George needs roaring finish for shot at Lions
GEORGE Ford is focusing on ensuring Leicester finish the season strongly and secure a place in next season’s Champions Cup rather than fretting whether he will make the Lions squad to tour South Africa in the summer.
The England fly-half missed out on the 2017 trip to New Zealand and he is vying with Johnny Sexton, Finn Russell and Dan Biggar for one of the two likely berths for the 10s, handicapped by England’s poor Six Nations campaign and Owen Farrell’s versatility.
“Ask any player and they will want to go on the Lions tour,” said the 28year old, who has won 76 caps. “I am not going to sit here and make a massive plea. All I can do is play as well as I can for Leicester.”
Ford’s cause will not be helped by the lack of anyone connected with England on the management team revealed by the Lions head coach Warren Gatland last week.
Leicester’s head coach Steve Borthwick, below, who was in charge of the set-pieces on the 2017 tour to New Zealand, turned down an approach to focus on giving Tigers their roar back.
“I’m not surprised Steve was in contention because he is a brilliant coach,” said Ford. “I have never known anyone to be so on it consistently to push his team forward. A lot of our improvement this season is down to him, the way he got hold of the club from the start and stamped his authority on the place.
“He has had a massive impact on everything and as a player you want to be a part of it. He is never content, always looking for ways to get better and improve. I knew how hard working he was with England and he will have a great coaching career.
“He wants you to fight and stay in games and be in a position where you are in it when things are not going your way or you get into a difficult patch. There are still areas we have to improve on. In this game, as soon as you think you have cracked it, you come unstuck.” Leicester would have finished bottom last season but for Saracens’ being deducted 105 points for salary cap breaches. They travel to Bath today in seventh position after a run of three victories in four matches, their best since the 2017-18 season. They are looking for the double over Bath, who are one place in the table below them, after coming from behind to win 36-31 at Welford Road at the start of the year. It was a match in which Ford tortured his England colleague Anthony Watson with the spiral bomb, a high kick that wobbles on its descent, making it difficult to track, let alone catch.
“I started doing it when I was young, but it is something Dave Alred has encouraged since I’ve worked with him,” said Ford. “The aerial battle is a big part of the game and it is a kick which is more difficult to defuse than a normal one.
“The spiral bomb takes time and practice to get right because you kick the belly of the ball rather than its end and it is proving to be pretty effective.”
It was a ploy common in the amateur era but, in common with other tactics then, it was deemed too risky in the professional game which demands accuracy. At Alred’s prompting, Ford has revived it and as Watson found four months ago, it can confound the best catchers.
“He had something to say about it when we met up in the England camp,” said Ford. “He is a world class player, deadly on the counter-attack, and you look for ways to shut down his running game. I think the main reason it went out of fashion was the risk it carries of slicing off your foot.
“The game is now about accuracy and dropping the ball on a sixpence, but it means kicks are easier to deal with. It is harder to get in the air when fielding a spiral bomb – the ball moves as you are tracking it and you can look silly when it lands somewhere you didn’t think it would.
“The professional environment is about executing as well as you can and you tend to go on the safe side rather than work on something that can potentially change a game. Dave’s encouraged me to use it and I work on it every training session. He is stuck in Brisbane because of the pandemic, but every week he asks me whether I used it in a game. I might put a few up on Sunday.”