Coach has earned right to find solution to slump

Yes, England are ailing but a charge of paralysis by analysis does not stand up to scrutiny

Oh we of little faith. The fickle nature of the sporting life has particularly sharp focus this Saturday, with Eddie Jones in danger of passing from hero to villain in three weeks, a turbocharged fall by any standards. If England’s back row could move with such alacrity to the breakdown then the knives that are being sharpened would still be very much in the kitchen drawer.

Jones deserves better. The England head coach has earned a stay of critical execution. He himself noted a few weeks back that it was curious that when things were not going quite so well he is billed as ‘the Australian’ in many articles. Jones is very much England head coach.

Those who argue that England’s demise has been caused by overcoaching, by a reaction to the driven nature of the man who admits to rising at 4am and was firing off emails in the wake of the Murrayfield defeat, are planting a convenient theory on to a situation crying out for explanation, any explanation, even if it is wrong.

How have England gone from a position of global excellence, with a pre-tournament record (22 wins in 23 Tests) that stands against the finest in the history of the game, to one where bafflement and rebuke are the order of the day? That they could finish as low as fifth in the championship were results to pan out a certain way at the weekend beggars belief. Ian Ritchie, former chief executive of the Rugby Football Union, was skilfully pushed into a corner one year after England had again finished runners-up, when asked if it were “unacceptable” for a country of such resource to continually come second? There is no way out of answering that question except with a yes.

Jones has brought significant things to England’s account. A Grand Slam and back-to-back titles to boot is not the stuff of luck or happenstance. That is why he must be backed to find a way through this mini-crisis.

The charge of overcoaching, of paralysis by analysis, does not stand much scrutiny, as if coaches laying down rigid game plans, on insisting that this or that must be done at any given point on the field of play inevitably leads to leaden, brain-dead performances. True, England are playing that way at the moment, lacking spark and wit and reactive intelligence, but if coaching by the book, or playing by numbers, were an inevitable blight on producing good rugby, then how to explain the success of Ireland under Joe Schmidt?

It is not the manner of the coaching that is necessarily at fault. And Jones himself is not the autocratic coach he once was. As the game has changed, so has he. Players are empowered to make decisions on the hoof. England are simply not doing that just now.

There has to be confidence in Jones that he will sort it out. I do not buy the theory, either, that all of his coaching tenures have hit the wall at the mid-point, his critics claiming that he is a very good firefighter, a master of the quick fix but little else besides. That is to deny what he did with many teams across the last couple of decades.

Of course he is a tough taskmaster. Of course there have been issues in the various set-ups. His back-room staff are worked hard and some struggle to cope.

This generation of England players, though, do not seem to find issue with either his working demands or his attitude. That is not to say that there are no concerns. Jones’s statement that much of the explanation for England’s difficulties at the breakdown stems from the more laissez-faire approach of refereeing in Pro14 and Top 14 does not cut it, nor does an observation that that particular phase of play has become more about power. Mind you, saying that it will take until the World Cup in 2019 to fix is hokum. It can be done effectively enough by the time Ireland arrive at Twickenham.

Rugby has always been about a blend of power and pace. The game cannot be played without power. And to infer that somehow England are not instinctively tuned to smashing people out of the way at the breakdown solely because of the way the Premiership is refereed is nonsense.

How much sophistication is required to work out that those blue-shirted French blokes over the ball need to be blasted clear? Or how much awareness does it take to realise that you need to get a metre nearer to the ball-carrier, or time the approach run better, so that your team-mate does not get isolated.

These players are seasoned internationals. The majority have been playing rugby since they were five or six years old. The essence of the game has not changed that much. The context might have done, but not the basics: run, pass, find support, smash the opposition and so on.

England are in a pickle. Of that there is no doubt. There are selection matters to tend to – Don Armand at least on to the bench, Owen Farrell to fly-half, Ben Te’o to inside centre and maybe others, but the chief need is for perspective.

England are ailing and are in urgent need of a pick-me-up performance. But Eddie Jones is not a spent force.

Players can make decisions on the hoof. England are simply not doing that just now