England will learn on Monday whether Maro Itoje will be available for any of their four autumn internationals at Twickenham. The Saracens second-row sustained a hand injury playing against Scarlets on Saturday evening and has had an x-ray.
Itoje sustained the injury making a tackle and was taken off immediately after the club’s medical team examined the right hand of the forward, who turns 22 on Friday. Saracens said on Sunday there would be no update on Itoje’s condition until Monday.
Itoje has started England’s past six internationals and established a second-row partnership with his club-mate George Kruis. But he was being considered by the national head coach, Eddie Jones, as a replacement in the autumn for the injured openside flanker James Haskell.
That was before Kruis required ankle surgery that will rule him out of the matches against South Africa, Fiji, Argentina and, possibly, Australia.
Jones has second-row back-up in Joe Launchbury and Courtney Lawes but his resources are more thinly spread in the back row with Jack Clifford, Mike Williams and Sam Jones unavailable for the series.
The loss of Itoje would be considerable, despite his youth and relative inexperience. Saracens at first seemed to fear the worst, saying the player would need to see a specialist as well as have an x-ray, before taking a more neutral stance.
Itoje is in England’s elite squad and, under the agreement between Twickenham and Premiership Rugby, club and country act in concert on medical issues. Jones is gathering his players after the round of Premiership matches next weekend for a warm-weather training camp in Portugal, anxious not to hear of any more injuries. The backs Anthony Watson and Jack Nowell are ruled out of the autumn series and the centre Manu Tuilagi is yet to play since the opening night of the season. South Africa’s squad for their tour of Europe includes the Leicester wing JP Pietersen, but the Bath flanker Francois Louw and the Worcester scrum-half Francois Hougaard were not considered because of injuries.
