England Six Nations 2016: George Kruis the lock and key to red rose hopes

The Saracens man is a crucial figure in England’s new era. He tells Chris Hewett of his eagerness to revive the strong tradition of Borthwick, Beaumont, Dooley and Johnson

George Kruis training at Twickenham this week (Getty Images)

England might be a safer bet for a first Grand Slam in 13 long years – more embarrassingly still for the world’s best-resourced rugby nation, it would be only their second of the professional era – if they had already seen off the strongest teams in the Six Nations, rather than the weakest. All the same, there is a trend of some significance gathering momentum inside the red-rose camp as preparations intensify for next weekend’s meeting with Ireland at Twickenham... and it goes by the name of George Kruis.

Judged across the opening two rounds of the tournament, the Saracens lock must, by any fair measure, be ranked among the half-dozen most eye-catching performers on show. If England’s line-out was a long way short of perfect in Rome last Sunday – they lost four of their own throws and finished the game with a miserable return of 69 per cent – Kruis more than made up for it with another double-digit tackle count, thereby indicating that his rampant workaholism against the Scots in Edinburgh eight days previously is a long-term condition rather than a mere side-effect of acute Calcutta Cup-itis.

He was just about the last name on the team sheet during last autumn’s World Cup pratfall: Geoff Parling, Courtney Lawes and a semi-fit Joe Launchbury were all picked ahead of him, not only for the matches that mattered, but also for the one that didn’t (against Uruguay in Manchester – a game so profoundly pointless even the South Americans have forgotten it). Four months on, he is among the first.

Is he fazed by this sudden change of circumstance? Not a bit of it. There may have been a moment during the England squad’s midweek visit to central London – a trip presumably designed to give the players some much-needed respite from the electrifying 24/7 frenzy of life in... er... Bagshot – when the 25-year-old lock from neighbouring Guildford lost the colour in his cheeks and seemed shaken rather than stirred, but this had less to do with the shock of finding himself spoken of as a “senior” player so early in his international career than with talk of his club’s 64-point collapse against Wasps on home soil.

“I still can’t believe that scoreline,” he said, his face a picture of befuddlement. “Honestly... I simply can’t believe it. I’d taped the game, thinking I’d enjoy it when I got home from Italy. When I heard what had happened, I couldn’t bring myself to watch it. I’ve deleted the whole thing. I don’t want to know about it.”

Needless to say, he was far keener to discuss events in the Six Nations to date. “I feel as though I’m getting to grips with what international rugby is about,” he said. “I’m certainly enjoying it, which is a good sign. When you win your first caps, you’re scared; you’re so desperate to do well, it’s hard to relax inside the jersey. Now I think I’m developing an understanding of the demands of playing for my country.

“But the white shirt is never yours, so people are emptying themselves in every training session. The depth we have in the second row means you can’t take things for granted and in addition there’s a lot of emphasis on players being strong enough in their decision-making to be ready for any scenario and take control. So it’s a high-pressure environment. Eddie Jones [the head coach] is putting a lot on us because he wants us to be prepared for anything.”

That being the case, how did Jones react to the line-out malfunctions against an Italian side without a top-of-the-range lock to call their own? Not to mention the forwards coach Steve Borthwick, to whom the loss of a line-out is tantamount to high treason?

Kruis, who understudied Borthwick during his early days at Saracens, readily confirmed that the former England captain continues to take these things personally – “It pains him as much as it pains us players,” he said – but also argued that, as the pack is a work in progress, there would be improvements between now and the end of the championship in mid-March.

“You can have bad moments at the set-piece,” he said. “It happens. The important thing is that we’re a hard-working bunch, a group of players who know where we want to be. We want to get back to the old days of English forward play. We want to be a brutal England pack.”

This will have been music to the ears of the head coach, who uses the B-word a good deal when discussing matters of the up-front variety. Jones bangs on about this England side being a “team without a history” because he wants to avoid all talk of, and break all links with, the England of Stuart Lancaster, his immediate predecessor. However, he can talk in the past tense when it suits him, hence his constant references to the great red-rose packs of yesteryear. And what did those packs have in common? Engine-room productivity over and above anything generated by their opponents.

England have won six Grand Slams since international rugby resumed after the Second World War and on each occasion their second-row partnerships were by far the most potent in the championship.

In 1957, the Oxbridge duo of John Currie and David Marques were a serious unit; in 1980, the Bill Beaumont-Maurice Colclough combination, with Nigel Horton as back-up, set the standard throughout European rugby. The list goes on: Paul Ackford and Wade Dooley in 1991; Dooley and Martin Bayfield the following season; Bayfield and Martin Johnson in 1995; Johnson and Ben Kay, with Danny Grewcock and Simon Shaw challenging them every step of the way, in the World Cup-winning year of 2003.

In short, England have a second-row tradition every bit as rich as the All Blacks do in open-side flankers, the Wallabies and the Welsh in half-backs and wings, the French in centres and the South Africans in scrum-breaking props.Jones believes – and has every reason to believe – that if that heritage can be rekindled and updated between now and the next World Cup in Japan three and a half years hence, a global title might be a realistic target, as opposed to the “la la land” dream of 2015.

But his locks, including Kruis, have a fair distance to travel before this comes to pass. Jones is not short of contenders: Launchbury and Lawes remain in the mix; the brilliant Saracens prospect Maro Itoje now knows what it is to operate at Test level, albeit against a flagging Italian side impaled on the pointy end of a very sharp stick; Ed Slater, the vigorous and voraciously competitive Leicester captain, will demand a place in the coach’s thinking the moment he proves he can stay fit; the West Country tractor from Wallaby land, Mitch Lees, may do likewise if his performances for Exeter are as good post-injury as they were pre-injury. And then there are Dave Attwood of Bath and Matt Symons of London Irish.

But at this early stage of proceedings it is hard to think of an English partnership to match the Welsh combination of Luke Charteris and the magnificent Alun Wyn Jones. For one thing, Jones has yet to settle on his preferences; for another, the lamentably limp rugby played by the red-rose tight unit during the World Cup means it is not taken as seriously as it once was. Kruis recognises there is some catching-up to be done.

“I think the majority of the squad have put the World Cup to bed now and see this as a new era,” he said. “It may be in the back of our minds somewhere, but you can’t keep hanging onto the past. I actually think it would have been the same if we’d won the thing: if you’re constantly looking back, it does nothing to help you address your next game. Yes, we have a point to prove, but we’re a confident group, taking steps in the right direction.”