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London - British and Irish Lions wing Anthony Watson says he is feeling fresh and ready for England's November internationals.
The Bath flyer played for the Lions in the summer on the tour of New Zealand and has been involved for his club side in the Premiership this season, but revealed he is on a specialist training regime to keep him at peak performance.
“I feel good. As a team we had a great week in Portugal last week and the training this week was awesome, so everything is going in the right direction towards Saturday,” the 23-year-old said ahead of Saturday’s Test against Argentina at Twickenham.
“Eddie’s correspondence has been pretty thorough throughout this season and when the Lions players went to Portugal we had a different schedule to the other lads, so we were able to recondition our bodies a little bit to make up for the lack of pre-season, so I think that put us in good stead.
“In Portugal we had stretching at 6.15am and hip conditioning to get ready to run - it was all low level stuff in the morning to allow us to train better in the afternoon.
“I felt a lot better going into training Friday last week and then Monday and Tuesday this week, and I understand where I need to do certain things to allow my body to stay fresh.”
Watson, who has scored 13 tries in 26 outings for England, started all three Test matches for the Lions on the right wing this summer.
With players from England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland all coming together in one squad, he feels that the different philosophies, as well as spending some of the tour playing at full back, have helped him develop. "There’s no right or wrong way to approach a game.
“I feel I learnt a lot throughout the tour from playing with some of those stars like Jonny Sexton and Liam Williams, and there were guys who had very contrasting approaches.
“It was definitely something I learnt that there’s no right or wrong way to approach a game, it’s just whatever suits you.
“It was definitely cool to play 15 on the Lions tour and enjoyed it 100%, but I enjoyed playing on the wing just as much. I’ve gone back to Bath and played 15 there which was awesome as well, but I’m just going out and see where it takes me I guess.”
Bath team-mate Semesa Rokoduguni has been included in the 26 players retained for the series opener against Los Pumas.
Watson believes Rokoduguni can replicate the form which has seen him lead the Premiership try scoring charts, along with fellow England wing Jonny May, with seven so far for the season.
“Roko is Roko, he does ridiculous things in training and every time he’s done that he just needs to keep going about his business and he’ll get his crack.
“He’s a very good friend of mine and he’s a good bloke so I’m delighted that he’s in he set up.
“He just needs to keep doing what he’s done for Bath all season and if he can do that on the international stage then the sky is the limit.”
