Eddie’s scary white-knuckle ride just got even scarier!
NICK CAIN TRIES TO GET BEHIND THE THINKING OF EDDIE JONES AS HE NAMES HIS WORLD CUP SQUAD OF 31
WHEN it comes to explaining events as part of an over-arching strategy there are few more adept than Eddie Jones. However, that ability should not be allowed to mask the reality that ‘Fast Eddie’ got his England World Cup selection master-plan more than a year out of kilter by not axing his old guard sooner.
This goes a long way to explaining why the 31-man squad he announced for the 2019 tournament on Monday in Bristol confounded most midterm predictions, as well as leaving his assertion that he knew nearly all his squad two years ago teetering in the wind.
The England coach’s hasty rejig meant that last weekend he went into the warm-up internationals against Wales with an untried, unfancied match 23.
It featured four players on debut – 32-year-old Gloucester scrum-half Willi Heinz, 23-year-old Northampton flanker Lewis Ludlum in the starting 15, with Saracens hooker Jack Singleton and Harlequins centre Joe Marchant on the bench. The starting line-up also included two more picks with fewer than five caps, Joe Cokanasiga and Piers Francis, as well as four forwards who are just into double figures, Luke Cowan-Dickie, Ellis Genge, Charlie Ewels and Tom Curry.
There would have been a fifth debutant had the Bath winger, Ruaridh McConnochie, not withdrawn through injury on the eve of the opening double-header.
That adds up to almost half a starting 23 with only 50 caps between them. So much for long-term World Cup planning.
That a mix-and-match England defied all expectations by winning 33-19 against tantamount to a Wales Grand Slam side reinforced the notion that Rugby Union coaches, like Napoleon’s generals, need the fates to conspire in their favour.
Bonaparte demanded “give me lucky generals” – and Jones certainly found himself in that category at Twickenham last weekend.
Every one of the novices and nearnovices he picked stood up to be counted, and as a consequence momentum was re-established after
a Six Nations which ended with England stalling against Wales and Scotland.
The upshot was that the pressurevalve that was building around Jones’ World Cup selection policy was released – as was the pressure on England to win in Cardiff yesterday. This would have built inexorably had they lost the first leg at home.
He indicated that the focus on selection from outside the camp, and the tensions it creates, was a main factor in his decision to announce his 31 well before the September 8 squad cut-off date.
He said: “In England it does (create tension if you leave it late), because of the 12 clubs, and because the media is so powerful. I’m not criticising the media, but the media is more powerful here than anywhere else in the world. It affects the way people think here. So, I have decided to try and minimise the noise, and make sure the players understand who the best 31 are, and get on with the World Cup.”
It is an interesting observation, but what Jones and others at the RFU should not lose sight of is that the expectations of success and the conjecture about selection in the media is largely a mirror image of what England rugby fans expect, and what they discuss.
If Jones and company think the national Press here is a hard taskmaster, they should take a walk with the fans leaving Twickenham after forking out a couple of hundred quid to see a belowpar England display. They would discover rapidly that no punches are pulled.
The most contentious areas of Jones’ selection policy are that he could have made most of the calls for a changing of the guard before the 2018 Six Nations nosedive, rather than waiting a further year before making those decisions.
This delay resulted in players such as Jamie George, Kyle Sinckler, Tom Curry, Sam Underhill, Mark Wilson, Cowan-Dickie, Cokanasiga, Francis and Heinz not having the Test exposure they should have, leaving some of them with very little more experience than Ludlum and McConnochie, the novice bolters announced in the squad.
Over the last year the England coach phased out his 2016 Grand Slam old guard of his hooker and former captain, Dylan Hartley, flankers Chris Robshaw and James Haskell, as well as long serving scrum-half Danny Care, while Chris Ashton decided the training camp demands were too great.
When it came to the World Cup cut he also ruled out other regular picks, including props Harry Williams and Ben Moon, injured blindside Brad Shields, No.8 Nathan Hughes, scrumhalves Ben Spencer, Dan Robson and Richard Wigglesworth, as well as axing centre Ben Te’o and 72-cap full-back Mike Brown after the final training camp.
However, Jones said at the squad announcement that he had made the decision to leave out Brown and Te’o before the fracas between the two players in Treviso, which saw both players return home after coming back from Italy.
When I asked Jones whether Brown and Te’o were out of the squad three weeks ago, he said, “pretty much so”.
While Te’o, who has played just 35 league games in his three years at Worcester, cannot take too much umbrage at missing out given his long periods of inactivity due to frequent injuries, the hardgrafting Brown is in a different category.
Brown remains the best and safest full-back under the high ball in the English game, and, given the proliferation of that tactic going into the World Cup, the case for his inclusion was strong.
However, when asked whether he had enough aerial expertise – especially following Elliot Daly’s continued lack of authority in that department against Wales last weekend – Jones said, “100 per cent”, and pointed to Daly and Anthony Watson. He explained: “Brown is a great defensive full-back, but we feel the way we want to play we need a fullback who can attack, and with pace, and fortunately for us Daly and Watson are our best options.” While that ruled Brown out, two old guard forwards, Dan Cole and Joe Launchbury, can count themselves fortunate. Both were said to be marginal selection calls after their
low-key club seasons before playing themselves on to the plane to Japan last weekend against the Welsh.
Cole did so at the expense of Williams, and although the Leicester tight-head scrummaged strongly against Nicky Smith, the Exeter man has been more consistent and is significantly more mobile. Launchbury got the nod ahead of Bath lock Ewels, who has made such impressive progress that he not only eclipsed Alun Wyn Jones but also outshone the Wasps stalwart, especially in the lose.
Talk of Cole brings us to one of the biggest gambles of the World Cup squad selected by Jones, because he has opted to take only two tight-heads, despite it being the most demanding and influential position in the scrum.
While the number of scrums in matches has been decreasing, they have a habit on increasing when the conditions are wet. This could be a significant factor during the World
“Jones is taking only two tightheads.. the most influential position in the scrum”
Cup because of the high humidity which leaves the ball as slippery as an eel.
This workload could stretch Sinckler and the 32-year-old Cole to breaking point, which is why Jones revealed a contingency plan which has seen Joe Marler spending time training at tight-head since he made himself available to England again.
The Harlequins loose-head revealed he switched to tight-head when he played there for Worthing and Esher for 18 months as part of his apprenticeship before earning a senior contract at the Stoop.
Given that was almost a decade ago, the 29-year-old Marler will have his work cut out, despite his reputation as being one of the best technical scrummagers in the English game. A factor that cannot be ignored is that, at 17st 4lb (110kg), he is over a stone lighter than Cole and many of the other heavyweights plying their trade in the No.3 jersey.
It is an inevitability that if England have a run of tight-head injuries, should they reach the business end of the tournament, their opponents will look to turn the screw at the scrum. That could leave Marler exposed, and no-one should need reminding of the way that a weakened scrum can totally undermine any team.
The other significant risk taken by Jones is picking only two scrumhalves, Ben Youngs and Heinz. The England coach broke the mould when he opted for two 9s , rather than three, when he was in charge of Japan four years ago, despite it being the most aerobically demanding position on the pitch with scrumhalves expected to get to almost every breakdown.
However, it enabled Jones to pick six players in his back three rather than five, with McConnochie almost certainly the beneficiary and Spencer the scrum-half who lost out.
Despite acknowledging it as a risk, Jones has pressed ahead after identifying George Ford as scrum-half cover. As with Marler, the Leicester fly-half has been operating at 9 during some training sessions – however, the prop’s experience of switch-hitting in the front row is significantly more extensive than Ford’s forays at 9.
These amount to a couple of spells at scrum-half for Leicester when the incumbent has been sin-binned – hardly extensive preparation.
The risk being run by Jones is that two consecutive injuries at either scrum-half, or tight-head, in a short time frame leading into a big World Cup game – without being able to fly in a replacement in time – will put non-specialists like Ford and Marler under huge pressure.
In some respects it is typical of the white-knuckle ride England have embarked on under Jones.
What Jones cannot be accused of is lacking conviction and the courage to gamble in selecting his World Cup 31 – even if it did take him until the last knockings of this fouryear cycle to reinvigorate his squad with new blood by picking players on form, rather than relying purely on experience.
As Jones said on Monday, part of the art of selection is, “knowing when a player is just about to fall off ”. He outlined that the reasons could be physical or emotional, but the outcome is that, “they can’t give you what they did”.
The England coach also made an admission: “After two years I thought we would carry quite an experienced team to the World Cup. Then I found out I needed to make changes, so I had to start again.”
He added, with a typically brazen flourish, “I wouldn’t have done it any differently”. Of course he would, because like all of us he has made mistakes.
The changes Jones has made mean that England take a squad to Japan that no-one will take lightly – but, even so, their little Aussie general will need to be lucky for this task force to return as England’s second World Cup winners.