Eddie Jones has stepped up his efforts to help his squad acclimatise to playing next year’s World Cup in Japan by arranging a sushi night as part of a week designed to prepare England for their first two fixtures of the 2019 tournament.
While New Zealand have played two Test matches in Japan this autumn and a number of England’s other rivals including Australia, Ireland and Scotland have visited next year’s host nation since the last World Cup, Jones has failed in his previous attempts to take his squad to the country.
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It is understood the Rugby Football Union explored the possibility of taking one of next year’s World Cup warm-up matches to Japan while Jones also wanted to hold a training camp there but could not find a suitable window around domestic fixtures. It is also believed England attempted to move one of last summer’s Tests in South Africa to Japan but none of the three host cities were willing to agree.
Jones however, has regularly explained the need to minimise the “cultural stress” of taking part in next year’s World Cup in unfamiliar surroundings and explained at the start of the season how he wanted his players to take Japanese lessons. And on Tuesday night he sprang a surprise by bringing sushi chefs to their Bagshot training base.
Kyle Sinckler revealed the players were unaware until they all found chopsticks on their chairs at a team meeting to begin preparations for facing Japan at Twickenham on Saturday. He said: “There were loads of plates of sushi and all the fat boys were looking at each other and saying: ‘Is this play on?’ Eddie’s quite good with that stuff, giving us a flavour of Japan, what to expect when we’re out there. He even joked every player had to eat with chopsticks throughout the week otherwise you are in trouble. You have to buy into their culture. And I was: ‘Oh God, looks like room service for me, then!’”
Jones has also arranged a shorter training week – the players were released last Sunday and reconvened on Tuesday afternoon – in an effort to mirror the quick turnaround between next year’s World Cup opener against Tonga and their second pool match against the USA four days later. “It’s something we’ve got to get used to,” said Danny Care.
After last weekend’s one-point defeat by New Zealand, Jones urged England to take their frustrations out on Japan by “physically smashing them” and the hard-hitting Sinckler revealed the rallying cry was “music to my ears”.
“I can’t wait,” he added. “One of the things I love about rugby is that you can always let some frustration out in a tackle. [The New Zealand] centre Jack Goodhue felt that at the weekend, which is nice, I heard his ribs crack a little bit. But we’ve only played two games we’ve got another two to go so we’ve got to back it up.”
Jones has maintained he will name his strongest available team on Thursday to face Japan but some changes are expected with Charlie Ewels and Courtney Lawes competing to replace the injured George Kruis in the second row. A number of replacements are pushing for starts but Manu Tuilagi will not be involved. The defence coach John Mitchell is instead hopeful the centre will feature in England’s final autumn international against Australia. He said: “It’s an adductor injury that needs to be trained at high intensity. He hasn’t reached high intensity yet, so he progressing towards that.”