England must learn from recurring second half issue
AFTER Saturday’s incredible 38-all draw with Scotland Eddie Jones said he has a “good idea” why England have developed a tendency to throw away strong positions, but whether it will be as easy to fix the problem as he suggests is another matter.
For all his confidence in the postmatch news conference, Jones, like most people who watched the amazing Twickenham game, will surely have woken up wondering just how his team managed to blow a 31-0 lead against a Scotland team who were mere spectators in the opening halfhour. England needed an 83rd-minute try by George Ford to salvage a draw after they had been scoreless for a 50-minute period during which time the Scots ran in six tries.
Jones called it a “recurring theme” – referencing the Six Nations defeat in Cardiff last month and the first two games of last years’ tour to South Africa where England were well on top only to lose all three.
“It’s 100 percent mental... it’s not something you can fix easily but we know what the problem is.
“It’s going to take some digging deep into the team psyche but I think it’s a good lesson for us before the World Cup,” he said. “The players were just lacking the discipline to do the simple things over and over and maybe we got seduced by the scoreboard.
“You do that in a World Cup pool game against Tonga and you can find yourself in a different situation and we’d rather have those lessons now.”
England, though, have already had, and seemingly wasted, plenty of opportunities to learn, most recently in Cardiff where they looked like rabbit in the headlights in the last 20 minutes of a game they had controlled for the first half.
As Scotland’s Man of the Match flyhalf Finn Russell ran riot in the wide open spaces on Saturday the situation was crying out for England to deliver the rugby equivalent of “putting their foot on the ball” to settle the situation and regroup.
Unfortunately the man who should have been doing it, captain Owen Farrell was, by his own admission, instead at the heart of the problem.
He gave away two tries via a chargedown and an interception and seemed unable to settle his teammates into a period of simple possession that could and should have been able to stem the Scottish momentum.