Maro Itoje will miss England’s four autumn internationals after fracturing his right hand. The Saracens second-row requires surgery and is out of action for six weeks.
That puts Itoje in line for a comeback in the second week of December, after England’s final international against Australia, and means Eddie Jones is without three of the back-five forwards who featured in the Six Nations Championship and the summer’s series win in Australia.
Itoje’s club and country second-row colleague George Kruis is out for up to eight weeks after ankle surgery while the flanker James Haskell is not expected to return until the new year after having reconstructive surgery on the big toe of his left foot.
“For any team to lose a player of the ability of Maro is a blow and he will be missed through the autumn by both his club and England,” Mark McCall, the Saracens director of rugby, said. “What’s now important for Maro is his recovery and we look forward to his return later this season.”
Itoje was injured during Saracens’ Champions Cup victory against the Scarlets on Saturday.
Jones had been considering playing Itoje in Haskell’s position for the autumn series, operating at wing forward alongside Chris Robshaw, because of a spate of injuries in the back row: Sam Jones, Jack Clifford and Mike Williams are all out and while Courtney Lawes has played at blindside wing forward, he is likely to be needed in the second row with Kruis unavailable.
The Leicester second-row Ed Slater, who has played a number of matches at six for his club, is an option, along with the Sale No8, Josh Beaumont, seen by Jones as a second-row in the long term, although that may mean moving Robshaw back to openside, a position Jones does not believe he is suited for even though he played there for England for four years.
There are openside specialists in the Premiership, Matt Kvesic, Luke Wallace and Brendon O’Connor among them, but Jones, who will announce his squad for the autumn matches against South Africa, Fiji, Argentina and Australia on Wednesday morning, has not yet been persuaded by any of them.
Jones is without 10 players for the Twickenham series. The hooker Luke Cowan-Dickie has an injured knee while the wings Anthony Watson and Jack Nowell are out and no comeback date has been set for the Leicester’s centre Manu Tuilagi who has not played since the opening night of the season.
Wales also have injury problems for their four-match autumn campaign that starts against Australia on 5 November. Their squad report for training this week with the full-back Liam Williams and the second-row Jake Ball, who were injured at Saracens, needing fitness checks, along with the centre Scott Williams and the wing George North.
The Australia game falls outside World Rugby’s official window but Wales will be able to select their six players who are based in England, including North and the centre Jamie Roberts, after Premiership Rugby waived, on a one-off basis, its rule that clubs held on to their non-England players when they were not obliged to release them.
Premiership Rugby said: “As a gesture of flexibility, the clubs will release their players outside the approved Test window for matches on the weekend of 4-6 November. This comes as we continue deliberations on a new post-2019 global season structure to find an appropriate balance between club and international rugby.”
Wales will not have their England-based players for the two fallow weekends of the Six Nations with Premiership Rugby insisting next week is an exception to a rule that remains, and by releasing players on a weekend when they would not have played anyway because it is an Anglo-Welsh Cup round, the clubs are depositing goodwill in the global season debate.
