Caution needed over Nowell’s role change
EDDIE Jones may well have been suffering from delayed jet-lag when he announced his Six Nations squad and more than hinted that he was considering playing Jack Nowell as a flanker.
Perhaps he miscalculated when April 1st is due.
There was not a suggestion that there might be a learning process, so we can safely assume that the Exeter threequarter’s change of position was being used to deflect attention from something else.
It is not such an outrageous proposition to move players around if the change can be effective, but there would probably be more mileage in a back moving occasionally to the tail of a lineout so that he can use his pace in defence or he can enter the attaching line from an unusual angle.
So far, so good. However, the move from the backs to the forwards would be extremely tiring for any back without months of acclimatisation and many games at club level, let alone on the international stage.
The constant forward tussles would nullify any potential injection of pace so you would end up with no gain but plenty of pain.
It is not as if a change of position has not been in vogue.
Not too long ago it was all the rage to try to get more dynamism and athleticism into the hooking slot.
Back row forwards were at the front of the line for the experiment and England certainly dangled the carrot with A international berths to encourage the process.
It still came to nothing because the players who had previously roamed the field in attack and defence were suddenly trapped in the middle of a game within a game. And generally it was a foreign world to them.
Things got even more complex after the sumo wrestling at scrum time – and they had to get the ball to a pretty precise spot in the lineout.
They could reproduce the skill in training, but when the scrum had taken its physical toll they had little idea where the oval ball might end up and the jumpers would mutter something unprintable about experiments when they were the ones who might cop the blame.
Yet changing from backs to forwards has been done before – and at Gloucester.
The move was not as radical as backs to hooker, but the Cherry and Whites did get ahead of England, Eddie Jones and Jack Nowell when Mike Longstaff took those fateful steps from playing with the girls in the backs and joined up with the real men in the forwards as a flanker.
Mike was a decent enough player and could manage in just about any position in the threequarters.
But when he made the move to the back row we saw a totally different player.
He was never one to jump up to volunteer for a potentially suicidal tackle, but when he got 7 on his back he roamed the defensive world like a colossus.
And as a link player to keep backs’ movements going, he was a breath of fresh air and well ahead of his time.
In a professional game there has to be scope for utilising players’ skills to the full, but the advantage that the amateur game had was time and a second team and a full fixture list for those United players.
There was opportunity to give seemingly madcap ideas a decent chance without having to start the process at the top.
The players in the Premiership are out on their feet in may cases and Exeter and Nowell needed this idea like a hole in the head.
However, it might open up the debate of how players’ skills can be best used.
There is no law that is set in stone that states that a player must play in one position on the pitch and he must stay in that role for the full 80 minutes.
Josh Hohneck, come on down; you are now a 10.