Leaving captain Maro Itoje out of next month’s titanic meeting with world champions South Africa is the correct decision, says England senior assistant coach Richard Wigglesworth.
Itoje has been rested for the 4 July match against the Springboks as well as Tests against Fiji and Argentina on subsequent weekends in order to give him extended time away from rugby.
The 31-year-old has exceeded World Rugby’s recommended limit of 30 matches a season in the 2023-24 and 2024-25 campaigns.
He captained the British and Irish Lions in Australia last summer and will lead England into the Rugby World Cup in Australia next year.
“I’m incredibly happy that we’ve been able to do right by him,” said Wigglesworth.
“He has had a lot on, not just last year but for the last however many years of his career, so we are lucky to be in that position with the strength in depth in that position – so Maro is going to take his rest.”
Leicester’s George Martin is back in the England set-up after making his comeback from a 14-month injury lay-off in April, while Northampton lock Alex Coles’ development was one of the few positives from a disappointing Six Nations campaign.
Ollie Chessum, who shone in the final-round defeat by France, is another second-row option, but could also be deployed at blindside flanker. Bath’s Charlie Ewels and Gloucester’s Arthur Clark are also part of the Nations Championship squad.
Wigglesworth, who played alongside Itoje at Saracens and England, backed his captain to “come back better”.
“What Maro does as well as anyone is use his time really well, so I’m looking forward to catching up after he’s had a bit of rest and he’s flying,” he added.
The format of the new Nations Championship – which pits six northern hemisphere sides against six of their southern rivals over two Test windows and culminates in a November weekend of play-off matches – has handed England a testing itinerary.
After playing the Springboks in Johannesburg, they face Fiji in Liverpool and Argentina in Santiago del Estero.
However Wigglesworth shrugged off concerns about how the travel would impact preparations, adding that Northampton and Exeter players would fly to South Africa with the rest of the squad on Wednesday despite only joining up on Monday after they contested the Prem final last weekend.
“We’re all going to stick together on this,” he said. “It is an exciting challenge that we’re not going to shy away from.
“There will be some adaptions on a couple of training sessions, but we get well looked after with how we travel.
“There’s people doing far tougher things than some business-class flights, so we’ll be right.”
