Farrell the main man but everyone a leader in Jones’ new look
Head coach has tough decisions to make over retaining the old guard for the World Cup
Leadership is one of those subjects that you consider only when a team are losing. At the moment, England are flying, so the significant shake-up that has occurred in the past 12 months may have escaped a few people’s attention.
The most obvious symbol of that is Owen Farrell taking over from Dylan Hartley as captain, a handover which was very smoothly handled. Even when Hartley returns, this is Farrell’s team now. All the doubters regarding his perceived petulance and spikiness are slowly fading away. The added responsibility seems to have enhanced his game.
I remember when Clive Woodward took over as England coach, there was a massive hoo-ha about who he would choose as captain. In the newspapers, Lawrence Dallaglio was listed at evens, Martin Johnson at 2-1, Jason Leonard at 4-1 and Austin Healey at 200-1. The first time I introduced myself to Clive at Bisham Abbey, I said: “I know that you are thinking of making Lawrence captain, but I’m 200-1 so make me captain and we can each put £50,000 on that.” He just started laughing, but it was his loss.
Just as significant as the change of captain is the absence of so many of his original lieutenants. As well as Hartley (97 caps), Eddie Jones started this Six Nations without James Haskell (77), Chris Robshaw (66), Dan Cole (85), Danny Care (84), Jonathan Joseph (40) and Mike Brown (72) in his squad. Some of those were Jones’ choices, some were not, but that is a total of 521 caps which was missing for a mammoth trip to Dublin.
Now they must to go to Cardiff a week tomorrow without two more senior players in Maro Itoje and Mako Vunipola. Itoje seems an obvious leader, but Mako may be just as influential. Sometimes leaders are extremely vocal, speak their mind a lot, control proceedings and team meetings. Then you have these silent-assassin types, who are invariably frontrowers in my experience. At Leicester we had Darren Garforth and, for England, it was Phil Vickery. By saying nothing and doing everything, they become a leader in their own right.
Leadership is just everybody in their team doing their job. As captain, you let them get on with doing their job and, occasionally, if someone is slacking, you just point it out. I think leadership is being true to yourself as a team and as an individual and performing as best you possibly can. Sometimes in England we can get hung up on the cult of the captain. We want our captain to be like a general rallying his troops to go over the top with some great Churchillian speech. In
In England, we can get hung up on the cult of the captain. The importance is a bit of an urban myth
my experience, it does not work like that and if you ask Martin Johnson about it, he would snort at it. The importance of captaincy is a bit of an urban myth.
There will be a load of people who read this and say that’s rubbish, you need a strong captain. England have that in Farrell, but the collective leadership and environment is more important than the quality of a single team talk. Leadership can take many different forms. If you are playing well, then everyone is a leader. You can have great orators, guys who have the been-there-and-done-it badge and even someone like Jack Nowell, who can come off the bench and inspire everyone with his work-rate.
I think you can see someone such as Henry Slade, who is naturally quiet, really growing into a leadership role. As a young lad, when you arrive at an England team meeting, you think, “I have an idea here but I will tell someone when we leave the room.’” There was a point in my career, somewhere between 20 and 30 caps, when I thought: “There is an opportunity here to help the team.”
There is a definite switch that flicks in your head between someone who is absorbing the environment to someone impacting the environment.
The real question is how comfortable will Jones be in leaving all those caps at home for the World Cup. Cole has come back in from the cold, but have some of these other guys served their purpose in the Jones project?
Probably the most interesting question is what will Jones do when Hartley is fit again, given that Jamie George has not missed a beat so far? The argument that England are reliant upon Hartley’s leadership no longer holds much weight, but are 97 caps of experience more important than the energy of a thruster like Luke Cowan-dickie? Just 12 months ago, there is no question who Jones would have chosen. Now, I am not so sure.