USE YOUR BRAINS OR IT’S OVER
Lancaster’s men must smarten up
THE HAUNTED look had receded slightly but Stuart Lancaster admitted he had not slept much, before rising early yesterday to start his post mortem into what went wrong at Twickenham.
As if throwing away a 10-point lead to lose at home to their Pool A rivals was not bad enough, he is facing the grave threat of being without six key men for the do-ordie clash with Australia.
Jonathan Joseph, Courtney Lawes, Ben Morgan, Billy Vunipola and Ben Youngs are injury doubts, while Tom Wood is in danger of being cited for kicking Liam Williams in the head. Defeat to the Wallabies would effectively end England’s campaign.
Yet i t could all have been so different had a thunderous match they dominated on Saturday night not somehow been lost. Instead of taking a giant step towards the quarter-finals, they were ambushed and are facing a pool-stage exit from their own extravaganza.
After all the years spent preparing and the millions of pounds committed to the cause, it does not bear thinking about for the host nation.
So much of the immediate postmatch focus was on their contentious late call to go for broke and kick for the corner, when a penalty would have surely ensured a draw. But in a sense, the damage had been done already. Control had been surrendered.
The game provided f urther damning proof that England cannot deliver an 80-minute performance with effective regularity. They are se e mingly i ncapable of reacting on the hoof to significant match patterns and could not deliver the points t heir fi r st- half dominance warranted.
The recurring theme is dubious decision-making. In this instance, England failed to adapt to a ref, Jerome Garces, who was policing the breakdown with draconian zeal.
Scrum- half Youngs, who was superb before going off injured, could not mask his angst. ‘You’ve got to realise what the ref is doing. You’ve j ust got to keep making tackles, roll away, get out of there. It was the same against France away. Our discipline was shambolic in the first half there and we’ve . . . we just can’t do it.
‘ Whether i t was silly, dumb, pressure, whatever, we were ill- disciplined and ultimately that cost us the game. We’ve got to make sure we’re smart. We’ve got to adapt to the ref quickly. If we haven’t worked it out after 72 minutes... it’s frustrating.’
Eight days earlier, England were not smart in failing to address a glaring tactical flaw that allowed the game to drift in favour of Fiji. There was post-match talk of messages being imparted at half-time, but Lancaster has e ndlessly trumpeted the notion of a leadership group, so they should not need problemsolving guidance from their coaches.
Against Wales, they kept committing the same ruck offences. This i s not to under- state the Welsh effort, because they were under siege in the setpiece yet their champions came to the fore when needed. Alun Wyn Jones was the colossus of Lions vintage while Taulupe Faletau will lurk in English nightmares after a rampaging display.
Dan Biggar’s goal-kicking, defence and decision-making was wondrous. He was battered but nailed the winning penalty from halfway.
Then there was the crucial Wales try, a fitting amalgamation of the home side’s brain-freeze tendencies and their rivals’ defiant spirit allied to individual brilliance. England rushed up, were woefully out of position, Wales worked the ball to the outside and Lloyd Williams showed great vision to deliver a low cross-kick into Gareth Davies’s path. Still, the scrum-half had to execute a difficult pick-up before crashing under the posts.
It’s now part of Welsh rugby folklore, but for Lancaster it was a travesty. ‘It was a situation we should have defended better,’ he said. ‘We got beaten on the edge. The players will be disappointed we allowed them to get that. That was the only chance they got to put any pressure on in either half.’ Asked to clarify where the fault lay, he said: ‘It was a poor decision. A poor read by a defender.’
The scenario was more complex. George Ford had just been sent on in place of Sam Burgess and that meant a reshuffle, with Owen Farrell shifting to inside centre. Seconds later, it was the fly-half and Brad Barritt who charged out of the line to leave themselves exposed out wide. It was an aberration; out of character for two of the English defensive linchpins.
Lancaster defended the decision to remove Burgess at a critical time, when the defence had held up well as a unit, due to a desire to have another kicker on the field. Yet the initial consequence was fleeting confusion which allowed Wales to turn the game.
Farrell was assured in his all-round game but there was a lack of craft in midfield. Burgess was a strong but far from dominant presence and Barritt will be under pressure following his defensive mistake. But when Lancaster was asked if he regretted his selection, he dismissed the notion.
‘In terms of scoring points, the team we started with were 22-12 up and we showed some good attacking intent throughout the first half. We built a good score, so I think we were set up to score points.’
There was a circling of English wagons in relation to the late penalty call which has generated fierce debate and cr i t i c i s m. Collective responsibility was the mantra, even though captain Chris Robshaw, who looked broken by his team’s fate, claimed the buck stopped with him.
What no-one was questioning was that England need to be smarter. When Lancaster considered his team’s attacking options for the decisive encounter with Australia on Saturday, he once again identified the crux of the issue as ‘ decisionmaking on the field’.
It cannot all come f rom the coaches’ box, with water- carriers delivering f resh orders. These players have to solve problems and adapt to events on their own, or this campaign is doomed.