Jones hopeful of return of England quartet

England boss Eddie Jones is hopeful of an opportunity to deploy Manu Tuilagi and Courtney Lawes in the England jersey next weekend against Wales. 

Lawes has been struggling with concussion issues while Tuilagi appears to be over his hamstring injury and has been in impressive form for Sale Sharks of late. 

Another duo which is expected to be back in the mix soon is that of Joe Launchbury and Lewis Ludlam, the former coming back to full contention after a lengthy knee injury while the latter was left out of the Italian clash with a rib issue. 

Commenting on the situation, Jones said: 

“Potentially Launchbury, Tuilagi, Lawes, Ludlam, I’ll have a chat to Alex and Manu and see where they’re at and whether he’s got enough petrol in the tank to make the step up. We’ll assess it from there. Just having a power-running centre would give us a different option. 

“Everything we’re doing now is about trying to create opportunities through finesse and that’s through good running lines and passing. But to have someone who can take you forward quickly and engage two or three defenders then allows you try and finesse in extra space, which would be really useful to us. 

“We’d be hopeful that by the end of [the] week [Courtney] will be training fully. He’s making some great progress and the medical staff have done some terrific work with him. He’s not far away now and we’re really hopeful he’ll be back in full training and able to play against Wales.”