Nowell building for a bright future

By Neil Fissler
17/9/21

Jack Nowell admits that he cannot remember the last time he completed a full pre-season with Exeter Chiefs as he targets rebuilding his stalled England career.

The Cornish flyer has endured a torrid 12 months with injuries after helping Exeter win the Premiership and European double last October.

Nowell played through the pain barrier and had an operation on a toe ligament injury before tearing a hamstring when on the comeback trail and suffering knee ligament damage.

But after spending five weeks on the beach in his native Cornwall with the sun on his chiselled tattooed chest Nowell, 28, is firing for the start of the new season.

"I honestly cannot remember the last time that I did a full pre-season. I say I did a full pre-season. I did one day of training and got covid then I had ten days off, so I don't know if I class this as a full pre-season. But it's been good enough for me. I feel pretty good, and the fitness feels really good.

"We get what most boys call a pre-pre-season with programmes that our strength and conditioning coaches send us, and if I am honest, I did bugger all. I was down on the beach every day, I was in the sun, spent time with my family, normally I am one that over trains a little bit, but this time I decided I was going let my body completely relax. And I wasn't going to batter it. I haven't done too many extras, and I feel in a pretty good place, to be honest," said Nowell.

The Lions winger has had nine operations trying to keep himself playing at the top level, and each time doesn't get time to fully recover from the previous seasons' exertions.

"Normally, how that works is you get to the end of the season, have your operation, you have ten days off with a cast on. You are straight back in on the 11th day and are rehabbing straight away. So that is all the time you get off, but I haven't been able to enjoy myself and go to the beach. I've always had an ankle cast on or a thumb cast, and I know I am back in within a week, but this time there was nothing wrong with me, so I got to do some stuff I wanted to do," he adds.

This season, Nowell is keen to add to his 34 England caps despite not featuring in an Eddie Jones since a personal World Cup nightmare almost two years ago.

An operation on an ankle injury suffered in the Premiership Final, a hamstring injury, and then an appendix operation saw him make just one appearance off the bench against Argentina.

He appears to be still very much in Jones plans after a discussion between them decided it would be best for him to have the summer off rather than play against the USA and Canada this summer.

"I don't want to look at far into the England stuff. I've always said if you play well for your club, you will go on and play for England. I just want to put myself in that position, and I do that by playing well for the club. The World Cup where I had a cameo of ten minutes against Argentina. Again that was all down to injury. I had that nightmare of a World Cup camp. I am still pretty gutted about, so I haven't put on an England shirt for a while, and that is something that I am desperate to do."

Exeter travel to Welford Road tomorrow to open their Premiership campaign Leicester Tigers with a massive point to prove after crashing to Harlequins in last seasons final.

Even though the subject isn't banned, Nowell acknowledges that the Chiefs are trying not to revisit the ins and outs of the defeat too much.

"We have got a massive point to prove. We feel that we should have won the game against Harlequins. We weren't the favourites because a lot of people wanted Harlequins to win. And they fully deserved to win it, but we felt that we were good enough to win and had a good enough season. We let ourselves down by letting Harlequins play all the exciting rugby. We sat back and took it, but that was last season, and we are trying not to speak about it too much. It's a good subject to try and remember now and again. That game could have gone another way if we had done different things, and we did things as a Chiefs team that we don't normally do."