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The Henry Slade update on the injury picked up tackling van der Merwe

By PA
England midfielder Henry Slade is in a fitness race for November (Photo by Hannah Peters/Getty Images)

Henry Slade hopes to recover from shoulder surgery in time for England’s autumn opener against New Zealand having played through the pain barrier since February. Slade sustained a labral tear to his right shoulder during the Six Nations defeat at Murrayfield but saw out the season and even soldiered through the summer tour to Japan and New Zealand.

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With the operation taking place five weeks ago, he has the chance of proving his fitness in time for the All Blacks’ visit to Twickenham on November 2 due to an accelerated rehabilitation programme.

“It’s a 14-to-16 week injury normally but I’m pushing trying to get that down to 12 weeks. I’m in week five now, so I’m hoping to get back for a game or two before the autumn,” Slade said. “I’m working doubly hard, as hard as I can. Jamie Fulton, the Exeter physio, specialises a lot in shoulders, so we’re trying to push the boundaries with what we can do as early as possible.

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“It happened against Scotland in the Six Nations. I was diving to tackle Duhan van der Merwe when he scored that try when he ran the length. I dived and landed on my shoulder and felt a bit of a rip around the bottom.

“Then there was a tackle in the second half where I felt the same thing. Since then it was playing up every week – any sort of tackle was pretty sore, so I had to get it sorted ASAP. I have been tackling with my left shoulder! Passing was fine, it was more contact, tackling and carrying.”

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England may be operating with a new defensive system when the autumn arrives following the shock resignation of Felix Jones, a key member of Steve Borthwick’s backroom staff. Slade was a cornerstone of the aggressive style of defending masterminded by Jones and he hopes it is retained even if its architect is expected to leave soon.

“I really enjoyed working with Felix. I thought he was a really good coach. It was a bit of a shock him leaving but everyone has got their reasons,” the 31-year-old centre said. “It will be interesting to see what it looks like going forward now. We don’t know who is coming in.

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“You want to be involved any time you can. Hopefully there is someone fighting my corner. I do really enjoy defending like that. It’s an incredibly aggressive way of defending, if we can keep going with that I’d be really happy.”

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J
JW 4 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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