England camp 'massively disruptive' to derby preparations

Northampton Director of Rugby Phil Dowson has spoken about how his team’s preparations for this Saturday’s 254th East Midlands derby against Leicester have been impinged by England’s Autumn Nations Series training camp.

The Gallagher Premiership champions had seven players away for the first three days of this week, the most of any club, and would have had one more absent had Alex Coles not been injured.

Saints’ England contingent amongst Steve Borthwick’s 36-strong ensemble included forwards Trevor Davison and Tom Pearson and backs Fraser Dingwall, Tommy Freeman, George Furbank, Ollie Sleightholme and Fin Smith.

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Dowson admits the timing and length of the camp was not ideal ahead of such a big weekend of fixtures.

“It has a massive disruption. It makes it very difficult to prepare for a derby week. The fact is that we have this big derby weekend and all the players from all the clubs, not just us, have been away for three days, not two days. That has been difficult and to be honest it is the first time it has happened, the first time we have had three-day camps as opposed to two-day camps.

“So it will be interesting to see how we adapt to that and get what we want on Saturday. It has been disruptive, it has been tricky. But a lot of the guys we have had missing are really experienced and have a critical mass of experience under their belts so we are hoping that they can slot back in, and we are confident they can slot back in and get the job done.”

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Premiership Rugby have been playing the derby weekend up all week, with Gloucester’s West Country arm-wrestle with Bath, which precedes the East Midlands showdown, one of the other mouth-watering match-ups. However, the marquee players who could have helped drum up interest have been at Pennyhill Park.

Dowson believes it is unfortunate and hopes such “teething problems” will be ironed out once the new Professional Rugby Partnership agreement has had time to bed in.

“I think this camp was probably organised prior to when the fixture list came out and this was going to be a derby weekend. The fact that the two clash isn’t ideal. Even for the nuts and bolts of it, all the lads are away today. On media day, if you wanted to speak to Fin (Smith) you’d have to go down to Pennyhill Park. It is a little bit bizarre,” he said.

“But I think also the new relationship is positive and wants to do the right thing for rugby and it wants to be much more aligned. There are going to be teething issues, I do think this is probably one of them. The clubs that lose a lot of players are massively disrupted for what they are trying to build up in the press for the PRL as the big derby weekend.”