This time, two into seven just might go
ENGLAND’S campaign at the home World Cup in 2015 was a big enough joke in itself, but that didn’t stop the smart-arses rolling out their laughter-in-thedarkness lines. “What’s the biggest difference between our Rugby Union and Rugby League teams?” asked one self-styled comic after the numbing defeat by Australia. “Answer: there’s more chance of finding an openside flanker in the League side.”
This was a little unfair on Chris Robshaw, the poor sod in the No.7 shirt. Like Tom Wood of Northampton and James Haskell of Wasps, the other full-time flankers in Stuart Lancaster’s party, he was not a pure breakaway of the Richie McCaw/Michael Hooper/Sam Warburton school. He was a “six and a half ”, with the emphasis heavily on the “six”.
Robshaw had his moments in the openside role, for sure: his Premiership grand final performance for Harlequins against Leicester in 2012 was something to savour; his Last Man Standing efforts in adversity – most notably against Wales on a gruesome night in Cardiff a decade ago – were object lessons in raw courage and commitment. But if no one could conceivably have tried harder in impersonating a round peg in a round hole, he was simply not one of life’s natural “Dead Ringers”. Which explains why he never toured with the Lions.
Spool forward through the subsequent World Cup cycle and what did we find? England making it through to the last knockings with…wait for it…TWO openside flankers in the same back row. Not pretend ones or fake ones or part-time ones, but genuine No.7s with the full complement of bells and whistles. Tom Curry and Sam Underhill were so effective in tandem, they skinned the All Blacks alive on semi-final day in Yokohama. Yep, we’re talking New Zealand here. The country that gave us Waka Nathan, Michael Jones and Josh Kronfeld.
And now, as another global gathering beckons? There are even more No.7s at the top end of the English game than there are political arguments and rubbish administrators. Curry, most certainly, and Underhill, just about, are still in the Red Rose mix, as are Curry’s twin brother Ben, Jack Willis, Ben Earl, Tom Pearson, the multi-tasking Lewis Ludlam, Uncle Tom Cobley and all.
And should an outbreak of plague rip through the squad ahead of the important business in France, there will always be Jack Nowell. He may be a wing, but he wouldn’t panic if you suddenly added the word “forward” to his job description.
During the most recent Six Nations, it was Willis who found himself front and centre – partly because he was nailing turnovers in his sleep, partly because Tom Curry was broken and Underhill still engaged in his increasingly forlorn fight for form and fitness. (A quick digression:
England are currently selecting the former Wasp from his new rugby home in Toulouse, which casts an interesting light on Lancaster’s refusal to solve his No.7 conundrum by summoning Steffon Armitage from Toulon. “Rules is rules,” explained Lancaster, referring to Twickenham’s tough anti-exile policy, but rules are there to be challenged. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, that didn’t happen.)
So the international team has gone from famine to feast in eight years flat. Good news? Like ageing, it’s better than the alternative. But big numbers mean big questions in selection and as things stand, four months before the chosen few cross the water to France, there is zero clarity around the optimum back row combination. As we can make the same argument for the wing positions, the entire midfield and the scrum-half slot, the old line about woods and trees springs to mind.
Most judges capable of distinguishing between a legal pass and a forward one – this automatically rules out “Television Match Officials”, but we’re past caring about that lot – believe Tom Curry must play if England are to make the most of their favourable tournament draw. It is equally obvious that Earl, whose reported falling out with Eddie Jones no longer amounts to a row of beans now that rugby’s answer to Dominic Raab is weaving his unique brand of man-managerial magic on the other side of the world, has struck a vein of form so rich, he could win the domestic title for Saracens on his own.
Could the two play together, in
PICTURE: Getty Images
“Earl has struck a vein of form so rich he could win the title for Saracens all on his own”
a left-and-right arrangement that used to be the modus operandi of the French and the South Africans and remains a part of their thinking even now? It would be fascinating to watch, especially if they found themselves alongside the most gifted of the No.8 candidates (otherwise known as Zach Mercer, but that’s a story for another day).
Without doing the full Einstein thing, England’s most urgent problem is time and the relative shortage of it. There are precisely no competitive fixtures left ahead of the Pool D meeting with a dangerous Argentina on the banks of the Mediterranean in early September. That’s right. None.
Whatever has been going on selectorially since 2019, it hasn’t been nearly enough. England are like the snail who says he was robbed by two tortoises. “Can you describe them?” asks the policeman. “No, it all happened so fast.”