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Saracens' update on England doubt Farrell three days after injury

(Photo by Bob Bradford/CameraSport via Getty Images)

Saracens have provided an update on the first steps being taken by Owen Farrell in his bid to get back fit in time for the start of the four-game England Autumn Nations series versus Argentina on November 6. The London club’s No10 suffered a concussion last Saturday in their win at Exeter and Mark McCall, their director of rugby, reported post-game that his player would be facing a twelve-day standdown period.

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That timeframe would leave Farrell short on training with England if they were to select him to face the Pumas, but McCall explained on Tuesday afternoon that the 31-year-old was still a chance for the opening match of the series despite the alteration by World Rugby to the protocols governing concussion.

It was last June when the game’s global governing body changed its approach and stated at the time that “players with a history of concussion or who are removed from a match with obvious concussion symptoms would sit out from play for a minimum of twelve days”.

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That stipulation means Farrell shouldn’t be available to train fully with England at the start of next week, a restriction that could likely see Eddie Jones look elsewhere with his selection as he usually places huge importance on players training the full week before a Test match.

Having been named last week in the 36-strong England squad that was to assemble in Jersey on Monday for a five-day training camp, it was decided post the weekend that Farrell would be best served by progressing through his graduated return-to-play protocols at home with Saracens rather than on the Channel Island.

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“Yeah, he is at the club. He has been in the last two days to see the medics and got through the procedures and the process he has to,” said McCall, who was then asked about the revised World Rugby protocols and what Farrell was expected to do in order to be declared fit for England. “You would probably need to talk to someone else for the exact A to Z of what he needs to do but it is a little bit different now and potentially a bit longer.

“We will wait and see. There is still a chance that he will be available to play in game one and fingers crossed that is the case. He is certainly going in in good form. He had a really strong start to the season. He’ll be okay, I think.”

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If England don’t select Farrell versus Argentina, might there be a chance he could instead play for Saracens versus Bristol in the Premiership on November 5? “I wouldn’t have thought that would be the case, no.” Going back to the recent performances of Farrell, McCall added: “He has hit the ground running this year, he is good on both sides of the ball, he has controlled games well so he is right on top of things at the minute.”

Farrell featured in just four of the eleven England matches last season as separate ankle operations forced him out of the Autumn Nations Series mid-campaign and then sidelined him from the entire Guinness Six Nations. He returned for the July tour versus Australia but wasn’t reinstated as captain as Courtney Lawes was left to skipper the team.

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Flankly 1 hour ago
'Absolute madness': Clive Woodward rips into Borthwick in wake of NZ loss

Borthwick is supposed to be the archetypical conservative coach, the guy that might not deliver a sparkling, high-risk attacking style, but whose teams execute the basics flawlessly. And that's OK, because it can be really hard to beat teams that are rock solid and consistent in the rugby equivalent of "blocking and tackling".


But this is why the performance against NZ is hard to defend. You can forgive a conservative, back-to-basics team for failing to score tons of tries, because teams like that make up for it with reliability in the simple things. They can defend well, apply territorial pressure, win the set piece battles, and take their scoring chances with metronomic goal kicking, maul tries and pick-and-go goal line attacks.


The reason why the English rugby administrators should be on high alert is not that the English team looked unable to score tries, but that they were repeatedly unable to close out a game by executing basic, coachable skills. Regardless of how they got to the point of being in control of their destiny, they did get to that point. All that was needed was to be world class at things that require more training than talent. But that training was apparently missing, and the finger has to point at the coach.


Borthwick has been in the job for nearly two years, a period that includes two 6N programs and an RWC campaign. So where are the solid foundations that he has been building?

4 Go to comments
N
Nickers 1 hour ago
Scott Robertson responds to criticism over All Blacks' handling errors

Very poor understanding of what's going on and 0 ability to read. When I say playing behind the gain line you take this to mean all off-loads and site times we are playing in front of the gain line???


Every time we play a lot of rugby behind the gain line (for clarity, meaning trying to build an attack and use width without front foot ball 5m+ behind the most recent breakdown) we go backwards and turn the ball over in some way. Every time a player is tackled behind the most recent breakdown you need more and more people to clear out because your forwards have to go back around the corner, whereas opposition players can keep moving forward. Eventually you run out of either players to clear out or players to pass to and the result in a big net loss of territory and often a turnover. You may have witnessed that 20+ times in the game against England. This is a particularly dumb idea inside your own 40m which is where, for some reason, we are most likely to employ it.


The very best ABs teams never built an identity around attacking from poor positions. The DC era team was known for being the team that kicked the most. To engineer field position and apply pressure, and create broken play to counter attack. This current team is not differentiating between when a defence has lost it's structure and there are opportunities, and when they are completely set and there is nothing on. The reason they are going for 30 minute + periods in every game without scoring a single point, even against Japan and a poor Australian team, is because they are playing most of their rugby on the back foot in the wrong half.

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