England have been handed a major boost with Maro Itoje due to be fit for the start of the Six Nations after the Saracens director of rugby, Mark McCall, revealed the second-row is only three to four weeks away from returning after a broken jaw.
Itoje sustained the injury against Harlequins this month, following a collision with his international team-mate Mike Brown, and he was rated as doubtful for England’s Six Nations opener against Italy, with fears he could be out of action for up to 10 weeks. A trip to the specialist last week has ruled that Itoje is likely to make his comeback during the next block of European matches however, against the Ospreys on the weekend beginning 12 January, or Northampton a week later. “Maro is probably three or four weeks away,” McCall said. “He went to see the specialist who said a maximum of six weeks and he’s already had a week and a half.”
It is a considerable fillip for Eddie Jones, with Itoje a fundamental part of his pursuit of a record third successive Six Nations title, having carefully managed the 23-year-old through the autumn, handing him just one start following his exertions with the British & Irish Lions in the summer. England are due to travel to Portugal for a warm weather training camp on 22 January and Itoje is now on schedule to take a full part in that before Jones’s side face Italy on 4 February.
For Saracens, however, his absence is still keenly felt. In addition to Itoje they were already without Billy Vunipola, Michael Rhodes, Schalk Brits, Liam Williams and Duncan Taylor for the humiliating 46-14 defeat by Clermont on Monday but Brad Barritt (concussion) and Richard Wigglesworth (hip) will now also miss the trip to the Stade Marcel Michelin on Sunday – the latter facing up to eight weeks out.
Injuries are just part of the problem for the two-times defending European champions, however. On Monday they missed a staggering 37 tackles in what was a sixth defeat in a row – albeit two of those coming in the Anglo-Welsh Cup. They remain the best off of the second-placed teams in the Champions Cup but European assignments do not get any harder than travelling to Clermont.
As such, on their day off the players called a clear-the-air meeting at a local restaurant on Tuesday to thrash out their recent struggles, and Jamie George believes it had the desired effect.
“It’s best to get everyone together after a game like that because everyone has their own feelings and everyone is hurting but it’s better to hurt together and then you can move past it,” George said. “It allowed us to have a chat. The majority of people talked about the game and what their frustrations were. It’s nothing huge that we need to fix, it’s just little things that are reoccurring. We got the elephant in the room out and we have a good plan going into Clermont on Sunday.
“We’re certainly not used to being in this position but the good thing is that we have things to hang our hat on. We’ve cleared the air in terms of what we need to get right on the field and we’ve come away with solutions and we’re trying to put that on the field.”
McCall, meanwhile, acknowledged he is in the midst of his toughest period since taking over as director of rugby in 2011 but after an “open discussion” when the players came back to the club on Wednesday, he is confident Monday’s record European defeat will not derail his side’s hopes of reaching the knockout stages.
“It would be a big problem if players didn’t feel wounded by what happened on Monday night,” he said. “We’ve got a group that really, really care about things. We spoke as a group on Wednesday. We talked more about the group we want to be and what we want to get out of the weekend and the next six weeks.
“They trained brilliantly this afternoon. You wouldn’t have known Monday night had happened if you’d seen them today. We don’t want a group that has lots of self-pity and feel sorry for themselves. We want a group that has balls and sits up straight and gets on with it. And I think we’ve got that kind of group.”
