A dose of Eddie Jones generosity opened Georgia’s eyes to the standards they need to hit every day as they prepared for the 2019 Rugby World Cup.
Jones opened the doors of England training for opposed scrum sessions with the Georgians in the past two years.
The most recent session, in February of this year, turned fiery after some tight contests, but it was the moments before they packed down that former backs coach Richard Graham said were most valuable.
Former Reds coach Graham, who served as Georgian backs coach until the middle of 2018, said those sessions were the key to showing nations like Georgia the gaps off the field when it came to matching tier one nations.
“Milton (Georgia coach Milton Haig) had met Eddie a number of times and that allowed a number of training camps with England and that's demonstrated to the playing group what a tier one side with the intensity and professionalism of a tier one side trains at and that's why they can play at the level they play at,” he said.
“It's one of those things you don't know if you don't know and if you're not exposed it, you think what you're doing is right.
“Once the players saw those sorts of things they knew they needed to improve what they were doing and that was in all facets.
“That was so beneficial and you've got to applaud Eddie that he's allowed that two years in a row.”
Stability has become a priority for the Georgians, who have received World Rugby priority funding since the last World Cup, and Graham said Georgia’s coach Haig had brought in measures to ensure players hit their own required standards between international seasons.
“A lot of their forwards play in the Top 14 in France and their level of conditioning is horrible,” he said.
“It's a long season there, there's not a lot of focus put on level of conditioning so the players would come back for international rugby not fit to play international rugby so that was a real challenge for the group.
“Some measures put in place were (telling players), ‘If you want to be selected for the national team, here are some benchmarks when you come back to the team’.
“We will come over and visit you and we'll look at you, get an understanding of what you're doing through and a better relationship with your clubs or be more present for you individually and understanding what you're doing.”
Georgia’s conditioning work appears to be paying off - while they’ve only won one of their three matches so far, the Europeans were able to match Wales in the second half and stormed home to beat Uruguay 33-7.
The Georgians look set to finish one win behind their 2015 return but have narrowed the margins against the bigger teams so far in this tournament.
World Cups are an all too rare chance for tier two teams to face their bigger rivals and Graham said the challenge moving forward was ensuring that they were able to do this more regularly.
“World Rugby are trying to fix this problem at the moment and get tier two sides more games against tier one teams so they know what the level of competition is and what they need to do to improve,” he said.
“At the moment, where tier two teams don't get that opportunity, frequently, all they know is the pace and intensity of either tier two games or the club competitions from which they've come.”
Georgia take on Australia on Friday October 11 at Shizuoka Stadium Ecopa, kicking off at 7;15pm local, 9:15pm AEDT, LIVE on Foxtel, Network Ten and via RUGBY.com.au RADIO, Rugby Xplorer and Amazon Alexa.
