Rugby World Cup 2019: Mike Brown picks up the baton in England after doing most of the Treviso training camp

The excursion from England to Treviso in the middle of the summer could not have been better from a planning point of view. The high temperatures and the humidity rate, which reached 90% yesterday, have not only put the hardest training camp to date, but have also given them a taste of what it's all about. wait in Japan next month.

"It's incredibly difficult," admits Mike Brown, who had to endure more than others this summer. The rear of the Harlequins saw its place in the starting XV leaving it in the last 12 months, before being totally ruled out of the team last fall. When Eddie Jones named his initial training group for the World Cup last month, his name was not found.

It is therefore all the more impressive that the 33-year-old is running late for the World Cup.

"Obviously, you want to be named in all the teams announced by Eddie," he said. "We are all competitive animals, so we would not be disappointed and we would be lying if we did not say we were disappointed if we had not been named.

"But I've been back for three weeks and I've been training as hard as I can to offer competitive spots and also to make sure the team, no matter what Eddie's choice, in the best place possible.

"You have this doubt in the back of your mind, but Eddie just said to be ready, so I immediately fell into ruin and I was greeted with a fitness test Bronco. It was pretty wild so I made sure I was ready. I was on the moon to have the chance to come back and continue.

Brown has already felt his fair share of the misery of the World Cup. He was very far from the table during Martin Johnson's reign as coach of England, but Stuart Lancaster gave him the No. 15 jersey in his very first game after the 2011 World Cup. Yet his memories The tournament itself is limited to the painful legacy left by the 2015 campaign, and the difference between the preparation of the home tournament four years ago and that of Jones was notable.

"The fitness was different and much more suited to different positions," added Brown. "Both were difficult, but off the field we get positive results, which we may not have done then. It's difficult (but we did a good job. "

Much of this was done in Italy, where Jones took his team to a 12-day training camp in order to experience the kind of conditions that are occurring in Japan. But the intense sessions planned by the Australian for his trip to Europe have had more serious consequences than normal. They test players in an unprecedented way, such as the unpleasant sensation of boiling sweat and mbad weight loss during a single workout.

This is crucial information that every player will have to gather for Japan if he wants to know how to take care of his conditioning in the Far East.

"It's about 80% humidity today and everyone starts to sweat as soon as you go out. You sweat sweat, which makes handling the ball very difficult. In addition, it is difficult to maintain a temperature as low as your body temperature because you sweat all the time. It just stays on your skin and warms up even more so you do not lower your body temperature.

"You always feel incredibly hot. Here too, the weather is really sunny so it is very difficult to try to keep the temperature at the base. To do this, we have set up training devices: guys come to suck you cold water by constantly trying to wipe you off sweat so that your skin has time to calm down and so right now.

"We weigh ourselves at the beginning of the sessions and afterwards so that you know how much weight you have lost. The nutrition guys make sure that you get the right things after the workout to increase your weight. For example, during our first very difficult session last Wednesday, I lost 3 kg of weight. It is therefore a question of recovering the liquids and eating more after a session.

"In England, I would probably lose the weight of a normal session under normal conditions. After a test match, I would probably lose a maximum of 1 kg and I play at the highest level in extreme fatigue. So it puts that in perspective with the weight loss you can get here.

"Once you've made all the right decisions, we'll go to lunch and you'll be almost back before the afternoon session, no problem – as long as you do the right things."