Joseph is sure he can tame the beast in Bastareaud
MUCH of what Jonathan Joseph says about Saturday’s game against France makes it sound like it’s just another day at the office.
This is part of the defence mechanism some players adopt after a surprise defeat, but it’s also because his next assignment is stopping French outside-centre Mathieu Bastareaud – and ‘Basta’ is a 19 stone (120kg) beast.
If Joseph allows Bastareaud to whip up a storm at the Stade de France the damage will eclipse the ‘Beast from the East’, putting the freeze on England’s Six Nations aspirations as well as allowing their 2019 World Cup pool rivals to hit them with an icy warning blast.
The 6ft 1in Bastareaud outweighs the wiry Bath centre by five stone (32kg) and has such thunderous girth and thighs that, unless you have freakishly long arms, it is almost impossible to encircle them to make a tackle. That much was evident as he brought France back into life by pulverising Italy with a man-of-the-match performance in Marseilles, creating a try for Hugo Bonneval with a precision backhand offload, and then carrying four Azzurri defenders over the line for one of his own.
Even so, Joseph opts for understatement as he assesses the size of the Bastareaud challenge. “You don’t come up against guys like too often. He gets a lot of turnovers, he is a big physical carrier, so he is something quite different...I am sure as a team we will be able to handle him well.”
Not surprisingly, Joseph stresses the need for a collective England effort to stop the Toulon tank.
“With our defensive system more times than not you will get two-man tackles. You are probably going to need some help if you have one of the smaller guys attempting to tackle him. A lot of the boys have played against him before and know what to expect, (and) I have played against him a few times.”
Joseph says tackle technique is crucial. “It is not a case of size, it is more a case of making sure you are in the right body position and your tackle selection is the right one. You don’t want to get caught in a bad position when you are off balance and he is able to bump you off, and you don’t want to be at arms length and trying to reach for him. You have to do all the stuff to get in close.”
He adds: “You get him down early, whether it is a chop or whether you bring him over yourself.”
Joseph talks also about England taking ‘learnings’ from the loss to Scotland. “It was a game we didn’t quite get right. We park it, take the learnings from it and move on. We need to get back on track. No one is panicking – it is a game of rugby. More times than not you are going to lose a game throughout the year.”