History tells us that Wilkinson could play every game between 2 April and the end of May and
Posted in General on 24. Sep, 2010
History tells us that Wilkinson could play every game between 2 April and the end of May and still represent a gamble.”I would really love to be playing for England in the Six Nations, but I have to be happy with just getting back on to the pitch,” the absent hero said yesterday. (The fact that Martin Corry, the England No 8, played against France after six weeks of inactivity is irrelevant. Wilkinson is not a big ugly forward, and anyway, his injuries to neck and knee were, and are, far more complex).Therefore, the Lions coach will have to back his instincts. Sadly, he still has no clear idea of when he will be permitted to do so.And this is Woodward’s problem. Wilkinson will not play in either of England’s remaining Six Nations games, against Italy and Scotland, because Andrew will not let him.”It would be irresponsible to throw Jonny into Test rugby before he has played at club level,” the former England stand-off said this week. Newcastle understand this better than anyone, which is why they never rule him out of action for long, whatever his physical state.
The merest suggestion of his turning out at Quins will increase turnstile interest by anything up to 20 per cent.Before the Six Nations Championship, he contradicted himself in the space of a few minutes. Having identified England’s match with Ireland in Dublin as a possible target – one that he missed by some distance, given that the game happened without him last weekend – he then touched on the Lions by saying: “If I have to set my targets for four years’ time, rather than for this summer, that’s what I’ll do.”Having missed so much rugby – he has played no more than a dozen games in 15 months – he is itching to pull on a pair of boots in anger. Everyone wants a glimpse of him, if not a piece of him, and he has become 24-carat box-office as a result. He is not to blame – after all, he is hardly the sort to spin a yarn for the sake of it.The chaos surrounding the timetabling of his return is the inevitable consequence of the spectacular growth in rugby interest following that World Cup-winning drop goal of his. His director of rugby, Rob Andrew, believes the home game with Bath on 27 March is a more realistic target. If he fails to make that, he can kiss Stade Fran?s – and, quite possibly, the Lions – a long and heartbreaking goodbye.Wilkinson has gone from being on-message with England to being mixed-message with the world.
Even though the celebrated outside-half will not have tasted a single second of Test rugby since that game of games in Sydney in November 2003, he will be included, virtually sight unseen, on the flight list for Auckland.But there is no guarantee he will do any such thing. His recovery from the ligament injury he suffered in Newcastle’s game with Perpignan on the Spanish border in January is more or less complete – he has been running for a fortnight now, and he re-embarked on his ultra-obsessive goal-kicking routines last week – but he has yet to engage in serious contact work in training.Wilkinson thinks he may be fit for Newcastle’s next Premiership match, at Harlequins on Sunday week. Was he telling it straight, or merely dreaming on in the City of Dreams? He probably did not know himself. But one person who needs to know precisely what is happening in the never-ending saga of Jonny-boy’s knee is his international coach No, not Andy Robinson We are talking Sir Clive Woodward here. We are talking Sir Clive Woodward here.
Woodward is scheduled to announce his 40-odd man squad for this summer’s British and Irish Lions tour of New Zealand on 11 April, nine days after Newcastle take on the French champions in what is likely to be their most demanding fixture of the season by a very long way.Should Wilkinson play a full game against Stade and emerge in one piece, the good knight will enjoy a good night, happy in the knowledge that his single most valuable asset is operating somewhere near the level that will enable him to survive trial by All Black. Jonny Wilkinson – remember him? – pitched up in Paris yesterday to report that his chances of leading Newcastle into their Heineken Cup quarter-final with Stade Fran?s at the Parc des Princes in a little over four weeks’ time were looking brighter by the day.
The 23-year-old centre will stay with the regional side until the end of the 2008-09 season, ending interest from English clubs.. But I have watched the footage again and I would have been the first one to put up my hand and admit I had made a mistake if it was so. If there is evidence, then perhaps they should give me evidence of my mistakes and I will gladly admit them.”Twickenham has taken a strong line recently when dealing with coaches who are critical of match officials – last month Northampton’s Budge Pountney was fined £2,000 and given a six-week touchline ban, with two of those weeks suspended. And on the second occasion [when Josh Lewsey claimed to have grounded the ball], where there was doubt if a try was scored, I was in a perfect position to adjudicate.”I didn’t need to use the television referee from where I was and even if I had reason to, the scrum maul was repelled back into the field of play and the ball became unplayable, so technically I was spot on.” Kaplan awarded a five-metre scrum to Ireland instead of the try or an attacking scrum to England.”Even if they ask why I didn’t refer it, Hugh Watkins [the video referee] has said that with the referral he wouldn’t have given it” he continued.”As I understand it, Andy is a reasonable coach and it is out of character for him to do something like this I wish him well for the rest of his Six Nations campaign.
Nathan Wood, Paul Noone and Mark Hilton joined the burgeoning casualty list after Sunday’s 32-10 defeat at Hull. Simon Grix would have made his debut, but for fracturing a fibula and ankle against Leeds’ Under-21s.Andrew Dunemann is to leave Leeds at the season’s end, to be with his ill father in Australia.A rib injury has deprived Huddersfield of their captain, Ben Roarty, for up to six weeks.. England’s head coach Andy Robinson faces a lengthy touchline ban and a hefty fine following his angry outburst over the referee Jonathan Kaplan’s handling of last Sunday’s Six Nations defeat to Ireland. His post-match comments were fairly strong, but yesterday Robinson went a lot further when he was quoted as saying: “I think only one side was refereed.”The International Rugby Board is said to be seething over the issue. Last night a spokesman said: “There is a code of conduct in place. The national unions are fully aware of that.” The IRB insisted that responsibility for punitive action rests with the national union, in this case the Rugby Football Union, and the spokesman added: “We take all breaches of the code of conduct very seriously and we expect the national union to look at that and take action.”Recently the Scotland coach Matt Williams was highly critical of a match official, but he issued a fulsome apology through the Scottish Rugby Union and the matter was dropped.