If this autumn’s World Cup heads southwards, it will not be for failings in preparation among the northern contenders. Graham Rowntree, England’s forwards’ coach, is in no doubt that the time his squad have together now will lend them an advantage over the southern hemisphere teams, who will spend the next couple of months contesting this year’s truncated Tri Nations.
“Absolutely, I would choose to do it this way,” Rowntree said, as he took time out from his squad’s conditioning programme — for which read anguish and flagellation — to assure that the hosts will be in the shape of their lives come September. The trade-off is between fitness and match hardness, with England relying for the latter on three warm-up games against France (twice) and Ireland.
“We’ve planned this for two years. And those warm-up games are good. These guys need time to build sufficient base-level fitness. You can’t do what we’re doing now in a Six Nations or an autumn campaign. This way we get plenty of time to get hold of them. You can change a player, how he looks, get him as fit as possible. What we’re putting them through is very tough, the toughest I’ve seen.”
The sunny terraces and dickie-bowed waiters of Pennyhill Park cut a wicked contrast with the toil Rowntree spoke of just a couple of hundred yards down a leafy lane. The Surrey hotel has been England’s base, off and on, since the Clive Woodward era, but it has been colonised by them in recent years.
The press have yet to be admitted to the training centre they have built next to the full-size rugby pitch, so unspeakable are the tortures practised within. “They’re working as hard as they can,” said a deadpan Rowntree, “and we’ll continue to push them. We’ve got a horrible session lined up for them this afternoon, which is as it should be. They need that training to reach the fitness levels we aspire to.”
Rowntree apologised repeatedly as he dabbed the sweat from his brow. He had been running himself in the heat a couple of hours earlier. He often referred to the meticulous planning behind England’s campaign but the coincidence of the heatwave represents a bonus to cheer any sadistic fitness coach. With all the gizmos attached to the modern rugby player in training, one can be sure that when a coach tells us this is the hardest his boys have ever trained he has the data to prove it.
The All Blacks are held up as setting the standard to aspire to — indeed, to surpass. England finished the Six Nations with a try-fest against the French and they are promising more of the same this autumn. “We are aspiring to high ball-in-play minutes. There are teams around the world who are leading that at the moment and we want to be at the front of it. We’ve played New Zealand a lot recently, and the ball has been in play more against them than against anyone. Minute-wise, it’s in the late 30s. And that’s challenging. We want to get to around 40 minutes a game, ball in play, challenging teams, playing exciting rugby.”
Next week the 50-man squad will be trimmed by five before leaving for two weeks of more pain, albeit with the promise of a rugby ball thrown in, at altitude in Denver. Ben Morgan, whom Rowntree described as in the shape of his life, is well on track to feature there, following the broken leg he suffered in January.
After the disciplinary disruptions of the past few weeks, there is a mood of positivity in England’s camp. And, on that discipline front, they seem to have struck upon an effective policy of prevention. No one can misbehave if they do not have the energy.