Danny Care has no doubt how important the upcoming season could prove to his career.
At club level he is determined to return Harlequins to the top of the Aviva Premiership following a disappointing 2013/2014 campaign, albeit by their own lofty standards.
Like many of his contemporaries, meanwhile, there is the added significance of a home World Cup looming on the horizon.
Care was England’s first-choice scrum-half during the Six Nations, but an “annoying” injury picked up days into the squad’s summer tour of New Zealand saw him make only one appearance against the All Blacks.
With considerable competition for places, he knows he cannot afford to look too far into the future as he renews club hostilities against London Irish at Twickenham on Saturday.
“Obviously it is a huge year but I know a lot can happen in a year and you have to stay in the present. I only think one day at a time, and one week at a time,” the Yorkshireman tells Sport360°. “There’s a lot of rugby to be played before the World Cup. There’s a lot of rugby to be played to be picked for the Autumn internationals, so I know I’ve got to play well for Quins to get in that nine shirt again.”
That is the case not only for Care, but also for his club-mates Chris Robshaw, Mike Brown, Joe Marler and Marland Yarde as they aim to keep themselves in Stuart Lancaster’s thoughts. Having so many prominent players looking to press their claims could pay dividends for Quins as the club attempts to navigate their way back to the Premiership final.
“We want to be the best team in England, we’d love to win that trophy again,” Care says.
“It’s been a few years since we last lifted it and it’s the prize everyone wants to win. We were semi-finalists last year, we only just scrapped through. When we needed to, we got some big wins, but at the end I think we ran out of steam in that second half against Saracens (in the semi-final) and we don’t want to do that again.”
To ensure there is no repeat of last season a quiet summer at The Stoop was punctuated with the arrivals of Fiji centre Asaeli Tikoirotuma and England hopeful Yarde. The latter’s defection from local rivals, London Irish, has caught the imagination of fans, and Care is confident he can be a big hit with Quins.
“He’s born to play the sort of rugby we play here, off the cuff, throwing the ball around, getting the ball in our dangerous players’ hands and he’s certainly a dangerous player,” the scrum-half explains. “He reminds me a lot of Mike Brown, when they run they just don’t want to get tackled and seem to break tackles for fun. So, if we can release him and the other lads in the out channels this year then hopefully we’re looking good.”
Playing alongside Care, Brown, Robshaw and Marler can only help Yarde’s own hopes of a place in England’s squad for next year’s World Cup. It is that club understanding, especially with full-back Brown, that Care credits his try-scoring role in the Red Rose’s 13-10 win over Ireland last February.
“You get better playing with the same people all the time,” he says. “Ultimately if we can play well as a team at Quins, we try to get as many lads into an England shirt as possible.”
The former Leeds scrum-half struggled with injury through a frustrating summer tour of New Zealand, admitting, “you never want to give anyone else a chance really if you are in possession of the shirt”.
However, he believes competition for places in key positions can only be good for England and concurs with other senior internationals that Lancaster’s men left a mark Down Under. “Just speaking to their fans out there, they had written us off,” he says. “They thought we’d lose by 20 or 30 points every game, there’s no way we thought like that. We genuinely believed we should have won one or two of those games.
“We know how good New Zealand are, but they’re not unbeatable like some people say and hopefully we’ve put our hand up. But it’s time to get results now, and come the autumn we’ll look to try and win on our own patch.”
Indeed it is, and England welcome all three of the major southern hemisphere nations to Twickenham this November.
Samoa visit west London as well, and having met up for a training week in Loughborough last month, the squad are aware they need to turn promise into wins.
“One of the main things we said was that obviously the World Cup is the main goal but there’s a lot of time to go before that and some massive games for us,” Care adds. “The Autumn is four really tough games that we’re going to have to play very well to get the victories we want. So, we can’t really start thinking about the World Cup now, we just have to start the season and move on like that.”
That said, does seeing England’s women and Under-20s secure global bragging rights in recent months give the squad extra motivation to follow suit?
“No pressure,” he jokes. “To see the girls win was brilliant. You could see it on their faces, how much it meant to them and it’s great for the whole of England, you’re kind of sat there watching them get the trophy getting goosebumps thinking, ‘I’d love to be in those shoes in 15 months’.” So, does he expect to be?
“That’s the aim, Stuart Lancaster would be the first one to tell you that it’s what we’re trying to do,” says Care.
“We want to be the best team in the world, we want to win the World Cup and we’ll do anything we can to do that.
“It’s going to be a tough 15, 16 months but the lads are well up for it and I think we’re just dying to see what happens and get out there and play.”
