{"id":38232,"date":"2025-04-21T11:51:14","date_gmt":"2025-04-21T11:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/38232\/"},"modified":"2025-04-21T11:51:14","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T11:51:14","slug":"maro-itoje-paid-compliment-ahead-of-british-and-irish-lions-tour-captain-call-planet-rugby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/38232\/","title":{"rendered":"Maro Itoje paid compliment ahead of British and Irish Lions tour captain call : Planet Rugby"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maro Itoje has been dubbed \u2018Mr Incredible\u2019 by an England team-mate as the countdown continues to the naming of the British and Irish Lions tour captain.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Itoje is a leading contender for the appointment, which will be confirmed by head coach Andy Farrell at The O2, in London, on May 8. Under his leadership both England and Saracens have enjoyed marked upturns in fortune.<\/p>\n

On Saturday at StoneX Stadium Itoje<\/a> maintained his record of completing every match he has started for club and country since September in Sarries<\/a>\u2018 come-from-behind win over Gloucester.<\/p>\n

Marathon feat<\/p>\n

The lock forward has played the full 80 in England<\/a>\u2018s last 21 Tests and, remarkably, averages 78.59 minutes per game across his 93 caps.<\/p>\n

This marathon feat prompted changing room acclaim immediately after the Gloucester game with a salute from England hooker Theo Dan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s incredible,\u201d said Dan. \u201cI actually said to him in the changing room \u2018I don\u2019t know how you do it\u2019. The level of consistency and the level of performance he puts in, week in week out; it\u2019s not 40s [minutes], it\u2019s not 50s, he puts in 80s every week.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo churn out that level of performance with that amount of game time really is incredible. I\u2019ve seen the stats\u2026 unbelievable. His engine is crazy. It\u2019s absurd. I thought he was outstanding today, he always is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bath boss reveals \u2018science\u2019 behind Bomb Squad tactic after latest Premiership triumph<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Dan added: \u201cHe\u2019s a massive role model in terms of his performance and professionalism. On and off the pitch he\u2019s a fantastic leader. We\u2019ve found that this year with Sarries and England. There\u2019s no better guy to look up to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back to back wins over top-four rivals Leicester and Gloucester have thrust Saracens firmly into the Gallagher Premiership<\/a> play-off picture \u2013 and also boosted Dan\u2019s international chances.<\/p>\n

The 24-year-old has not played for England since the opening round of the Six Nations in Ireland yet was a tour de force for his club in Champions Cup defeat at Toulon a week ago.<\/p>\n

Either side of that he scored Saracens\u2019 winning try at Leicester and on Saturday weighed in with the two second-half tries which turned the match against Gloucester.<\/p>\n

Former England fly-half Andy Goode has even spoken about him as a possible Lions<\/a> bolter, saying: \u201cDan has got traits of [Dan] Sheehan that not many other hookers have, in terms of power and offloading ability. All you can do is put yourself in the shopwindow. [Against Toulon] that\u2019s what Theo did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not getting carried away<\/p>\n

Dan agrees he is hitting a run of \u201cdecent\u201d form, saying he is the beneficiary of Saracens becoming significantly more cohesive as the season goes on.<\/p>\n

\u201cEarlier in the season we were a bit up and down, sometimes not on the same page in terms of how we want to play,\u201d he added. \u201cNow we\u2019re all on the same page and it\u2019s so much easier for me personally to play in this team.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel so much more comfortable but I\u2019m not getting carried away. I\u2019ve found in my career that the moment I\u2019ve started to look too far forward into what\u2019s coming is the moment my performances drop.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve learned a lot from that. I\u2019m head down trying just to work on my craft, trying to put in the performances week in week out. If I do that good things will hopefully come my way.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Saracens v Gloucester: Five takeaways as England stars \u2018show class\u2019 to vindicate Mark McCall\u2019s controversial decision<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maro Itoje has been dubbed \u2018Mr Incredible\u2019 by an England team-mate as the countdown continues to the naming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38233,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[5313,393,225,522,21856,12,6875,4151,12070,79,21857,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-38232","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-british-and-irish-lions","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-home-page","11":"tag-international","12":"tag-maro-itoje","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-premiership","15":"tag-rugby","16":"tag-saracens","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-theo-dan","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114375811616241380","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}