Farrell plays down disruption

England forced to relocate full day of training on Tuesday

Last Updated: February 7, 2012 5:08pm

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Andy Farrell: Says training disruption will not prove a distraction

Sky Bet

England assistant coach Andy Farrell insists his squad will not lose their focus despite having their training plans disrupted on Tuesday.

The squad were forced to make a three-hour round trip to the O2 Arena after snow and ice meant they could not take to the field at their usual training base in Bagshot.

It was not an ideal situation to deal with in the one full day of sessions the team will have before they travel to Rome to face Italy in their second match of the RBS Six Nations on Saturday.

But Farrell said that the full day of training, held on artificial turf at the London Soccer Dome, had been successfully completed.

"You can't afford to lose your focus on what the main thing is, and that's the rugby," he told Sky Sports News ahead of the sessions.

"Unfortunately we had too much snow on the pitch and parts of it set as ice, but we've got to train.

"We've got an important day today, we've got a double day of sessions and are lucky enough to have a facility like this at the O2 to get the two sessions done."

Victory

"The culture that you try and drive is that anything could happen."
Andy Farrell Quotes of the week

England began their Six Nations campaign with a hard-fought victory over Scotland at Murrayfield and Farrell revealed that his side's preparations for that game were also disrupted.

He added: "The culture that you try and drive is that anything could happen.

"We were late getting to the game against Scotland for many different reasons of what the Scottish like to do in trying to disrupt you.

"But if you get het up about these things you lose the focus of what's the main thing, which is rugby. For us, today is just another day.

"We could have a delayed flight going to Italy, we've got to deal with that. You can't let these things get to you.

England also held a team analysis of their victory in Scotland, concluding that there was plenty of room for improvement despite the positive result.

"We sat down as a team and we wanted to asses ourselves. We felt that our defence was good, though obviously you can always improve," Farrell added.

"We'd like to get a better attacking platform but sometimes it was not necessarily that our attack wrong, it was just ball security and creating a platform for attack.