England undone by childish behaviour
Despite the fact that they were the first games of the tours, all the hopes and dreams of the North went south last week.With England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland all failing to find a winning formula we have to ask why?
Scotland discovered that playing in Argentina is not the same as playing at home against Argentina and you have to put in a much bigger effort to win. Argentina is rather like playing a French club, because when playing away from home they never put in the level of performance they show in front of their home crowd, which sometimes catches their opponents out.
The same can be said of New Zealand who always prove their status as the ‘benchmark’ for the game when at home by hitting Ireland with a quick start during the first half that took the game away. Wales, on the other hand were the better team against a slow starting South Africa who in the end had to rely on Welsh indiscipline to provide the opportunity for a late winner. Of these three only Scotland look likely to be able to turn the tables on their opponents and win the series. Meanwhile, England’s failure against Australia was after fielding what is probably Eddie Jones’s first choice team (barring the absence of Manu Tuilagi) which displayed a failure of leadership, off and on the field.
What a way to start the tour, as England who began the game well, then slowly fell apart against a 14man Australian team, made worse by Jones trying to blame England’s failure on the fact that the referee had sent off one of the Australian players. An excuse that was just about as pathetic and implausible than his explanation for the loss against the Barbarians as ‘an unnecessary game of no consequence’.
If Jones really believes what he says, he should spend more time encouraging his players to do their best to keep 15 opponents on the field, rather than making his unsupported comments about referees to the press.
Although this sounds disloyal, I must admit that in some ways I was pleased that Australia managed to turn the game around after losing Darcy Swain to a red card. Normally I don’t comment on cards awarded as now they are so common and are given for almost every offence or non offence that does or does not take place.
As for the game itself, I was expecting an experienced and mature England pack to show some physical power and controlled aggression in subduing the Australians. However, what we saw was experienced players attempting to
“Hill has struck Swain in the face and pulled his hair throughout a maul”
create frustration by targeting individuals with unnecessary and immature childish acts like pushing, screaming and in Jonny Hill’s case, hair pulling.
Personally, I don’t understand how Hill, right, was able to return to the pitch after his yellow card and wasn’t cited given his almost endless provocations towards Swain in front of the referee, to the point where Swain just lost it. If Swain had just punched Hill and started a fight rather than the slight head butt he might well have got a yellow card instead of red, given Hill’s actions. As I watched the incidents unfold I couldn’t help thinking of Nigel Owens’ comment: ‘This is not football!’
Hill had struck Swain in the face and then he blatantly and continually pulled his hair throughout a maul. Although Hill’s actions were certainly not as bad as the eye gouging or testicle squeezing that happened when I played, it was still an act of unnecessary provocation that achieved the intended result. For me, it was the fact that Hill when struck with what wasn’t a full on head butt, turned immediately to the touch judge, with arms innocently outstretched, and appealed for an intervention. An act that seemed to indicate it was a predetermined plan designed to get Swain sent off either with a yellow or a red card.
I am the first to admit that frustrating the opposition is something all teams do in an attempt to put them off their game and was something the team I played for were very good at, particularly when playing against the French. However, we never sought to have players sent off by directly appealing to the match officials and we planned our own retribution for any overtly violent act perpetrated against one of our teammates.
What makes all of this worse is this seems to be the only tactic England had worked on and took precedence over all others.
The attacking axis of Owen Farrell and Marcus Smith never really happened and is still a work in progress as Farrell seems to dominate the decisions by moving Smith to a secondary position. Even so, there were some bright spark moments in the game with Jack van Poortvliet and Henry Arundell scoring tries on their England debut and a robust performance by Ellis Genge.
Sadly, all this was overshadowed by the childish behaviour from a few players we expect to be the more mature leaders of the team.
Eddie Jones is more or less guaranteed to stay until the World Cup, as what coach in his right mind would take over this close, so we can only hope with everything crossed that England can save face.