Now it’s time for Eddie’s big guns to finally hit the heights
AFTER three middling performances in the 2017 Six Nations so far, England are due a ‘big one’ and I’m confident Eddie Jones and his team will deliver something pretty special next Saturday to beat a resurgent Scotland at Twickenham and set up a tilt at a second Grand Slam on the trot.
England haven’t really fired properly in this Championship yet. They played well at key moments to dig themselves out of a hole against France and Wales — and that strange Italy game counted for very little in trying to assess the form and potential of this team.
Now England really need to engage top gear because that is what will be required to deal with the Scots. And if they are going to pull off another Grand Slam, they need to travel to Dublin with the momentum of a great win so they can hit town with a bit of swagger. Dublin is not a great place to play if you are short on confidence and suffering any self-doubt.
Against Scotland, I am sure England will remain unchanged up front, barring injuries, but there is still some potential for finetuning the back division.
England must pick their team for this game as if it is a World Cup final, with the strongest, most potent combination they can put on the park, and I’m not sure we have seen that yet.
They will have been revved up in training last week and that will continue this week with some of the team, possibly the majority, knowing they haven’t done themselves justice yet in this year’s Championship — despite continuing their long unbeaten run under Jones.
They will be feeling slightly uneasy about that with the Lions tour so close.
Included in that category is probably George Ford, whose battle with Finn Russell provides a fascinating subplot to what could be a cracking game.
This for me is probably the shootout for the reserve spot at 10 in the Lions squad. I see Jonny Sexton as the starter, if Owen Farrell plays 12, while there is also a good chance that Warren Gatland is looking at Farrell at No10 as well.
Apart from their all-round skillset, both Sexton and Farrell share a physicality which will be needed down in New Zealand. Whatever the scenario, that duo are the first choices in the position, which effectively leaves one vacancy to be filled in the squad.
Russell (right) is having a good tournament. He is an attacking offthe-cuff player and, when he plays well, Scotland play well. He enjoys a bit of chaos and broken play and I am particularly enjoying the quality of his passes. His long, fired flat miss passes are a joy and it must be a pleasure playing off Russell when you are attacking. Ford hasn’t been at his very best so far but is by no means playing badly. His general game management is probably better than Russell’s but he hasn’t shown so much in attack yet.
In one way he is a little unlucky in that England’s overall game plan doesn’t always bring out the best in him. With their big heavy duty but slowish back row taking the ball up and looking to win the physical battle there are fewer opportunities for Ford to pose the individual attacking threat he does for Bath.
He is distributing the ball well enough but Ford is a really dangerous attacking runner in his own right who is also happy to run back into traffic and link with fast forwards on his shoulder.
That isn’t really England’s style at present but rather like England generally he will find a way of exploding into action against the Scots.