Maro Itoje will be out of action until the New Year with the knee injury he picked up during the autumn internationals.<\/p>\n
The England<\/a> captain, who has been sidelined since the victory over Argentina<\/a> at the end of November, was expected to be back on the field for Saracens<\/a> this month.<\/p>\n But Saracens director of rugby Mark McCall has confirmed that while Itoje has not undergone surgery, he will need more time before he returns for the club.<\/p>\n \u201cMaro is still carrying an injury from the autumn so we don\u2019t expect to see him for a while. The time scale is a little bit vague at the moment,\u201d said McCall.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s got a chance of being back for the Leicester<\/a> Tigers game which is the first week of January maybe. Somewhere around then.\u201d<\/p>\n Itoje, 31, has endured a significant international workload having captained the British and Irish Lions<\/a> on the tour to Australia<\/a> in the summer.<\/p>\n That meant he started the season late for Sarries, missing the first three games of the Prem campaign for his club.<\/p>\n This latest extended lay-off means his next appearance is likely to be at the Tigers on January 4 \u2013 or against Toulouse<\/a> in the Champions Cup the following week.<\/p>\n While his continued absence is a blow for Sarries, there is some good news ahead of this weekend\u2019s Prem game against Exeter with England hooker Jamie George<\/a> set to return.<\/p>\n George damaged his hamstring against New Zealand<\/a> last month and said he expected to be out for up to six weeks but will be back in four.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s worked really hard to get back and it\u2019s going to be good to have him available again,\u201d said McCall.<\/p>\n Saracens will also have Theo Dan<\/a> available for the Chiefs<\/a> game after his citing for a dangerous tackle against Hollywoodbets Sharks<\/a> last weekend was dismissed.<\/p>\n An independent disciplinary committee found that while Dan had committed an act of foul play it did not meet the red card threshold.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was what we expected but we are happy that he\u2019s available,\u201d said McCall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maro Itoje will be out of action until the New Year with the knee injury he picked up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321615,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-321614","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}