No mountain too high for Itoje and England with Australia first up in autumn series

England captain stresses team must display their full power in Saturday’s first of four home internationals in November

Just occasionally even the world’s best rugby players are genuinely taken aback. In mid-September, Maro Itoje, recuperating from his British & Irish Lions exertions, stood and watched an England training session and could not believe the pace, intensity and all-round zip on view. “I was thinking: ‘Wow, I need to get back in the gym, I need to make sure I come back quickly,’” he admitted this week.

Itoje says his former teammate Mako Vunipola was just as impressed – “He didn’t remember it being that fast” – on a visit to England’s base in Bagshot the other day. Another recent retiree, the England scrum-half Danny Care, felt similarly. All of which has been fuelling Itoje’s growing belief, with the 2027 Rugby World Cup on the horizon, that “there’s no mountain we can’t climb”.