End of term report
Yesterday the England rugby autumn international season ended with a relatively straightforward 37-18 home victory over a depleted Australian side at Twickenham for an overall three wins, one loss (15-16 to New Zealand) record.
Personally, I’d describe this as a 7 out of 10 outcome given where they’d started from and the combination of injuries etc. that prevented Eddie Jones fielding his preferred starting first XV at any point in the campaign.
Given England’s disastrous 2018 Six Nations and the mounting media criticism of him – even to the point of speculation that he should be replaced at head coach less than a year before the Rugby World Cup – Jones can feel satisfied and to a degree even vindicated as the calendar year draws to a close.
Firstly, the plusses.
As regards the forward pack, Exeter’s loose head Ben Moon looks a bit of a discovery – and just in time given the premature retirement from international rugby of Joe Marler.
At last Jones appears to have seen the light staring him in the face as over the past month captain Dylan Hartley has gradually slipped down the pecking order, leaving a superior player Jamie George at the starting hooker and Owen Farrell – the deserved first name on the team sheet – as skipper.
Kyle Sinckler is now making the tight head spot his own.
His Man of the Match award yesterday confirmed his importance to the squad as a prop now worth his salt at the coal face who can also put it about elsewhere on the field.
Maro Itoje in the engine room is back to his world class best though he still needs to work on his discipline – he yaps too much and gives away too many silly penalties.
In the back row, Newcastle’s Mark Wilson is a solid citizen with a big engine and for the time being now indispensable as a useful squad player. The Kiwi Brad Shields, after a slow start at international level, is at last making his presence felt.
Sam Underhill, after his heroics against the All Blacks, had a relatively quiet game yesterday but remains a cert for the RWC.
Overall, with the Vunipola brothers still to return and some or all of Robshaw, Hughes and Tom Curry scheduled to be back from injury in the New Year, the 2019 England pack is going to be big, robust and capable of holding its own with any other Top Five contender at both scrum-time and the breakdown.
When it comes to the outsides, it looks as though Jones is opting for size and power in the medium-term. Farrell has to play – he’s now the starting 10 – which means that the more inventive but diminutive George Ford will be picking up splinters on the subs’ bench for the foreseeable future.
In Jones’ ideal world, both Ben T’eo and Manu Tuigali would be centres in his top matchday 23.
For me, sadly, the silky skills of Henry Slade – his defence was much improved yesterday – have still yet to make their anticipated mark at Test level.
Wing threequarter is now an area at which England have a feast of riches: Johnny May, Jack Nowell, Chris Ashton and now the young ‘bolter’ Joe Cokanasiga would make the reckoning in any team in RWC contention, never mind the electric running of the long-injured Anthony Watson who will be returning to action next spring.
Now, the negatives – albeit far fewer of them.
What concerns me in a tactical sense is the way that England tend to fade in and out of matches. They either begin well – get 6 or even 10 points ahead – and then seem to ease off and let oppositions back into the game; alternatively, they start tentatively and take time to get going.
There’s a lack of ruthless consistency about them and – I guess it boils down to this – a lack of the sort of tactical nous ‘on the hoof’ that allows the very best international teams (currently let’s restrict the list to Ireland and New Zealand) to adjust or even switch their game plans out on the field in the heat of battle in response to the shifting tides and momentum of a match.
It’s almost as though England are over-coached.
They’re sent out with a game plan, stick to it and – when things aren’t working to plan – they seem to need to get back in the changing room at half-time to be told what to do next, rather than being able to sort it out on the pitch for themselves.
Jones is a past master at doing the necessary: no matter how senior or important the player, if they’re not performing as required, he hooks them off without ceremony almost immediately and sends on someone who will. My point is that – ideally – he shouldn’t need to do this as often as he does for the simple reason that some leader (or leadership group) on the field should have been analysing things as they go and made their own changes to the plan.
Two specific player comments to finish:
Elliott Daly is not – yet – working out at full back.
His one-on-one tackling (that is, as the last line of defence, facing someone coming straight at him, i.e. rather than diagonally to either side of him) and his soundness under the high ball are both suspect.
It doesn’t help that these two key aspects of the full back role are those at which the man he has replaced – the discarded veteran (now 33 years old) Mike Brown – excels. The comparison comes to mind like a red flashing light every time Daly comes off second best at them in a game situation.
Don’t’ get me wrong – Daly is an international class rugby footballer with speed and flair to spare and ball-skills to die for. I’m just not sure he’s best deployed as a 15.
My other big concern is Owen Farrell himself, sorry to say.
He’s got an ice-cold rugby brain and a combative strength of character to match any in the world. But there’s a fine line between controlled aggression and that which is over the top and therefore can get on the wrong side of referees.
The new England captain either hasn’t learned this – or else doesn’t have it in him.
And his tackling technique leaves plenty to be desired. Not to put too fine a point on it, his head-on ‘no arms’ style is a total no-no. It’s now illegal under the new World Rugby protocols, almost cost England the South Africa game at the death recently and yesterday should have resulted in a penalty try (and a yellow card or worse) to Australia which might have altered the course of the match in the visitors’ favour.
The worst part of his tackling approach is the fact that his ‘shoulder first, arms nowhere’ isn’t even deliberate.
In my view it’s totally instinctive – his first reaction is not to tackle low like most people do, maybe because he doesn’t want to risk getting a knee, thigh or shoulder to the head. Someone needs to take him aside and help him change that – or England might face losing a RWC semi or final due to him having been sent to the naughty step.
