England's tough training regimen will pay dividends at Rugby World Cup
5463500581EmailConfident: Forwards coach Graham Rowntree believes England will be ready Photo: ACTION IMAGES Creating a garden to relax inTeam Cuprinol redesigns a large garden in London and offers tips to revitalise decking using light colours Sponsored by CuprinolBy Mick Cleary, Rugby Union Correspondent
10:53PM BST 30 Jun 2015
Graham Rowntree, the England forwards coach, says the team will go into the Rugby World Cup aiming to take on the southern hemisphere superpowers with the high-tempo style that enabled them to score six tries against France on the final day of the Six Nations Championship.
ADVERTISINGOn the hottest day of the year, there was no let-up in preparations during the second week of conditioning work at England’s Pennyhill Park training base, with Rowntree disclosing that the players faced “horrible” sessions in a bid to get them “as fit as they have ever been”, so as to hit their target of around 40 minutes’ ball-in-play time in a match.
England train at Pennyhill Park on the hottest day of the year
“You’ve got to be challenging teams with ball in hand and making the opposition work across the field in every department, run them around,” Rowntree said. “You have got to have that tool in your armoury. The players need to be as fit as they have ever been to win a World Cup. I think it would maximise the talent we have got available. It suits our players.
“We aspire to be a high ball-in-play side. There are teams around the world [notably New Zealand] who are leading those stats at the moment, how they are running in the game and keeping the ball alive, and we want to be the team leading it. The ball is on the field for the most amount of time when we play New Zealand. And that is challenging. It’s in the upper 30s minutes. We want to get to about 40minutes. Ball in play, challenging teams, playing exciting rugby.”
Rowntree insisted that that England had not suddenly flicked a switch and decided to play this way. It did not suddenly materialise against France because England had to chase points in order to boost their points difference in the race for the title. “Look at the way we played the Six Nations, full stop, ball in hand, scoring 18 tries,” Rowntree said. “It wasn’t just against France. We want to play that brand of rugby. But you will need a few brands of rugby available to you to win a World Cup.”
Chris Robshaw, the England captain, will be hoping his side can cope in the heat of battle
England have been training with state-of-the-art gadgetry in order to maximise their effort, wearing GPS and heart-rate monitors so as to deliver the best outcome. They have another 12 days in camp (with breaks at the weekends) before they head to Denver on Saturday week for a fortnight’s stint at altitude.
“It is not mindless running,” Rowntree said. “Every session we have a GPS target we want them to hit. They all wear monitors so we know how hard they are working. So we know how hard we can push them and how hard we want to push them.”
Rowntree said the chance to get players in camp was preferable to the southern-hemisphere calendar, under which their teams have to play competitions before heading to England in September. He also said England now had a full complement of 50 players in camp with Bath wing Semesa Rokoduguni having arrived from Fiji and three injured players, full-back Alex Goode, centre Luther Burrell and fly-half Stephen Myler, all ready to begin training after injury.
“Absolutely I would [prefer] this way,” said Rowntree, delighted too that the long-term injured No?8 Ben Morgan wss well on the way to full recovery. “You get an opportunity to get hold of the players and change them.”
