{"id":561729,"date":"2026-03-24T19:22:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T19:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/561729\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T19:22:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T19:22:14","slug":"world-cup-winning-captain-johnson-urges-england-to-think-about-summer-break-for-players-martin-johnson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/561729\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup-winning captain Johnson urges England to think about summer break for players | Martin Johnson"},"content":{"rendered":"

England\u2019s legendary World Cup-winning captain Martin Johnson<\/a> says the current management should consider resting key players this summer to boost the chances of history being repeated in Australia next year. Johnson was among several senior squad members who did not tour Argentina in the buildup to their 2003 global triumph and suggests a similar policy could assist England\u2019s 2027 campaign.<\/p>\n

In 2002 England beat the Pumas 26\u201118 in Buenos Aires with only eight of their subsequent World\u00a0Cup-winning squad involved. Johnson is fully aware that post-game recovery and conditioning techniques have moved on significantly but believes the current captain, Maro Itoje, and others require careful handling if they are to prosper in 2027.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it\u2019s the right thing for a guy who\u2019s just had a big Lions tour to have a summer off and not go on the trip, that\u2019s just managing your player with the World Cup in mind,\u201d said Johnson, who also led a British & Irish Lions squad to Australia in 2001. \u201cWho comes into that category is up to the coaches to decide but, yeah, that could be a possibility depending on where people are. Guys are always carrying something injury-wise, particularly later in your career.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rugby season\u2019s just non\u2011stop. You don\u2019t get a two\u2011month block of training which would put a lot of people in a good place. If they can manage some guys to get that it would work for them, I\u2019m sure. We had a summer off in 2002, the year before the World Cup, although that [Argentina] game was\u00a0played so late the rest of us were already back in pre\u2011season training for the next year.<\/p>\n

Maro Itoje is among the players who may need a rest this summer. Photograph: Adam Davy\/PA<\/p>\n

\u201cWith experienced players who have been around and have the appetite to go to another tournament then maybe you can manage them. I don\u2019t like saying \u2018a good summer off\u2019 because what you want as a player is a good off season in which to train. It\u2019s the only time you can really make physical fitness gains and improvements.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson, in training for the Race to the Slater Cup<\/a> on Saturday in aid of Ed Slater, Lewis Moody and motor neurone disease research, was also England\u2019s head coach at the 2011 World Cup in New\u00a0Zealand and knows from personal experience that balancing future tournament planning with, in this case, the shorter-term imperatives of July Tests against South Africa, Fiji and Argentina is not easy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love it when people talk about planning \u2013 \u2018we\u2019re aiming to peak for the final\u2019 isn\u2019t much good if you get knocked out beforehand. You can plan all you like but then you get three phone calls one weekend telling you that three of your best players are injured. Where are your plans now?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all know how it works. Some guys who we think are going to be key won\u2019t be there because they\u2019ll be injured or lose form. And some guys who we\u2019ve never really heard of will have great World Cups and become stars.\u201d<\/p>\n

In common with many others Johnson is unsure what conclusions to draw from England\u2019s Six Nations campaign<\/a> which delivered four defeats and a fifth-placed finish. \u201cWe know they can play well but they just didn\u2019t for three games. They\u2019ve got to work out what that\u2019s about and sort it out.\u201d The final fixture in Paris<\/a>, however, fuelled his sense Les Bleus are a rising threat. \u201cThat last game \u2026 wow. I\u2019ve not seen a game played at that pace, ever.<\/p>\n

Australian prime minister John Howard presents Martin Johnson witth the Webb Ellis Cup in Sydney. Photograph: Odd Andersen\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cYou watch the way the French play and I think they\u2019re changing the game a little bit. If you didn\u2019t get them under pressure their transition game just ripped teams to pieces. And they won the title despite conceding 96 points in their last two games. Is something changing there? It was interesting to see the game being played slightly differently. You\u2019ve got to play to your strengths, not just do the same as everyone else does.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s son Henry was part of the England Under-18 squad beaten 63-33 by France U18s this month \u2013 \u201cMy lad came off the bench and said France did all their damage from kick returns and transitions\u201d \u2013 and, at 56, the former Lions captain\u2019s competitive nature still burns. In the Race to the Slater Cup two teams of cyclists, captained by Johnson and Mike Tindall, will try to be the first to reach Villa Park from Leicester and Gloucester respectively before the Big Match Bonanza weekend Prem game on Saturday.<\/p>\n

In support of Slater and his former teammate Moody, Johnson is committed to helping fund more research into MND and its potential causes. \u201cI don\u2019t think we know enough about these things. That\u2019s partly why we\u2019re doing the ride. We live in an age when we think we have the answer to everything but we don\u2019t. I\u2019m all for research and science trying to give us the answers. The more we can do to find out the truth the better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tickets for the Slater Cup at Villa Park on Saturday 28 March start at \u00a310 here<\/a>. \u00a31 of every sale goes to 4ED to support families affected by MND.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England\u2019s legendary World Cup-winning captain Martin Johnson says the current management should consider resting key players this summer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":561730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-561729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=561729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/561730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}