Steve Borthwick has turned up the heat on England’s World Cup hopefuls, putting them through their paces in extreme temperatures in Verona in an effort to prepare them for the “make-or-break” moments at the tournament later this year.
England are spending the week at a state-of-the-art training facility in northern Italy, with Borthwick changing Eddie Jones’s plans and opting against returning to Treviso. On Tuesday the thermometer hit 40C and, to the amazement of locals, Borthwick has arranged gruelling sessions for late afternoon during a heatwave which – because of an anticyclone ominously named Cerberus – could see Italy record the highest ever temperatures in Europe this week. After a morning of ball skills and strengths, players took to the field for a series of exhausting drills for a 50-minute session with Borthwick having to introduce additional water breaks because of the heat.
Borthwick has added strength and conditioning guru Aled Walters, who masterminded South Africa’s World Cup triumph in 2019 before joining Leicester, to his staff and has retained the services of Tom Tombleson, who oversaw England’s fitness regime four years ago. And whereas rivals Wales have targeted altitude training as a key part of their preparations, Walters and Borthwick believe heat training will reap rewards at the forthcoming tournament in France.
“There are physiological benefits to training in a more temperate climate,” Borthwick said. “I think that will be beneficial for us. It also affects the way you think.
“When you train in the heat, and I’ve seen it and experienced it as a player, [it tests] how you think clearly under a different type of pressure. And challenging the players to think in the situations we give them, when they’re under the physical and emotional strain of training in the heat, that’s also a factor. We had one camp outside of England, we had to decide whether we had heat or altitude and we chose heat.
“You’ve got to be physically equipped for the toughest situations in a game. There are extreme moments within a game and Test matches are so tight. So if you are not conditioned for those extreme moments, those are the ones which can make or break you.
“If you are conditioned better than the opposition for those extreme moments, you get the crucial score in a game. If not, you might concede the crucial score; or you make a poor decision or a great decision, depending on how you are conditioned. We need to be conditioned so we are equipped to play how we want to play in the toughest circumstances in a Test match.”
Borthwick has taken his full 41-man squad to Verona with Ollie Lawrence also joining as he nears the end of his rehab. Billy and Mako Vunipola, Ollie Chessum and Jack Walker have stayed behind to continue their recovery from injury with Borthwick seeking to blend tactical preparation with the gruelling fitness regime before England return home on Saturday and resume training at their Bagshot base next week.
“I’ve said to the players we’re here to develop physically, we’re here to develop the way we think and we’re here to develop tactically,” Borthwick said. “We’ve given them what the tactics are going to be for the week. What areas tactically we’ll be looking to develop. So we’re giving the players clear direction of the purpose of why we’re getting them to do what they do. So it’s specific and directed.”
