England need to recover ruthless streak – and fast
In the last Six Nations England received a lot of praise for a spirited performance when they were down to 14 men for most of the game against Ireland. How close they came, we marvelled, but in the end the Irish found a way to quell the English spirit.
On Saturday in Perth, England could not do the same to their Australian hosts and only two last-gasp tries gave a semblance of respectability to the final score. Ultimately, England can pretend all they like – they were outfought for large parts of the game when they had a man advantage.
The Aussies showed courage in fashioning the win, but they should not have been given the chance, not after the red card and losing Quade Cooper in the warm-up and first-choice full-back after just 22 minutes.
The strange thing is that for the first 30 minutes England were going along nicely. They were winning the physical battle and fashioned a couple of early line breaks, even though they could not convert either. They were 14-9 up going into the final quarter but could not see the game out.
When Eddie Jones went on his record-equalling sequence of successive wins before the last World Cup, I wrote that they had developed the useful habit of staying in games and eventually winning them. But it is a worrying trend, my colleague has calculated, that in the past 12 games England have found ways to either lose the final quarter or the match as a whole in eight of them. Good sides do not relinquish such advantages; certainly not if they have a man advantage.
The unevenness of England’s performance was seen in many facets of play. They started by bossing the breakdowns and their ball-carrying was more effective. They ended by being shunted around and counterrucked, and their scrum went wrong at crucial times.
At the scrum that gave Australia their first points, England got it horribly wrong. Both flankers, Courtney Lawes and Tom Curry, lost contact with their props. Curry ended up scrummaging on the Australian loosehead and Lawes alongside the second row. When a prop does not have the weight of his flanker behind him, he has to take all the pressure from the opponent’s prop, second row and flanker. There is hardly a prop around that can hold that force.
The axis of Marcus Smith at No10 and Owen Farrell at inside centre did not work. The more you watched them you could see that they both wanted to play at fly-half. The centre partnership, this time between Farrell and Joe Marchant, was workmanlike at best.
Jones said after the game that he and his side remained committed to winning the series 2-1. What he omitted to say was that the first Test is the most advantageous for any touring side and if you do not win it, you face a desperate scrap.
On the subject of finding settled units, I offer no apology for returning to this topic as it is
seminal in providing England with the best chance at the World Cup. Unfortunately, Jones will have got scant indication of who should feature long term. As said, the Smith-farrell axis did not gel but it is very recent and Jones will not be keen to drop either. Marchant did several things well but his pairing with Farrell means England have no power carrier in the centres.
The back three were reshuffled and did not spark. Their potency increased with the late introduction of Henry Arundell, who left three defenders in a heap as he scored an outrageous try with his first touch in international rugby. Do you start Arundell? If so, is that not hard on Freddie Steward, who has done nothing wrong, or do you make a change on the wing?
Finally to the back row. When England wilted in a crucial 10-minute period in the second half, that included the back row and Jones should revert to the combination that served him so well of Billy Vunipola, Curry and Sam Underhill.
All is not over but there are significant issues that Jones must address. Any decision he must make will involve pain for someone but, with all that said, this is why he is paid the big bucks.