Captain Farrell ‘a genius’ for England, says George
JAMIE George views Owen Farrell as a rugby "genius" whose presence has grown with his promotion to the England captaincy.
While Jonny May brought Twickenham to its feet by grabbing a hattrick of tries in Sunday's 44-8 victory over France, it was Farrell who orchestrated the downfall of feeble opponents.
The Saracens playmaker (pictred), assisted by half-back partner Ben Youngs, expertly exploited the acres of space available in the backfield through a variety of kicks as England registered their biggest win in the fixture since 1911.
In the injury-enforced absence of co-captain Dylan Hartley, Farrell has taken over as sole leader of the team and his Saracens team-mate George believes he is thriving as a result.
"The bloke's a genius. I never see him have a bad game and that's why he's one of the best players in the world, if not the best player in the world," George said.
"In my eyes, it's amazing to be playing with a fly-half and captain who is as dominant as he is and who leads from the front in the way that he does.
"Owen's been a captain and leader for a long time now. It's not a new thing for us but he does it really well and it brings the best out of him in terms of his game. He's performing really well."
May elevated his strike rate to 12 tries in as many Tests after breaching the fragile French whitewash three times inside the opening half hour.
Two of the scores were touch downs of kicks made possible by his speed, but his remarkable pace was also evident in the second when he outfoxed wing Damian Penaud from a standing start.
When asked if May's form makes him unstoppable at the moment, George replied: "Can no-one tell him that please! We need to keep his feet on the ground!
"We're really happy for him because he works incredibly hard. People think he's just this fast kid who happens to be good at rugby, but he puts a huge amount of time into his preparation.
"He probably does more than anyone else in the squad, so he deserves all the praise he gets."
England have dismantled Ireland and France on successive weekends in a majestic start to the Six Nations that has plotted a course to a showdown with Wales on February 23 that could emerge as a title decider.
Wales are also unbeaten and George, now the team's first-choice hooker ahead of Hartley following another superb afternoon, knows Eddie Jones' tournament favourites face a tough assignment in Cardiff.
"We have to be aware that we did well against France but recognise that it wasn't the perfect performance," George said.
"We really did a lot of analysis. We focused on ourselves a lot this week and tried to make sure we put our best performance out there.
"We still didn't do that, so an exciting thing for us is there's still a lot to come.
The important thing for us is to keep the ball rolling."