Owen Farrell and Kyle Eastmond joined the lengthening casualty list for England’s Six Nations opener against Wales on Friday week, in what will come as another blow to the head coach, Stuart Lancaster.
Despite the encouraging presence of four Premiership sides in the quarter-finals of the European Cup – England’s best return for 17 years – Lancaster has a number of fitness issues to resolve, with Farrell, Eastmond, Geoff Parling and Tom Wood the latest casualties in the build-up to the Millennium Stadium fixture.
Farrell hurt a knee during Saracens’ 18-6 defeat by Clermont while Eastmond suffered a recurrence of the shoulder problem he sustained in Toulouse a week earlier. Both players will be assessed by England’s medical staff although Eastmond was visibly upset at being replaced and was keen to continue. George Ford also required a concussion check in Bath’s victory over Glasgow but was subsequently able to return to the field.
Farrell’s injury appears of most concern. The fly-half twisted his left knee when tackled and left the field in the 19th minute. He left the stadium on crutches after the game, with his knee in a brace, and said he had no idea how bad it was. His diagnosis mirrored that of Saracens’s director of rugby, Mark McCall, who said: “It’s a knee injury and we don’t know the full extent of it yet. It’s complicated with knee injuries. Sometimes you can [walk off without a limp like he did] and it’s more serious than it looks. But we’ll get it looked after and we’ll know about it in the next few days.”
Bath’s head coach, Mike Ford, suggested Eastmond’s withdrawal was more precautionary. “Kyle came off last week with a shoulder [knock] and he’s just taken another knock,” Ford said. “He says he is fine and we don’t think it is too bad. The doctor was pretty adamant that he had to come off and it was the right thing to do.”
Parling, meanwhile, looks certain to miss the start of the championship after suffering a medial cruciate ligament injury early in Leicester’s defeat by Ulster in Belfast. The Tigers’ director of rugby, Richard Cockerill, said he expected the lock to be ruled out “for a few weeks I would imagine”.
Wood also limped out of Northampton’s sobering defeat by Racing Métro with an ankle problem and, at the very least, looks unlikely to train this week as Lancaster finalises his combinations for the Welsh encounter. With Joe Launchbury, Ben Morgan and Ed Slater already set to miss the entire Six Nations and Courtney Lawes sidelined until at least the middle of it after undergoing minor ankle surgery, England’s forward pack is creaking. Manu Tuilagi and Ben Foden are also sidelined and Lancaster could do with some good news when the latest batch of medical reports come in.
At least plenty of English players will be involved in the knockout stages of Europe with Northampton, Bath, Wasps and Saracens having all made it into the last eight. All four, however, have away draws in the quarter-finals and face a dauntingly rocky road to the final at Twickenham in May.