Late collapses show players cannot think under pressure

Eddie Jones’s side were following in a rich English sporting tradition when they collapsed in Perth. From being 14-9 up with a man advantage entering the last quarter at the Optus Stadium, England conceded three tries in about the same time it used to take for Shane Warne to mop up the Poms’ tail over the Swan River at the Waca.

Jones, a keen cricket fan, will not appreciate the comparison but the England head coach should be far more alarmed by his side’s tendency to crumble in the last 20 minutes. This year, England have lost the final quarter of six of their seven matches, only beating Italy 7-0.

Until debutant replacements Henry Arundell and Jack van Poortvliet struck when the game was gone on Saturday, England had registered only one try in nearly 140 minutes of play during this critical period.

This statistic is even more concerning than the 11 tries England have scored in six Tests (five of which were against Italy) or four away wins since the World Cup (two in Rome). The perennial problems of indiscipline, lack of cutting edge and poor decision-making come into even greater focus in the final quarter, when the majority of matches are won or lost.

This is an issue that predates Jones. The Rugby Football Union looked for Jones to be “Eddie the Exorcist”, banishing the ghosts of the 2015 World Cup, as much as “Eddie the Super-coach”.

But those demons have never been conquered. As Jones said after the extraordinary 31-0 blown lead against Scotland in 2019: “It’s like we have some hand grenades in the back of a jeep and sometimes they go off when there’s a lot of pressure. We’ve got to get rid of them.”

Jones still drove that jeep to the 2019 World Cup final (where the Springboks won the final quarter 14-0), but the grenades have kept going off and there was yet another explosion at the Optus Stadium.

Jones was correct when he said England should have been further ahead than 14-9, which was not even taking into account Darcy Swain’s red card or the three key players Australia had lost to injury.

After conceding needless penalties either side of half-time converted by Noah Lolesio, England responded strongly through Ellis Genge’s try from a maul. They had another close-range maul. This time Australia stopped its progress. So Jack Nowell and then Lewis Ludlam carried into the guts of the Wallabies defence. But the cleaning crew of Jamie George and Maro Itoje both went off their feet. Michael Hooper

needed no second invitation to jackal the penalty.

“We let them off the hook a few times,” Danny Care, the scrum-half, said. “I thought at times we were about to cut loose.” At this point, the partisan Australian television commentators stated England were “starting to bully” the Wallabies. They were in control.

It felt uncannily similar to the position they were in at Murrayfield against Scotland in February when they led 17-10 at the hour. The catalyst for that defeat was Luke Cowandickie’s yellow card amid some rank indiscipline. The common theme was that in both cases England were unable to apply the old Sir Clive Woodward principle of TCUP (Thinking Correctly Under Pressure).

Mistakes abounded, from Billy Vunipola’s yellow card to allowing Hooper to snaffle another turnover on his own try-line after some sloppy clearing.

Most galling of all was the scrum with six minutes remaining. With both teams down to seven forwards, England scrummed with Ludlam at No 8 but without a blindside flanker. Australia targeted Will Stuart with a concerted shove. With no second shoulder to support him, the tighthead was crunched. Wallabies penalty. Game over. Again.

So are these recurrent collapses physical or psychological? Both Courtney Lawes and Itoje looked exhausted in the second half: no surprise when you consider they have played nearly 12 months of continuous rugby since the Lions tour. There have also been suggestions of Jones “flogging” players in training before the Barbarians defeat.

Tired players can be rested but the intractable problem is of England lacking the wherewithal to climb out of a hole. They seem unable to adapt to shifts in momentum. That is a mental issue, which may predate Jones but is coming to define the latter half of his reign.

Time for solutions is running out. England left Perth, the most isolated city in the world, but Brisbane – where the Wallabies have won their past 10 fixtures – is going to feel even more desolate unless Jones finally exorcises England’s late ghosts.

The British men’s and women’s eights won impressively at Henley Royal Regatta yesterday, the event back to its crowded, enthusiastic best after the 2020 cancellation and 2021 limitations on spectators.

The men’s eight blew straight through Australia’s national team entry, winning by nearly three lengths, in a time only three seconds off the Grand record and one second off the two intermediate markers. The women’s eight, made up of the four and two pairs, defeated a recently strengthened Australian crew by clear water.

As yet, Louise Kingsley, the GB Rowing director of performance, and the selectors are not convinced the team have enough strength in depth to field both small boats and an eight. So for this temporary project to have succeeded will raise interesting questions.

Australia had already gone clear when Britain’s fightback began, turning the screw between 500 and 1,000 metres and closing the race only one second outside the course record in still conditions.

The Stewards coxless fours went in the narrowest-ever margin for the event to an Australian quartet featuring three Tokyo Olympic champions. The British four, a new combination after changes due to illness, clung on as Australia took a length lead and then battled back through the roaring Enclosures. The final sprint, led by Freddie Davidson, took back half a length during an incredible last 15 strokes to give them the lead, but Australia won after their bow surged ahead by under a foot on the final stroke.

After the Australian men’s double beat Britain’s Matt Haywood and George Bourne by a mere third of a length, hostilities between the two nations will be resumed in Lucerne at next weekend’s World Cup, where Ollie Wynne-griffith and Tom George will have another chance against New Zealand, who conquered them by only two-thirds of a length.

Coach Bobby Thatcher produced one of the youngest crews to win the Princess Elizabeth Challenge Cup. His St Paul’s School eight contained a 15-year-old and two 16-year-olds, and won by a third of a length after holding the slimmest of leads against Radley’s feisty line-up and fending off repeated attacks over the second half of the course.

Oxford Brookes University won both the student men’s trophies, Leander won the Prince of Wales elite men’s quads for the 10th time, and Molesey got revenge over Thames by winning back the Thames Cup. Thames were victorious in the other three club events, setting records at every marker with their Wargrave women’s eight.