One of the all-time great Wallaby Test victories has left England up a gum tree of their own making. Clearly Australia deserve huge praise for Saturday’s spectacular ram raid, topped off by a record for points scored in this fixture at Twickenham. For the home side, however, a recurring failure to close out big games is now the subject of mounting scrutiny.
Scoring five tries and 37 points, for instance, should be enough to win any Test match. But only last March England scored 31 points in Lyon and still lost to France. Yet another disturbing pattern is emerging, this time around their defensive solidity. It makes for cracking entertainment for neutrals, less so for those England fans who still have any hair left to pull out.
Because apart from 35 missed tackles in 80 minutes, their bench efficiency, their scrum, another grim injury to their best back-rower, a captain who is not on the pitch when it really counts and a head coach’s unblinking faith in a gameplan that keeps exploding in his face, what else do England need to worry about? Not too much, really, just the world champion Springboks who are about to come rumbling over the hill this Saturday.
A backs-to-the-wall mindset has served England well in the past and could yet do so again. But, equally, that just underpins the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde element of their performances. Broadly speaking their execution seems to improve when the equation is at its simplest. The more bells and whistles they add, the less control they are exerting. And yet they remain wedded to a method that gives skilful opponents more than half a chance. What if England keep losing not because they are not sticking closely enough to their system, as Steve Borthwick believes, but because, deep down, they fear the system itself is flawed?
How else to rationalise the muddled mindset that cost England so dearly again? As the Wallabies thrillingly proved, there is mileage to be had from playing boldly, offloading with a touch-typist’s deftness and not settling for the orthodox. But you still have to think straight and, lately, Borthwick’s England have been having far too many brain fades.
They play when they’re down but not when they’re up. And when they’re up, they don’t quite know how to finish. This week’s classic example was the ill-fated midfield foray – with six minutes left and England leading 30-28 – which ended with George Ford’s attempted pass being put down by a charging Ollie Lawrence and providing the turnover from which Andrew Kellaway scored at the other end. As Borthwick muttered afterwards: “What is the decision-making process? That’s a question I will be asking the players.”
Increasingly it points to a more fundamental issue: are a reshuffled coaching staff and the players entirely on the same wavelength? Individuals previously punished for sitting back clearly felt they had to keep playing. Once again, too, Ford was at fly-half, rather than the excellent Marcus Smith, who had been shunted back to 15. Ford was meant to bring last-quarter calm and order. Instead, for the second successive week, the switch had the opposite effect.
So hello darkness, my old friend. England are not maximising the ability at their disposal, their progress is stalling and dressing-room confidence is in danger of eroding. With six losses in their last eight Tests, England’s winter could now get very messy. The 34-year-old Jamie George has been a fantastic servant but looks in increasing need of a sabbatical. Tom Curry also has to be given lots of time to recover properly from his second concussion in two months. The midfield balance still feels awry and Joe Marler has turned down Borthwick’s request to make himself available for one last stand against South Africa. The Springbok Bomb Squad will once again be salivating.
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Beyond that, with the Japan game largely a box-ticking exercise, lies a Six Nations opener in Dublin followed by a home game against France. What if England stagger out of that having lost nine of their last 12 games and resigned to another lowly Six Nations finish? The Rugby Football Union can ill afford to pay off another head coach but, equally, its business model is predicated on the national men’s side winning consistently.
You have to hand it to Australia and Joe Schmidt, though. They were tactically cute, demonstrated precisely how to unpick a blitz defence and have not played so well in years. Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii had a worldie of a debut and the pace and purpose of Len Ikitau, Tom Wright and the 20-year-old match-winner Max Jorgensen brilliantly complemented the hard running of Rob Valetini, Harry Wilson and Fraser McReight.
It has certainly upped the ante for next summer’s British & Irish Lions tour to Australia which, at this rate, may end up featuring fewer Englishmen than expected. There are plenty of talented individuals and impressive human beings in their ranks but, frustratingly, the orchestra is still not in total harmony. England, to adapt the great Eric Morecambe, are playing most of the right notes, just not necessarily in the right order.