A TONGA TWISTER
Injuries and illness mean Eddie considers a gamble on Smith... if his body holds up
IT was meant to be one game Eddie Jones did not need to worry about.
Tonga at Twickenham before the serious business of Australia and South Africa, ranked two and three in the world.
Jones could afford to drop inform fly-half George Ford from his squad and not skip a beat when Marcus Smith hurt himself in training. But Owen Farrell testing positive for Covid changes everything. Almost impossibly, Jones suddenly finds himself short of playmaking options.
He will today decide between starting either full-back George Furbank out of position at fly-half or risking Smith (main pic, right) after his week on the sidelines.
Farrell has backed Smith to run a Test match, but whether his body holds out is an unknown.
Furbank, according to Courtney Lawes, is a “class player all round who could play pretty much any position and will be fine”.
But the Northampton star has only ever started four Premiership games in the No.10 jersey and is, in the words of former England flyhalf Paul Grayson, “unbelievably light on experience” in the position.
“George is not breathtakingly quick, he’s not massive and he’s not got an enormous boot,” said Grayson. “What he is, is a really tidy rugby player, good in the air, able to take the ball to the line and capable of making breaks where you think he’s got no chance of doing so.”
Grayson reckons that whoever starts will “have as much quality ball as you’re ever likely to get in an international” as England will still be “vastly superior” to Tonga.
But that does not make it an ideal prep game for an England side needing an unbeaten autumn to claw back the momentum lost during their worst-ever Six Nations campaign in spring.
They average 57 points a game in the fixture and, given their firstchoice pack is unaffected by the Covid chaos, will expect a healthy winning margin.
Manu Tuilagi and Henry Slade offer power and guile in midfield while Jonny May and Adam Radwan could be the fastest wing pairing England have ever chosen.
But England have lost the chance of seeing Smith and Farrell together at 10 and 12 ahead of serious
challenges against the Wallabies and Springboks and that is a real setback.
However
Lawes, who could take over the captaincy in Farrell’s absence, insists the squad has responded well to the 11thhour disruption.
“There’s nothing we can do about it so we’ve just got on with it,” he said. “We had a really good team run that loosened everyone up.
“That should give us confidence going into the game.”