England are confident Owen Farrell will be fit to face Scotland on Saturday despite the leg problem which has restricted his ability to train fully over the past 10 days.
Farrell has not participated in the squad’s more physical sessions since the hard-fought win over Wales but is expected to prove his fitness on Thursday before the team fly north.
The England management are insisting all will be fine even though the Lions midfielder once again played a reduced part in Tuesday’s training watched by the visiting football coaches Stuart Pearce, Hope Powell and Mark Warburton. “Owen is good,” said Neal Hatley, England’s scrum coach. “He’s been doing an extra bit of reconditioning but he’s good to go.
“He’ll train with us on Thursday and has been involved with the group outdoors this week. It’s about doing what we need to do to get the individual specifically right for the weekend. If that means we tailor what we do in the training then we do it to make sure we hit the ground running. We have a clean bill of health so everyone is available for selection.”
The West Ham manager David Moyes had been due to watch Tuesday’s session but the Scot ultimately could not attend. Eddie Jones will instead visit West Ham at a later date to continue his search for potentially valuable training tips from other sports.
England’s matchday squad is set to include Nathan Hughes and Joe Marler for the first time in the tournament, both of whom will be expected to challenge Scotland physically.
“In that last 25 minutes against France, Scotland were anything but flaky or fragile,” said Hatley. “Physicality will be important for us. We’ll look to make sure we do well in the collisions and go from there.”
England have also named two extra forwards, Wasps’ James Haskell and Bath’s Charlie Ewels, in a 25-man travelling squad, with the starting XV to be confirmed on Thursday.
They will not, however, request that Welsh referee Nigel Owens keeps a specific eye out for Scottish prop Simon Berghan scrummaging on his knees. “If he’s got a tendency to drop you’ve got to force him on to his knees to make it clear for the ref,” said Hatley. “If he picks it up he picks it up.”