Now Eddie must ensure England can switch the plan mid-game
So at last Eddie Jones has proven his England team have a plan B as he totally changed the game plan for last week’s game against Italy from what we had seen in the previous two games.
Bringing in the big boys to bash up the opposition was a game too late to keep England’s Grand Slam dreams alive. Jones showed what could and should have been the alternative game England needed to play against Wales when their kicking game failed.
Let’s not forget the hero of last week’s game, the ‘smiling assassin’ Manu Tuilagi, started and played the whole game against Wales, but as England persisted in playing the Plan A kicking game, he failed to make the impact we all expected.
Showing what should have been obvious to all – the inability of just one player to change the tactics of a game. A lesson Jones appears to have learned, as against Italy he employed all his ‘big guns’ in the backs with Ben Teo, Tuilagi and Joe Cokanasiga offering threats across the pitch.
Playing a Plan B is not the answer in itself as all it shows is, with a change of personnel, you will play a different game, which is what would be expected. It could be argued that the team that put Italy to the sword would also lose to Wales because it, too, showed an inflexibility in how they played the game.
Eddie Jones has now proved that his England can play, and have at least two styles of game with which to challenge their opponents. What he has yet to show is that they can switch between the two plans when the need arises in a single game.
The ability to change your game may sound easy, just a matter of making an alteration in tactics by bringing on different players to change how the team plays, but it’s not that simple.
I’ve played in games when we have known what we were doing as a team wasn’t working but because it had worked before there was an underlying false confidence that if we kept on playing the same way we would eventually succeed just because it worked before.
One example was the Five Nations in 1990, where England played a different style of rugby to how we had played before, relying on a more backs-led attack, moving the ball wide rather than the forward-orientated game England were known for.
We had won our three previous games with ease and travelled to Scotland for a Grand Slam finale against an unbeaten Scotland in a winner-take-all match.
An early score by Jerry Guscott boosted our confidence in the style that had served us well in the previous games but a robust Scotland came back and played their traditional game to win and claim the Grand Slam.
The following year we went back to our traditional game and won the Grand Slam only to repeat our attempt at open rugby in the World Cup final and lose to Australia.
We again reverted to our traditional game for the next Five Nations and won back-to-back Grand Slams (91, 92) for the first time in 67 years, and we remain the only Home Nations team to achieve that feat since the 1920’s.
That gave us an underlying confidence in our traditional game plan that led to defeat the following year because we, as a team, could not switch if our opposition negated our forwards.
The inability to switch game plans would usually result in a loss when I played, because players under pressure have a tendency to revert to their known strengths and need the intervention of someone not physically involved on the pitch. However, unlike now it was harder to do that, as the coach could not instruct the payers on the pitch once the game had started nor bring on substitutes to change the game.
In the modern game it’s at those pressure moments that a coach has to exert his authority with substitutions to change the dynamic and style of play of the team. None of the teams in this year’s Six Nations have shown they are able to switch game plans when Plan A goes wrong and despite yesterday’s results, winning or losing this Six Nations will not guarantee a World Cup performance.
The closeness of this year’s Championship with everything coming down to the last weekend shows that there is no ‘standout’ team here in Europe, meaning there is still a lot of work to do if we want a second Northern Hemisphere World Cup win.
No team has shown the levels of consistency needed in this season’s Six Nations, and it is consistency that every team needs if they are to have any hope of bringing home the Webb Ellis trophy. It’s good to hear (if not totally unexpected) that Manu Tuilagi has re-signed for Leicester Tigers as it shows he has a wise agent who knows where the real money is.
Racing may have offered more than Tigers on paper but when you add in the RFU match fees and win bonuses, plus the sponsorship revenue from playing for England, I am sure he won’t be too much out of pocket when he finally leaves Leicester.
“None of the teams have shown they are able to switch game plan if Plan A goes wrong”