Killing Them Softly

Richard Bath Is an Award-winning Writer Based in the UK.

WHEN ENGLAND WHITEWASHED Australia 3-0 in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney in June 2016, Eddie Jones should have been a happy man. But he wasn’t.

“These boys shouldn’t be playing rugby, they should be on the beach,” he said of his knackered England troops.

Jones was right then, and with every passing week the England and France players have become incrementally more knackered as they have been relentlessly flogged by their clubs.

Alpha male owners don’t spend up to a million euros a season on a player so he can sit on the sidelines or play international rugby, so every week the players have been forced into action.

In fact, these are the same club owners who announced last year that the domestic season would be extended to 10 months from 2019-20, only to back down in the face of the real threat of strike action from their players.

The result of flogging players became clear in this Six Nations. England and France, by far the most populous and richest nations in world rugby, finished fifth and fourth respectively in the tournament. In England’s case, where they won games by small margins in last year’s tournament, this year they lost them by equally small margins. The two contenders in the Six Nations [ie: not Italy] who don’t have some form of central contracts to ensure their players are not overplayed, basically came last.

The problem isn’t just the calendar. There are as many club games in the Pro14, in which clubs from Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Italy play, as there are in the Aviva Premiership.

And England don’t play any more test matches than their Celtic cousins; in fact, Wales now play more thanks to their extra autumn test.