since he stated that England had none at the beginning of his tenure. On Thursday that count has changed, in his mind England now have ‘at least two at this stage’. They remained un-named however a couple of names will immediately spring to many people’s minds!
“When the Lions come back I want them to feel the difference in the team and to feel that the team has changed. I want the Lions to be shocked. Some of the training we are doing has eclipsed what we did in the Six Nations - the level of training.”
