Tuesday 11 November 2014 11:51, UK
England coach Stuart Lancaster expects most of his injured players to be fit and available for this weekend’s clash against South Africa, but is not anticipating making wholesale changes to his starting XV.
The biggest worry concerns Courtney Lawes, who took a knock to the head and suffered concussion in the loss to New Zealand on Saturday, but Lancaster is not too worried about his forward.
Speaking on Monday at England’s training camp in Surrey, Lancaster told Sky Sports: “I’m reasonably optimistic that Courtney will be available to face South Africa this weekend.
“The knock will curtail his training at the start of the week but that’s the process with these sorts of head injuries.
“Dylan Hartley has also got a bit of a knock and Rocco (Semesa Rokoduguni) came off injured after taking a bang.
“But I’m also optimistic he’ll be fit for training on Tuesday and the same goes for Dave Attwood who has a few bumps and bruises.
“The only other one is Kyle Eastmond who has been sick and has been in bed ‘quarantined’ for the last 24 hours.
“It’s too early to say who might miss this week’s game because we don’t pick a side until Thursday.”
Looking back on Saturday’s narrow defeat at Twickenham, Lancaster added: “We had a strong first half performance against New Zealand and that put us in a good position to win.
“We were 14-11 up and missed a few first half chances too. But the world champions came back into it.”
If we do make changes, it will only be one or two, not wholesale.
As for reasons why England were beaten at the weekend, Lancaster went on: “We had some inaccuracy in our kicking game and we’ve talked about that and we need to be better against South Africa because you can’t give them field position with their maul being so good, which it was even against Ireland who beat them.
“Their scrum is also pretty dominant. That’s the big focus area, and also taking the opportunities when they are there.
“But, if we do make changes, it will only be one or two, not wholesale.
“It’s a four-game series, with Samoa and Australia to come, and we’ll look at options both in the short term and the long term.”
Discussing Ireland’s win over South Africa on Saturday, Lancaster explained: “Ireland were smart. They looked at different ways of defending the ball, which worked well for them. Their kicking game was good and they took their opportunities.
“It was a good Irish performance and I expect that to spark a performance out of the Springboks this week. But we’ll need to respond as well.”
