England rugby coach Eddie Jones to make SHOCK move in Six Nations preparations
ENGLAND will fly in Georgia’s “uglies” to give their scrum a monster mid-Six Nations workout this week.
With a gap in the championship schedule after squeezing past Wales 12-6 on Saturday, Eddie Jones’s side have booked a two-day visit from one of the most uncompromising packs in the game in the belief it will help take their setpiece to another level.
“We want to have the best scrum in the world and they’re the biggest, ugliest, strongest scrum pack in the world. Why wouldn’t we want to scrummage against them? It’s fantastic,” said Jones.
“We will use the fallow week to do it. We want to win the Six Nations but we’re also using this as a trial for the World Cup, so it’s a great opportunity for us to get some really quality scrum practice in. It will be practice but we will do the same number of scrums that we would have in a game.”
England want more live training sessions after doing setpiece work against the Welsh pack in Bristol in November.
Jones’s choice of Georgia – who will be put up in London at the RFU’s expense – pits England against a pack who caused Wales all manner of trouble in the autumn in Cardiff in a narrow 13-6 defeat.
The plan carries with it an injury risk mid-championship against rugged opponents with a point to prove over their continued exclusion from the Six Nations but captain Dylan Hartley does not want the Georgians to hold back.
“Every scrum has to be intense otherwise you get folded up like a travel map stuffed in your back pocket,” said Hartley.
“I think that by mixing it up and training against someone different we will find something out about ourselves and we will learn. They are good players who play Top 14 in France, good operators.
“I’m looking forward to it. It will be a really useful tool and I’m sure they will take something from it as well.”
More than 50 Georgian front row players are contracted in the top two divisions of the French league including Montpellier’s Davit Kubrishvili and Mikheil Nariashvili.
“There seems to be a tight-head prop on every street corner,” explained Georgia coach Milton Haig. “These are all strong boys with no shoulders and no necks. It is in their DNA.
“Wrestling has played a huge part in the history of this country and if you look at the scrum it’s pretty much an organised wrestle.”