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'My message to Maro' - Jamie George publicly issues advice to England teammate Itoje
By PA
Jamie George has urged Maro Itoje to continue playing on the edge as England look to rescue their Guinness Six Nations campaign.
Itoje has been Eddie Jones’ standout performer during the opening three rounds but his indiscipline has proved costly, conceding a total of 10 penalties with five of them occurring in the 40-24 defeat by Wales that ended the champions’ title defence.
Jones has stated that Itoje is firmly in the cross-hairs of referees and George insists that with some adjustments, his Saracens team-mate will continue to be a destructive force for the final two fixtures against France and Ireland.
“Maro’s one of the most confrontational players I have ever played with – it’s his game and it’s what makes him one of the best players in the world,” George said.
“Maro is the sort of bloke who is clever enough to know what a borderline penalty is and what he can and can’t do. I’ve got no doubt that he’s going to learn his lessons.
“On a different day, those borderline penalties might not have been given and Maro might have got man of the match and we’d be singing his praises. It’s a fine line.
“My message to Maro, not that he needs it, is that he should obviously learn his lessons but that can’t take away from the intensity and the way he plays the game.”
Defeats to Scotland and Wales have left England to adopt a damage limitation approach to the visit of France in a week’s time and the final-day trip to Dublin knowing that they can not retain their crown.
A dismal campaign in 2018 saw Jones preside over a fifth place finish, the nation’s worse performance since the 1980s, but with two tricky fixtures to come they could dip below even that two-win campaign.
Before crumbling in the final quarter, England had produced their best rugby of the tournament at the Principality Stadium that included eye-catching flourishes in attack and it is this realisation that will drive them on against France.
“We will be hurting from Wales and looking to put in a serious performance. We need to win the last two games, it’s pretty simple,” George said.
“It’s hugely disappointing to have lost the games that we have, but at the same time we are playing against a French side who are considered one of the best in the world at the minute.
“And then we play Ireland who are looking like they are back to their best, so they are two great opportunities for us.
“One of the goals we had when we came into this campaign was to put smiles on people’s faces and we haven’t done that. Well, I don’t think we have.
“So we’re looking to do that and keep it at the forefront of our minds. We’re still desperate to beat France and Ireland.”
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Like I've said before about your idea (actually it might have been something to do with mine, I can't remember), I like that teams will a small sustainable league focus can gain the reward of more consistent CC involvement. I'd really like the most consistent option available.
Thing is, I think rugby can do better than footballs version. I think for instance I wanted everyone in it to think they can win it, where you're talking about the worst teams not giving up because they are so far off the pace we get really bad scoreline when that and giving up to concentrate on the league is happening together.
So I really like that you could have a way to remedy that, but personally I would want my model to not need that crutch. Some of this is the same problem that football has. I really like the landscape in both the URC and Prem, but Ireland with Leinster specifically, and France, are a problem IMO. In football this has turned CL pool stages in to simply cash cow fixtures for the also ran countries teams who just want to have a Real Madrid or ManC to lose to in their pool for that bumper revenue hit. It's always been a comp that had suffered for real interest until the knockouts as well (they might have changed it in recent years?).
You've got some great principles but I'm not sure it's going to deliver on that hard hitting impact right from the start without the best teams playing in it. I think you might need to think about the most minimal requirement/way/performance, a team needs to execute to stay in the Champions Cup as I was having some thougt about that earlier and had some theory I can't remember. First they could get entry by being a losing quarter finalist in the challenge, then putting all their eggs in the Champions pool play bucket in order to never finish last in their pool, all the while showing the same indifference to their league some show to EPCR rugby now, just to remain in champions. You extrapolate that out and is there ever likely to be more change to the champions cup that the bottom four sides rotate out each year for the 4 challenge teams? Are the leagues ever likely to have the sort of 'flux' required to see some variation? Even a good one like Englands.
I'd love to have a table at hand were you can see all the outcomes, and know how likely any of your top 12 teams are going break into Champions rubyg on th back it it are?
Go to commentsYou always get idiots who go overboard. What else is new? I ignore them. Why bother?
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