England's Ford happy ex-housemate May is pitch perfect

George Ford was forced to evict Jonny May in his role as landlord, but his relationship with his former housemate on the pitch goes from strength to strength.
England's George Ford.England's George Ford.
England's George Ford.

Ford believes May is ready to translate his scorching club form for Leicester onto the international stage when England face Australia at Twickenham on Saturday after he missed the autumn opener against Argentina because of a hamstring strain.

May has been an instant hit at the Tigers, running in 10 tries since leaving Gloucester during the summer, but his brief spell living with Ford proved less than successful after he spilled sauce on the fly-half’s suede rug.

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“Living with Jonny was hard work because he’s such high maintenance,” said Ford, whose vision has helped create the chances for May at Welford Road.

“He’s such a nice guy, but I had to kick him out after three weeks. We couldn’t live together any more otherwise our friendship would have deteriorated.

“You can usually tell when he’s trying to wind people up and spoil people’s rugs. He bought me a new one and I made sure he bought the same kind of rug.

“He’s very good at manipulating situations. If you spend all day with him at training, when you come home you just want to relax and chill out, but he’s just non-stop.

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“He used to come home, go straight into the lounge and lie on the sofa as if it was his, get the TV remote and that would annoy me straight away.

“He’d just treat it like it was his house, which I don’t mind because he’s a mate, but sometimes he would just take it a step too far. He feels like he’s learned a fair bit at Leicester and I think you can see that in the way he’s been playing. It’s not by chance he’s been scoring tries nearly every week – he’s in the right place at the right time and he works incredibly hard at being professional and getting quicker.

“Hopefully now that he’s had that run of games he can transfer that to into an England shirt.”

England have dropped George Kruis for Saturday’s game.

Kruis started the Argentina win, but has been released back to his club Saracens after head coach Eddie Jones opted to include Charlie Ewels in a 25-man training squad retained at the squad’s Bagshot base. Joe Marler is set to play a role against the Wallabies when the team is announced tomorrow after Ellis Genge was also discharged.