Milk diet sees burly Joe Marler's leg heal quickly

Yes, the Harlequins front-row starts against France – and the 24 stone Uini Antonio, no less – in Saturday’s RBS Six Nations opener against France barely four weeks after that fracture and he is thanking the white stuff.

England coach Eddie Jones is certainly delighted to see the 26-year-old ready to begin their Grand Slam defence given his availability for the tournament’s first fortnight was essentially written off last month.

However, Marler was named in the side yesterday and then explained how two pints – of milk, not ale – per day had been the crucial ingredient in his rapid recovery.

“I rehabbed the cr*p out of it to be honest and drank lots of milk,” he said, having, bizarrely, initially being diagnosed with a calf problem after completing the Premiership game against Worcester on New Year’s Day.

“And that’s it, my body has taken care of the rest.

“It’s actually a historical thing because there’s lots of calcium in milk, so that helps with the bones. And teeth. That’s not a new thing, it’s been around for thousands of years.

“Your mum always says milk is really good for you and you don’t really believe it until you really need it because you’ve got a broken leg, so I just drank loads of it.

“I drank two pints a day and it’s something I’ll keep doing because it’s really tasty.

“I always thought green top was good for you because it’s reduced fat, but they gave me licence to have blue top and the odd day I’d have that gold top stuff, the one with like 1,000 calories in one pint.

“Maybe I won’t carry on with that but blue top, it’s been really good for me.

“I’m not putting it all on that, I’m putting it on (England physio) Phil Pask as well, but it’s helped.”

Furthermore, Marler’s challenge was even greater given he did not use the healing powers of a hyperbaric chamber either due to his dislike of confined spaces.

With Mako Vunipola sidelined with a knee injury, his availability is music to the ears of Jones who could ill-afford to be without two leading looseheads at Twickenham this weekend.

“Originally when the scan came back and it said you have a broken leg, I thought ‘yeah good one’ because I’d been jogging around on it,” continued Marler, who was actually named to face Sale on January 7 but pulled up in the warm-up.

“So when then they told me that I’d really done it, I thought I was going to miss my chance (v France).

“The trouble was I did it in the first half against Worcester and just thought it was a calf knock and I did pull my calf as well, so there was a bit of confusion there.

“I thought I could keep running on it because running is not really my forte anyway so I could get away with hobbling a bit.

“I got to the end of the game and said ‘strap it up it’s just a tight calf or whatever’, and then because of the frozen pitches and the weather, we didn’t really get a chance to run it again until the following week’s warm-up.

“It was then that I said to them ‘I’ll be alright, I’ll just run it off’, but I couldn’t run it off because my leg was broken.”

As the Red Rose aim to maintain their 100 per cent record under Jones – they were unbeaten in 2016 and now aim for a record 15th successive win – the Australian has, however, been forced into a number of changes due to other injuries.

With former captain Chris Robshaw (shoulder) out for the competition, tyro lock Maro Itoje moves to the back-row where he starts at blindside in England colours for the first time.

Lock George Kruis’ absence with a knee injury sees Joe Launchbury recalled.

Jones, meanwhile, has picked Elliot Daly on the left wing ahead of Jack Nowell, who missed Tuesday’s training sessions due to personal reasons and was only back in the England camp on Thursday.

Nowell is, though, picked on the bench where James Haskell is also named despite having played for less than an hour since returning from a seven-month injury absence.