Ford will be key to England ambitions to attack with flair
Hclash in Dublin has become season-defining encounter hadopting a ‘run first’ policy will depend on speed of ball
Breakdown
This is going to test everyone – and not least the referee. Both teams are going to go after each other at the breakdown. Ireland have more “jackallers” in their team so there is less time and less material on opposition teams to analyse. The analysis provides only the finishing touch but Kruis says most sides’ advantages come from experience and familiarity.
“The focus changes more on to how do you want to be? How does the team want to be? Rather than how do we react to what the other team are doing?” Kruis says. “A lot of the hard work goes into knowing the roles, knowing the scenarios and the patterns that you are going to face, which come from years and years of work, rather than the few hours at the beginning of the week when you start analysing them.”
That is not to say Kruis does not
England must be careful not to allow isolated runners, players who sense a half gap and go off script.
Three times against France, Mako Vunipola, Billy Vunipola and Max Malins got away from their support and were penalised. The counter-argument would be it was the support runners’ lack of awareness that caused the problem: if you sense a team-mate is about to have a go and attack a gap, then first and foremost protect him and the ball.
Support players must pick up their body signals, change plan and “staff ” the breakdown, especially if
a good tackle is made, and a ruck formed. England were slow in among the frenzied French pace to identify the danger and it allowed the French in and over the ball.
Ireland’s back row are all Jedis in this area, and Tadhg Beirne is ridonkulously good (I felt he needed his own word to describe his brilliance to snap himself in half at his hips and fire his blue scrum
Iain Henderson is magnificent at this from the second row.
Tom Curry saved the English on their own line just before half-time after Teddy Thomas, Dylan Cretin and Antoine Dupont had gone 75 metres up the left flank. Focus will be required all game. One counter-ruck from France fortunately ended up with three points for England when Romain Taofifenua went off his feet, but later on Damian Penaud bundled Ellis Genge off the ball to win the French a penalty.
England won three points of their own in the first half through Curry getting over Cyril Baille. They are by no means second-rate citizens at the breakdown, but it would not be in their list of collective areas of excellence. The Irish are a step up in this area.
England will have to maintain their edge, but walk the fine line of control. One thing I would work on would be the opportunities for jackals or turnovers in and around Luke Cowan-dickie’s defensive technique. Cowan-dickie is a brilliant chop tackler – the one he executed on Gregory Alldritt resulted in the Curry penalty described above. Against Virimi Vakatawa in a wide channel (see left), another resulted in a turnover by Malins. His ability to get his opponent to deck quickly opportunity for defenders either
side. devote hours of analysis to opposition line-outs. However, the goal is less about how to crack the code of the entire calling system, rather to take away their main go-to option, so their plans can be disrupted.
“If you make a team do something other than what they want to do, then that’s where you cause mistakes,” Kruis said. “You are forcing them to play something unnatural.
“It is about knowing that you have got them under pressure and they don’t have a lot to turn to, so you can encourage your 10s that it is fine to kick off-field. When you get games where you can impose that on others, that’s when you feel like all that work has paid off.”
England intend to take into today’s season-shaping match against Ireland the same bold, attacking attitude that served them so well two years ago, when they scored within a couple of minutes and went on to win in Dublin for the first time in six years.
That win was the first in a sequence of four victories over Ireland, a confidence-booster as England look to avoid a defeat that would consign them to possibly their equal-worst finish in the Six Nations championship and also their first Celt-wash, following the losses to Scotland and Wales.
George Ford will be a pivotal figure in England’s determination to build on last weekend’s bracing victory over France.
That game featured the sort of vivid, ball-in-hand sequences that seemed a lost art for Eddie Jones’s side in the Autumn Nations Cup, when Ford himself described the prospect of having the ball under defensive pressure as a “ticking time bomb”, hence the soul-destroying spectacle of so much kicking.
Those dull, leaden days would seem to be rooted in the past, with the 2021 Guinness Six Nations serving up plenty of positive rugby.
Ford wins his 77th cap in Dublin, third only to Owen Farrell and Jonny Wilkinson in England’s alltime fly-half lists, and he hopes to stay true to his own basic instincts.
“I always think run first,” Ford said. “Even in the autumn, that was my thinking. I know a lot has been made of that [timebomb] phrase, but it is about having a feel for the game.
I base my [run first] decision off the speed of ball, momentum, and is it on to keep ball in hand, is it on to put pressure on the opposition by getting the ball to space?
That is always my first thought,” he said.
“Even against France, after they had scored early on, I would never have envisaged us having so many balls to attack with in the next 20 to 25 minutes. But we have got to make sure we are ready for whenever opportunity comes. The key is to be ready to do it at the right time. We want to leave it all out there against Ireland. We want to be a real threat with ball in hand and attack.”
England’s dismal opening to the championship has been offset by the tone of their 23-20 win over title-chasing France. Yet that upbeat mood music would take on a more sombre quality if they were to lose against Ireland. England have only once finished lower than fourth place, a losing streak in 2018 meaning they slumped to fifth, so there is plenty riding on the result at the Aviva Stadium.
“We see it as coming back in, after the Wales game, knowing we had two of the best teams in Europe in France and Ireland to play and you couldn’t ask for two more competitive, challenging games,” Ford said.
“We wanted to put some brilliant performances out there to get two wins. That’s how we saw it and that’s not changed. We want to win tomorrow because that’s what it’s about.”
There is little doubt that the forward exchanges will shape Ford’s agenda, with defence coach John Mitchell promising “a war at the breakdown”, with Ireland “a tenacious country, a tenacious side fighting b----- hard for each other. They will see it as an opportunity against us and rip in”.
Ford is head to head with Ireland captain Johnny Sexton, a double Lion, but the Leicester fly-half dismisses any talk of this game being some sort of selection audition in front of head coach Warren Gatland. The 28-year-old is often under-appreciated in the shadow of Owen Farrell, yet he pledges himself to the cause with renewed vigour every time he gets selected for England, starting or otherwise. Ireland’s kicking game, through Conor Murray or Sexton, will be a key feature and Mitchell was clear: “We are under no illusions as to what to expect”, with reference to the aerial game. But if Ford manages to get the quality of ball that he received against France and England prosper, then it may just be that Gatland can add another name to his fly-half roster.
Pivotal: England’s George Ford will set the tone but will need quick ball for attacks