Switching Steward to centre isn’t the answer

COME in No.12, your time is now! That is the call that Eddie Jones, and his predecessor as England coach, Stuart Lancaster, should have been broadcasting loud and clear to every club in the land for the past decade, given the dearth of candidates to either challenge or replace Manu Tuilagi at inside centre.

Jones has picked a mind-boggling 22 different centre combinations in his six and a half years as England head coach, while Lancaster was not far behind, picking 14 different pairings in his four year stint before England’s 2015 World Cup exit.

That is 36 reasons why this week one of the topics up for discussion in the Rugby Paper podcast was whether Freddie Steward could be moved from full-back to inside centre by England as a solution to the shortage of Test quality midfielders to fill the hole left by Tuilagi’s long spells on the sidelines due to injury.

Steward has at least played schoolboy rugby at centre, so the move from 15 to midfield – which is the same route Jamie Roberts took for Wales – would not be a complete novelty.

However, it seems absurd that a country with England’s playing resources should have so few powerful, straight running, skilful, line breaking centres. It is even more astounding that it should have to countenance moving a very promising young international full-back, who is just bedding down in his favoured shirt, to a position in which he would need at least a season to adapt to at club level before playing there in a Test match.

This sort of experiment needs careful planning and co-operation between club and country, and the first question is whether Leicester would be willing to upset the entire balance of their backline in order to accommodate an England request of this nature?

My suspicion is that, irrespective of Steve Borthwick’s links with England as a recent assistant coach, the Tigers head coach would give any request of this sort short shrift. Furthermore, Dusty Hare, who spotted Steward’s ability when he was Leicester’s chief scout, would be spitting tacks at the suggestion of moving him from fullback to inside centre.

When I spoke to the former England Grand Slam-winning full-back six months ago, he described Steward as “having full-back written all over him”. Hare added that he is England’s answer to New Zealand’s Jordie Barrett, and that it would be a waste to play him anywhere else.

When you consider the number of outstanding long-term centre comMy binations among rival nations like

South Africa,

France, New

Zealand, and Ireland is difficult to make any sense of England’s prolonged inability to find a couple of midfield partnerships of international quality out of the Premiership.

So, what is the root cause of the problem? Is it a failure of selection, or of backline coaching, or are there too many overseas midfield imports in the Premiership?

hunch is that having a talent of Tuilagi’s magnitude available, even if it means he is only playable on an on-off basis, has tempted coaches like Jones and Lancaster to park the development of other options. The prospect of bringing a match-winning powerhouse like Tuilagi back in to the team is too tantalising, and has seen them take their eyes off the ball by favouring stop-gap solutions at centre.

To be fair to Lancaster and Jones, there have been attempts at solutions – but, whatever the outcome, they have only been temporary measures. Owen Farrell’s move to 12 with Jonathan Joseph at 13 during England’s 2016-17 unbeaten run was effective for a time, whereas Lancaster’s championing of the Sam Burgess cross-over from rugby league was poorly planned and fraught with difficulties.

What England require is astute medium and long-term planning, not the short-term midfield chopping-and-changing that has impeded the national team’s development for years.