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The Saracens reaction to curious England rejection of Nick Isiekwe

(Photo by Dan Mullan/The RFU Collection via Getty Images)

Saracens have confirmed that a knock wasn’t the reason why Nick Isiekwe was omitted from the squad of 25 training with England in London this week. The 23-year-old bridged his four-year gap back to his previous Test cap appearance when chosen to start in the Guinness Six Nations opener away to Scotland on February 5 and he followed that up with a second successive start in last Sunday’s win away to Italy in Rome.

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However, it emerged on Tuesday evening when England named their training week squad ahead of the round three game versus Wales on February 27 that Isiekwe had been released back to Saracens by Eddie Jones.

He was the only player who started twice in the opening two rounds of the championship not to be kept on in camp, England opting instead to bring the fit-again Joe Launchbury in as they start their planning for the Twickenham match versus the Welsh. 

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Launchbury had been at England training for two days last week before going back and playing for Wasps in their weekend win over Bath, his third club appearance since a terrible knee injury was suffered last April. 

His last cap for England came in December 2020 as he was also unavailable through injury for last year’s Six Nations, but he now appears to have got the jump on Isiekwe despite the Saracens lock’s efforts these past two weekends at Murrayfield and the Stadio Olimpico.  

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Saracens aren’t sure yet whether they will involve Isiekwe in their league match this Saturday at London Irish but head coach Joe Shaw has given his view on how the second row fared being back on the England scene and how he will react now to the setback of not getting selected for this week’s fallow week camp.  

“If you are not involved playing for your country I am sure you are going to be disappointed,” said Shaw when quizzed by RugbyPass at his weekly media briefing on Wednesday. “I don’t know what the conversion was with Eddie but Nick will come in like he does every week and his focus just turns to Saracens. 

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“He is in this environment and loves this environment loves being with his mates. He has been here for such a long time so when he gets the opportunity to represent us he puts his best foot forward and no doubt that is what he will do in the next couple of days. 

“It [playing for England] will have done him the world of good because ultimately when you are playing at what is the highest level in a competition like the Six Nations, you are not only holding your own you are pushing, you’re leading, you’re doing some things that are taking the team forward. That is going to do his confidence and his maturity the world of good. 

“Being in that England environment with the best players in England and learning from them, that is what Nick does, he learns. He is somebody who has got this appetite to get better and better. He can’t only get better from it.”

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Nathan 1039 days ago

Nick Isiekwe position is harsh. He's an excellent player and the evidence of the fact he started ahead of Charile Ewels, he clearly has higher standing.

However, the problem that stands for him is that Maro Itoje is the number 1 lock for England. Number 2 is a bit of an open question, arugably its Jonny Hill but George Kruis (soon to return) and Joe Launchbury both have claims to the shirt.

Then alongside that England have the added depth of Charlie Ewels and Courtney Lawes is also technically a lock but is more flanker these days internationally.

So if you created an order tree it would probably be as follows:

  1. Maro Itoje
  2. George Kruis (been away but adds power and depth)
  3. Jonny Hill
  4. Joe Launchbury
  5. Nick Isiekwe
  6. Charile Ewels
Nick Isiekwe problem as it remains is that from position 2 to 5 almost any of them could play. He's ability to play backrow offers a greater flexibility but that might not be enough for him to break Charile Ewels hold on the bench position for lock particularly if Joe Launchbury is to return and giving the number 5 jersey and Jonny Hill is back fit.

His big oppertunity comes with the Australia tour and the fact that he was picked to play two games thus far does not mean he will not play another round of games. By-Week camps are always smaller then match week camps so a recall is likely.

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JW 1 hour 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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