TIGERS WILL MAKE ENGLAND ROAR
Youngs insists national team will benefit from blooming Leicester partnership with Ford
BEN YOUNGS says England will reap the benefit from his new Leicester club partnership with George Ford.
The Red Rose half-backs inspired Tigers to their first win of the season on a largely depressing weekend for rugby union.
Youngs grabbed a try double and Ford was perfect from the kicking tee as Gloucester were put away at Welford Road.
The pair bossed the first half and Youngs insists Ford’s return to Leicester bodes well for Eddie Jones’ national team. “Any experience you have as a partnership is going to benefit,” he said. “We’re working hard to get a telepathic understanding between one another.
“You’d like to think playing together every week you’re going to get a lot better understanding.”
Youngs and Ford had started 24 England Tests together before the latter chose to rejoin Leicester from Bath this summer.
But Youngs believes problem- solving together every week means that with England they are more likely to have answers to the questions posed as they have experienced them already.
“The conversation we’ve had over the last two weeks is what can we do better,” he added. “We’re desperate to improve and build that relationship.
“When things go well we’re able to learn from that. But equally, when they don’t, we understand, ‘Right, this is what we must do, this is what I need from you and you from me’. George understands the game unbelievably well.
“He knows everyone’s role and what they should be doing, so he’s able to coach while training. He demands excellence because he knows where he wants to get to and where the team needs to get to. He’s a perfectionist.”
Any perfectionists among rugby’s blazer brigade will be less satisfied with the weekend’s events. The number of empty seats at Leicester, England’s best-supported club, was a concern. But that paled alongside the pitiful attendance in Philadelphia, where Saracens and Newcastle drew a crowd of only 6,271.
Worse still in Port Elizabeth, Leinster’s Pro14 clash with South Africa’s Southern Kings was played in a virtually empty stadium. These are two examples of ill-thought-out projects by the sport.
Sarries and Newcastle struggle for crowds at home so why anyone thought switching the fixture to a non-rugby part of America would get the turnstiles spinning is a mystery.
To make rugby feel even worse, football – as in soccer, not gridiron – enjoyed its greatest American moment on the same day, with a MLS record 70,425 fans turning out to see Atlanta play Orlando.