Why England need to be the fittest team in France

EVERY coach is going to say there is room for improvement and, just as Steve Borthwick has done recently with England, one of the areas they are most likely to target is fitness. 

- JEREMY GUSCOTT

It is not unusual as a strategy, because fitness is really an honour badge for players, and it helps to bring a squad together when everyone reaches for a common goal.

It is fair to say that at international level you expect players to have very high standards of fitness, but that does not mean that they will all be very fit in exactly the same way. If you take a massive man like Uini Atonio, you would not expect the 6ft 5ins, 23 stone (149kg) French tighthead to have the same level of aerobic fitness, flexibility and speed as scrum-half Antoine Dupont.

It’s why a huge unit like Atonio, who will want to make Exeter feel his full physical force when he plays for La Rochelle in their European Cup semi-final in Bordeaux today, is usually only able to play at full bore for 50 minutes. Yet, you almost always see Maro Itoje, who is a more athletic big forward, do the full 80 minutes.

Another example is how different two international centres can be, like when France’s Jonathan Danty lines up against England’s Henry Slade. Where Danty does not look as if he has the aerobic fitness of Slade, nor does Slade have the power of the Frenchman.

It’s automatic to say that the best teams in the world are the fittest. However, if you look at France and South Africa, these are big power guys more than the most aerobically fit teams in the world – but they play to their strengths very effectively.