Several England players are approaching the season’s limit of game time agreed with the RFU and the Rugby Players’ Association, leaving Gallagher Premiership coaches facing a tricky task to juggle their resources in the run-in to the end of the domestic season.
For player welfare, England players are limited to the equivalent of playing in 30 full matches per season — an aggregate of 2,400 minutes — or 35 match involvements in total. With five rounds of Premiership matches left, plus the potential for two play-off matches, along with the knockout stage of European competition, and a three-match summer tour to Japan and New Zealand, Maro Itoje, Ollie Chessum, Tommy Freeman and Henry Slade have fewer than ten full matches remaining within their 2,400-minute limit.
“The RFU will continue to work closely with Premiership Rugby, directors of rugby and players to ensure game limits are appropriately managed,” an RFU spokesperson said.
Under the new Professional Game Agreement between the clubs and the RFU next year, the limit for match involvements per player will drop to 30, from 35, so the task coaches face in managing their stars will become trickier. In 2022, The Times revealed that Freddie Steward, the full back, broke the agreed minutes limit when he played in the third Test of the Australia series that July. The RFU had to apply for special dispensation so he could play.
In the Premiership, a fiercely contested run-in is expected, with eight teams still in contention for the four play-off positions, and coaches must work out which games they can afford to approach without their star players.
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The ten England players who featured most heavily in the Six Nations are due a weekend’s rest in the five-week period after their return to their clubs: Itoje missed Saracens’ victory over Harlequins last week, while Northampton Saints rested Freeman and Alex Mitchell against Bristol Bears and Slade sat out Exeter Chiefs’ victory over Newcastle Falcons. But the remaining six — Ben Earl, Elliot Daly, Jamie George, George Ford, Chessum and Sam Underhill — must all stand down for one week in the next four.
Itoje returned to his club with a minor knee complaint and may also miss the game away to Northampton on Friday evening, but Mark McCall, Saracens’ director of rugby, does not have any concerns about Itoje’s workload. “It should be fine,” McCall said. “He didn’t play last weekend, he may not play this weekend, but Maro will be fine. We’re very clear on the plan for those players.”
As with Itoje, Chessum started all five matches for England in the Six Nations, and Dan McKellar, the Leicester Tigers head coach, is aware of the toll that seven weeks away on international duty will have taken on the players’ bodies.
“We’re always mindful of players’ workloads, particularly the guys that have been in the Six Nations; playing Test rugby is brutal,” McKellar said. “When you’ve played the French and the Irish in back-to-back weeks, naturally you’re going to have sore bodies off the back of it. We’ll do what’s right for them at the right time.”
After this weekend’s Premiership matches, the round of 16 in two European competitions will be played, followed by the quarter-finals the next weekend. In the Investec Champions Cup, some tough ties await English clubs, with Saracens travelling to face Bordeaux-Bègles, Leicester away to Leinster, and Northampton at home to Munster.
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Those clubs in the Challenge Cup may be more likely to view the second-tier tournament as an opportunity to rest England players. Sale Sharks, for example, face Exeter in the Premiership this Sunday, then Ospreys in the Challenge Cup six days later, and the European match may prove a more suitable opportunity to give Ford his week’s rest as Alex Sanderson, the director of rugby, manages the return to club action of his international contingent.
“It’s the toughest challenge, aside from the injury curveballs, around maintaining squad cohesion,” Sanderson said. “When these players come back, the club needs to get the performances in a Sale shirt from them. It’s making other people understand that and also planning and not resting four or five at the same time.”
With Steve Borthwick, the England head coach, desperately keen to ensure greater alignment between club and country, including the introduction of hybrid contracts for the leading 25 England players, Sanderson believes that relations affecting the management of player welfare are heading firmly in the right direction.
“I believe [Premier Rugby] and the RFU, who have been at loggerheads for years around player game time, are closer than they’ve ever been to the fact that at some point they’re going to unify and become their own entity that will be ‘One Rugby’, I think it’s called,” Sanderson said. “In doing so the RFU, the players, the coaches’ wants, desires and wishes should be more aligned. I know it’s a constant debate, but I think the players are well managed.”
