WITH WILL STUART OUT LONG TERM, THIS IS WHERE ENGLAND CAN TURN
England prop Will Stuart will miss the Six Nations after suffering a season-ending Achilles rupture in Bath’s Champions Cup victory against Munster.
Johann van Graan’s face told its own story when asked about the injury the tighthead suffered early in the second half of Bath’s 40-14 win at the Rec. “We’ll take our time, but it looks like it is his Achilles,” Bath’s head of rugby said on Saturday. “I am no medical expert but you could see that he could not stand up when he got pulled off the field. It looks very serious.”
Now it appears that Van Graan’s worst fears have been realised with Stuart facing a possible nine-month lay-off, which not only rules him out of the remainder of the season for Bath but also the inaugural Nations Championship.
It is a cruel blow for Stuart, who had enjoyed an outstanding year for club and country. For a long time Stuart appeared in the enormous shadow of Dan Cole and he admitted he was struggling to seize his chance. “I’ve had opportunities over the past few years and I haven’t grasped them,” Stuart said in February.
But as England’s scrum developed into a serious weapon during the Six Nations, perceptions about Stuart began to change from understudy to leading man. He fully earned his call-up to the British and Irish Lions tour of Australia, appearing in all three Tests.
His loss is a serious blow for both Van Graan and Steve Borthwick, the England head coach. Van Graan at least has two established international tightheads to call upon in South Africa’s Thomas du Toit, who was nominated for the Premiership Player of the Season award, and Wales’s Archie Griffin plus the highly rated Billy Sela.
Borthwick’s cupboard is somewhat barer, making Joe Heyes indirectly England’s most important player. Heyes, 26, enjoyed a breakthrough summer on the tour of Argentina and the Leicester Tigers prop was trusted by Borthwick to start in three of England’s autumn international victories with Stuart being used as part of a set of Lions front-row replacements. That selection strategy now looks like a masterstroke.
Like Stuart, Heyes took a long time from his England debut in 2021 to go from good Premiership player to reliable Test performer. This is an inevitable part of the maturation process of props at the highest level and many informed judges believe that tightheads do not peak until well after their 30th birthday.
So there is a note of caution around the golden generation of tightheads led by Sale Sharks’ Asher Opoku-Fordjour, Gloucester’s Afo Fasogbon and Bath’s Sela, who are all 21 or under. There is no doubting their potential nor their physical gifts. However, they all lack the requisite miles on the clock.
Opoku-Fordjour is the most likely deputy having won six caps, including a start in England’s final match of the autumn against Argentina in which he was replaced by Stuart in the second half. However, Sale have just ruled him out for six weeks with an elbow injury.
A gnarly alternative would be Northampton Saints’ Trevor Davison, 33, but he has been used sparingly by England, winning just three caps.
Borthwick will need to formulate a plan quickly, not just for the Six Nations but for the Nations Championship, where England face double world champions South Africa. As they ruthlessly demonstrated against Ireland, the Springboks will exploit any hint of a weak link in a scrum.
Recommended
With a World Cup draw like this, England fans can dare to dream
2025-12-08T19:15:42Z