Hungry Boks will target this rookie back row
South Africa will look at the back row England have selected today and think they are going to have a field day. They will know that Brad Shields, Tom Curry and Mark Wilson have 10 caps between them and that none of them has even appeared in a Test match at Twickenham before.
They will think they can dominate them and make them fall apart under pressure, something which happens so often to inexperienced players. If I were in the Boks’ shoes I would be thinking the same way, and I do not mind admitting I really fear for England’s back row this afternoon.
But, that said, it is not a foregone conclusion that they will come a distant second-best in a two-horse race. Shields, Curry and Wilson will know a good performance today could go a long way to securing a seat on the plane to Japan for the World Cup, and they will not lack for motivation.
But to perform well you have to work together and play with your head rather than your heart. I have been a young back row and I know how you can either become desperate, diving into every breakdown, or forget the specific role you are meant to be playing and instead start relying on instinct. That means you play as you do with your club rather than your country, which can be terminal to your game plan.
England’s back row have to work as a unit, communicating which breakdown they are attacking or leaving alone. I have no doubt the Boks will target them on the floor and knowing when to commit and when to step back will likely decide the game.
The issue is that understanding your team-mates takes a lot of time. Over my career I developed a rapport with Heather Fisher, Sarah Hunter and Marlie Packer that meant I knew with a look when to attack and when to stand off. It made us all better players, but it took a few years to get to that point.
So England’s three will have to know their roles inside out and stick to them. For Shields, that means dogged defence and being a breakdown nuisance, while Curry will be expected to look for jackal turnovers and Wilson must run hard with the ball. Curry, in particular, has the Springboks’ respect and I hope he shows everyone today just how good he is.
But the lingering concern is that the lack of experience is so difficult to overcome, even if Shields and Wilson are hardly callow youngsters and have been regulars at their clubs for a number of years. The issue is that when things start to go wrong – and they will at some point this afternoon – you do not know how to halt the slide. You need to know how to ride the storm in international rugby but that takes time, which England just do not have.
Unfortunately, that means it will be a case of the blind leading the blind and England need Dylan Hartley to have one of his finest games, both as hooker and as captain, to keep them on course.
But South Africa will run at them hard and will contest every breakdown as if their lives depended on it. They will be looking to break England’s “connectivity” in defence, which happens when you commit too many men to a ruck and are left chasing shadows elsewhere. If that happens, you see players lose their heads and a perfect example of that was when Maro Itoje flew out to try and smash Faf de Klerk in the first Test against the Boks this summer but missed his man, allowing the scrum-half to score. That was a mistake born of desperation, and if you see anyone trying anything similar today you will know England are in trouble. I think England will be pleased if they achieved parity in the back-row battle against Siya Kolisi, Duane Vermeulen and Warren Whiteley.
England will come out of the blocks and their best chance of victory would be to get a healthy lead early on as the lack of experience will be felt most keenly in the final quarter. If South Africa are level going into that, I fear the worst. But if England’s back row can shine then anything is
possible.