Tuilagi is gamble but could unlock England puzzle
Australia are sure to target switch to wing while Jones is hoping variety that move offers will far outweigh any negatives
The pursuit of the unconventional has never been far from Eddie Jones’s thoughts. At the start of the 2019 World Cup year, the England head coach proposed the concept of selecting nine forwards, predicting the emergence of a “new breed of player” equally adept as a forward or a back. Jack Nowell suddenly found himself being talked about as an option at openside flanker.
The concept re-emerged last year when Ben Earl and Ollie Thorley were described as having the potential to be “hybid players”, an idea Jones had first experimented with in his former role as head coach of Japan, when he picked Hendrik Tui, a back-row forward, on the wing for Japan against Georgia. Which brings us to the latest incarnation: the eye-catching and undoubtedly high-risk selection of Manu Tuilagi on the right wing for England for the Test against Australia tomorrow.
Amid the public craving for Marcus Smith to be handed his first start at fly-half against a tier-one country, the question mark appeared to be: who would give way in the midfield?
With Jones determined to go with his instinct that Smith and Owen Farrell have the potential to emerge as a 10-12 partnership similar to New Zealand’s Dan Carter and Aaron Mauger and Australia’s version of Stephen Larkham and Rod Kafer, Henry Slade looked to be destined to be the unfortunate fall guy, given Tuilagi’s irresistibly powerful display against Tonga.
No one had reckoned on Jones’s solution: pick them all, a curve ball that is likely to have left England’s former attacking strategist Scott Wisemantel, now in the green and gold corner, redrafting the Wallabies’ game plan. If it was a tough call to omit Adam Radwan from the match-day squad, the Tuilagi selection as a “third centre” adds a fascinating subplot and a delightful twist to England’s attacking ambitions.
One has to go back to Dunedin in 2014 for the only time the Sale Sharks centre was deployed on the wing in an England shirt, and it has happened on just a handful of occasions during his club career.
The showreel of that England game, which they lost 28-27 to New Zealand, includes a length-of-thefield break by Tuilagi, only for him to be felled five metres before the line after being run down by Ben Smith. Yet overall the experiment was deemed to have been a failure. He was targeted by New Zealand’s kicking game and too often found himself out of position.
There is no doubt that Australia, although habitually less inclined to kick the ball, will go after Tuilagi, but England do not intend to leave him hugging the touchline tomorrow. Instead he will be deployed in a mix-and-match role, giving England another destructive ball-carrying “hybrid” option outside the running and kicking threats of Smith, Farrell and Slade.
“The fluidity of the game demands that [people pop up in all different roles],” said Jones. “If you look at the possession we get, we get 40 per cent structured and 60 per cent unstructured, when there are five million different scenarios. So their ability to fill a role, to have the awareness to either play close to the ball or away from the ball is just so important. If the game keeps getting quicker, as World Rugby wants at the moment, then I foresee there will be more fluidity in the game, particularly in the unstructured, and therefore players who can be adaptable are so important.”
Tuilagi’s dramatic conditioning improvements, including losing up to six kilograms, have been key to making this switch possible. The question remains as to whether Tuilagi will have had enough time to adapt to his new position during the camp, but this is the autumn for Jones to experiment and his bench selection is also intriguing, with Sam Simmonds recalled in a six-two split on the bench.
With Alex Dombrandt also on the bench, England will have pace and power to inject to the forward contest in the final quarter, while Bevan Rodd and Raffi Quirke will make their debuts if called upon.
Jones’s England have won all seven of their previous meetings with his native Australia, but tomorrow’s contest could be the most revealing of them all.