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2 hours ago
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The inquest into England’s Six Nations campaign has already started and when that is the case before the championship has even finished it is never a good sign. Everyone has their own opinions on what is wrong and I’m sure that is the same within the squad too. When you are on runs like England are, different players come up with different reasons for their problems and different fixes – and that makes the situation all the more difficult.
If there is one thing holding England back it is their gameplan. I don’t say that as a reaction to these three defeats, I felt that they stagnated during the autumn and tightened things up despite chalking up four victories. The best illustration I can give is the 2024 tournament. England had lost to Scotland, went to York in the fallow week, contrived to throw off the shackles in attack and it paid immediate dividends.
There was an energy to England back then, as demonstrated when Marcus Smith kicked the winning drop goal against Ireland and in the narrow defeat against France in Lyon the following week. It wasn’t only physical energy, it was energy in their expression. I remember at the time saying that if that was the baseline for this England team then the supporters have something that they can truly care about. Expression and invention are two traits that supporters will always invest in and get behind.
I found myself feeling that way again during last summer’s tour of Argentina. When the eyes of the watching world were elsewhere, following the British & Irish Lions in Australia, England were playing some genuinely scintillating stuff against Argentina. Blindside flankers were linking play, second rows were tipping on passes and England were scoring all manner of tries against a very good Pumas side. Again, my overriding feeling was just to imagine that team being supplemented with all those senior players returning from Lions duty.
Then came November, and while results suggested England were still moving forward, the autumn internationals did not represent a gameplan progression despite a clean sweep of victories. November is all about assessment. The best southern hemisphere nations come north and analyse, they take stock of where the game is, in which direction it is moving and they set about responding. The game moves forward so quickly and England have not been able to move with it.
Whichever way you dress it up, England have a rigid way of getting into the opposition 22 and they do not look polished enough to take advantage of that possession and territory when they get it. They lack the expression and the invention that they had two years ago. The question I ask is, if England had a more attacking mindset, and by that I simply mean in terms of ball movement, would they have a better chance of winning the matches that they have lost? In many ways it is a difficult one to answer because against Scotland and Ireland they were behind the eight ball so early.
What I have seen is that England are capable of producing threatening attacking patterns when they have had to chase matches. We saw it at Murrayfield, we saw some of it against Ireland and we saw it in the final few minutes against Italy. When they start playing heads-up rugby, looking for space, England are a dangerous side. My frustration is why they need to be chasing games to do that.
It’s an incredibly difficult task that awaits them in Paris. Playing France under the lights at Stade de France is about as hard as it gets but the biggest non-negotiable is that they play for each other. It’s been a tough week, as Fabien Galthié said, it’s a short competition but at times it can feel long and that will have been the case for Steve Borthwick this week. I think it probably helps that they have stayed away from home, they’ve stayed together and they can form the sort of mentality they will need to take on France.
England began the championship as one of the favourites, there was genuine optimism looking ahead to next year’s World Cup but then the bubble burst and there are only so many times you can keep going to the well and try to bounce back from disappointment. Knowing this coaching staff, I’m sure they’ve been poring over the data to try to rectify the problems but sometimes you just want to simplify things and use the “eye test”. What are your eyes telling you, what can you see?
Finding fixes is difficult, especially when there are so many different theories, but as Borthwick has alluded to this week, the response starts with the senior players. If England are to have any chance in Paris then they must rise to the challenge laid down.
