One down, four to go
Yesterday the McDonnell household – this North-of-the-Border member still reeling from “what might have beens” after Saturday’s Ireland v Scotland clash – was enlarged by one as usual: an eighty-year-old pal of my late father who traditionally watches Six Nations games with us because he’s no rugby expert and likes to do so in the company of those he considers are.
In the morning by chance I had been rung by a former RFU stalwart of my acquaintance who had predicted a 15 point England victory.
There are no “I told you so” elements to my verdict but yesterday’s result was always on the cards and didn’t really surprise me – I’d have said similar had England indeed won by 15 points.
The first point to register is that canny new French rugby head coach Fabien Galthié had deliberately overturned the apple-cart upon taking up the job at the beginning of his four-year Rugby World Cup cycle.
He selecting the bulk of his country’s next generation for his 2020 Six Nations squad, many of them from the Under-20 team that won the Junior Rugby World Cup.
Next, he’d added serious grunt to his coaching team by picking up highly-experienced (over a decade with Wales under Warren Gatland) tyro Shaun Edwards to take charge of defence.
As a result, as night followed day, the French team yesterday would have been brow-beaten and bullied by the unremittingly-intense ex-Rugby League great into adopting both a system and “they shall not pass” attitude as uncompromising as anything one would expect to see from any Irish or England team.
The lesson of last year’s Rugby World Cup Final was that a rock-solid defence is the first step to victory in the oval ball game: if you can stop the opposition from getting their game plan working, you’re half-way to having at least a foot in the game to the dying embers.
As for England, apart from the inevitable ‘haven’t quite woken up yet’ factor outlined at the beginning of my post, despite anything that Eddie Jones might have done to rid them of their RWC hangover – and it would have been plenty knowing the Australian, albeit only by reputation and what I read – they appeared to be still suffering from it.
Jones had grabbed the headlines in the skirmishing during the run-up to the game by promising that England were going to be intense, heavy-duty physical, and put pressure on the callow host selection by ‘beating them up’.
Within fifteen minutes of kick-off, whither Mr Jones’ boasts?
The men in white looked as though – having bought into his propaganda (no doubt inevitable when you are confined to quarters and subjected to his daily rants), they were playing like a team merely going through the motions, waiting for their coach’s predictions of the hosts splintering into a rabble within ten minutes of first being exposed to the whiff of grapeshot and the might of the English heavy artillery, to come true.
Once it was clear that the French defence had turned up, aggressive and dogged, England appeared listless and lacking in both direction and (seemingly) any capacity to improvise or evolve a Plan B.
For this I lay some blame at Eddie Jones’ door.
Nobody talks a better build-up to a game, chipping away with a sly humour at everyone and everything including his own team, but for all his chat championing ‘leaders on the field’ and adaptability, the fact is that his relentless driving of his charges (even those who are inherently big characters) has induced in them a degree of timidity about their ability to ‘think on the hoof’.
The other worrying signal in the England team was the propensity – continuing from their disappointing Rugby World Cup Final display – to make basic handling errors.
There were a surfeit of fumbles, knock-ons – two within five minutes by captain Owen Farrell alone, normally rock-solid in his skills – and basic playground mistakes: scrum half Nigel Youngs, for all his experience, still managed to throw another 25 yard wayward pass straight into touch – as he had in the Japan final.
To be blunt, Farrell’s influence on the team remains a worry to me.
Nobody is doubting his world class quality, but he’s no Martin Johnson in terms of decisiveness when the wheels temporarily come off and/or there’s a need to ‘take a crisis by the scruff of the neck’ and ‘sort it’ when one arises.
One only thinks of when the 2003 RWC Final went into ‘extra time’ and Clive Woodward striding towards the team huddle before the change-over, only to be met by Johnson’s flat raised hand and dismissive comment “We’ve got this, Clive …”, whereupon the England head coach swivelled and returned to the stand.
Determined and possessed of an aura as he is, I have rarely witnessed evidence of cool, considered leadership in Farrell.
Even in his post-match BBC interview he seemed stultified in front of the microphone and as robotic in his clichéd responses as ever – no depth of character or much sociability there, methinks.
