Twist in Tuilagi comeback saga
England centre Manu Tuilagi may not make the start of the Six Nations Championship after his club, Leicester, confirmed he is not expected back until the middle of January.
Richard Cockerill, the Leicester director of rugby, predicted Tuilagi would return from the groin injury that ruled him out of England’s November Internationals by the end of December, but his comeback has now been delayed by a couple of weeks. With England poised to name their revised Elite Player Squad (EPS) after the next round of European matches, in which Leicester play Scarlets on January 16, it would leave Tuilagi with precious little time to prove his form and fitness before the opening game against Wales at the Millennium Stadium on February 6.
A fit and firing Tuilagi would be a certain selection given the store that Stuart Lancaster, the England head coach, puts in his gain line-breaking abilities, yet the 23-year-old has been bedeviled by injury in the past 18 months. He missed most of last season with a pectoral injury and aggravated a previous problem, when he suffered a significant strain to his adductor muscle in Leicester's Champions Cup victory against Ulster in October.
"Hopefully he'll be back playing at Christmas time and be back into the England squad for the Six Nations," Cockerill said at the beginning of December.
Following the Scarlets fixture, Leicester conclude their Pool 3 campaign away to Ulster on February 24. EPS players would then be called into camp to prepare for the Wales game, but Tuilagi could be released for a fixture against Northampton on January 31, to sharpen his fitness levels.
Clearly, Lancaster is desperate for his return and is likely to him name in the EPS, come what may. After the 26-17 victory against Australia that brought England's underwhelming November Series to a conclusion, Lancaster was asked what one extra thing he would add to his side.
"Manu. He is a world-class player. There are others as well obviously – if you are to win the big games then you need your world-class players and he is in that category," he said.
However, Lancaster had his fingers badly burnt in a similar scenario, when he entrusted the flyhalf duties to Owen Farrell, who only had 84 minutes of game time since September leading into the series. Farrell duly played like a flyhalf who had 84 minutes of game time since September in the defeats to New Zealand and South Africa, before being moved and then dropped to accommodate George Ford.
It would be quite a gamble to repeat that experiment with Tuilagi against Wales in the teams' last encounter before they meet in the pool stage of the 2015 World Cup. Either way, Tuilagi's setback further muddies the midfield waters that are already opaque.
Whereas Wales' centre pairing for 2015, barring injury or a catastrophic loss of form, will be Jamie Roberts and Jonathan Davies. It would take a brave man to say with any certainty what England's midfield combination will be for the Six Nations opener, let alone the one that will take them through to the World Cup. Probably the only safe assumption is that it will not be the Billy Twelvetrees-Brad Barritt axis that finished the November Series against the Wallabies, the ninth different centre combination of Lancaster's three-year tenure.
With eight games until the World Cup, the time for experimenting would seem to be over and yet Lancaster has seldom had the opportunity to select his preferred combinations. Tuilagi has yet to start a game, in the centres, with either Twelvetrees (another Lancaster favourite for his kicking game) or Luther Burrell, who was sensational in Northampton's recent victory against Leicester after missing the International series with a hand injury.
Kyle Eastmond, who dovetailed seamlessly with Tuilagi for the first Test of England's tour to New Zealand, was dropped for the latter half of the November series, despite doing little wrong.
Then there is Henry Slade, the uncapped Exeter Chief, who is fast moving up the rails. Previously a flyhalf, Slade has been excelling in the Exeter midfield. He would provide the second playmaking and kicking option that Lancaster craves in his backline, but it would still require a considerable leap of faith for Lancaster to blood Slade at the Millennium Stadium, the fate of what happened nine years ago to Mathew Tait in Cardiff may put pay to that notion.
An even wilder card for Lancaster to play would be fast-tracking Sam Burgess into the squad. The league convert started against Exeter at blindside flank, opposite Tom Johnson, who was making his comeback after neck surgery. From reserve to international rugby in little over a month, would push the boundaries of credibility for even Slammin' Sam.
Source: The Telegraph
