Eddie got selection badly wrong and needs to hold his hands up - Andy Goode
England’s Six Nations campaign got off to a miserable start in Paris and Eddie Jones has to take responsibility because of his team selection, as well as the preparation.
England went into the half-time interval without having scored a single point for the first time in the Six or Five Nations for 32 years since 1988 and Jones acknowledged that his side might have been underprepared.
He says that is because club rugby has taken it out of his players and they deliberately came in late but the word coming out of the camp again is that they’ve been flogged once more in training and, in reality, it is the make-up of the team that is the real issue.
Eddie insists the result of the game won’t affect his selection for the Calcutta Cup next week but it should do and he should be straight on the phone to Alex Dombrandt or Sam Simmonds.
There’s no way Tom Curry would’ve been starting at number eight if Billy Vunipola was fit. He’d never started a game there in his life and now Eddie’s talking about him as a long-term project in that position.
He’s an unbelievable openside and it’s not like he had a bad game but you take away a lot of his strengths by playing him at number eight and not having a big ball carrier in there.
I questioned the lack of specialist number eights in the squad when it was named and it was a clear weakness at the Stade de France. It’s a specialist position and, while we had a dominant scrum, there wasn’t the necessary control at the base.
Ben Earl is the one player in the initial squad who can play there because he often packs down at number eight for Saracens, so I’ve named him in my team to face Scotland below but I’d have Dombrandt or Simmonds in there in a heartbeat.
They may not be in the squad and it may be a six-day turnaround before the next game in Edinburgh but let’s make no bones about it, if he wants to pick them, he can.
The midfield is the other major area of concern, especially after Manu Tuilagi went off early on with a groin injury. England looked seriously underpowered without him and Mako and Billy Vunipola in the side.
I don’t think the selection was right there anyway though. Eddie said he should’ve dropped George Ford for the World Cup final but he picked him again for the next game. It’s nothing against Ford but Owen Farrell is your captain and arguably best player, he has to be picked in his preferred position.
We all know he can do a job at inside centre but he doesn’t look comfortable there and, again, you’re taking so much away from his game by putting him there. Jones has to stop putting square pegs in round holes.
In the absence of Tuilagi and with the very inexperienced Fraser Dingwall in the squad, I think he has to go with Ollie Devoto and Jonathan Joseph in the centres at Murrayfield.
Devoto only got six minutes at the end to show what he has to offer but he’s impressed for Exeter this season and is a decent carrier as well as a distributor. Most importantly, he is a number 12 and plays there regularly.
George Furbank may not have lit up the game as he has done at times for Northampton but I can’t see him being left out if Anthony Watson continues to be unavailable with his calf injury.
I would make one further change to the backline, though, and that would be at scrum half. Ben Youngs has a lot of credit in the bank from his 96 caps but he just isn’t in form and Willi Heinz doesn’t offer the impact you really want from the bench.
Dan Robson, Danny Care and Ben Spencer are all good options who aren’t in the squad but if he isn’t going to call up one of them, I think he has to start Heinz and give him a chance.
Care has been in good form for Harlequins but his face doesn’t seem to fit any more, Robson offers more pace and dynamism as well but I’d have Spencer in there from the start if it was up to me.
Ellis Genge put himself about a bit when he came on and Joe Marler held up his end of the bargain at scrum time but Mako Vunipola will come back in for the Calcutta Cup clash to offer another big ball-carrying option, something that was badly missing.
England’s two tries came from moments of magic from Jonny May but I couldn’t tell how they wanted to attack for the most part and there was a lot of aimless kicking again. A combination of all of the above contributes to that but I think Farrell not being at 10 is still the biggest factor.
Whether it’s the captain’s role, Curry at number eight or Courtney Lawes at blindside as well, there is a clear lesson to be learned. Pick players in their correct positions.
You have to give France a lot of credit. A hugely inexperienced side really fronted up and put in a hell of a performance in defence, while showing glimpses of star quality in attack as well.
They certainly responded to the England head coach’s words about brutal physicality ahead of the match and they deserved the win. Now Eddie has to hold his hands up and say he got his selection wrong before putting it right for Scotland.
My England Team v Scotland
15 George Furbank
14 Elliot Daly
13 Jonathan Joseph
12 Ollie Devoto
11 Jonny May
10 Owen Farrell
9 Willi Heinz/Ben Spencer
1 Mako Vunipola
2 Luke Cowan-Dickie
3 Kyle Sinckler
4 Maro Itoje
5 Courtney Lawes
6 Sam Underhill
7 Tom Curry
8 Ben Earl/Alex Dombrandt
16 Jamie George
17 Ellis Genge
18 Will Stuart
19 George Kruis
20 Lewis Ludlam
21 Ben Youngs
22 George Ford
Comments on RugbyPass
Both nations missed a great opportunity to book a game that would have had a lot of interest from around the world. I understand these games can’t be organised in 5 minutes but they should have found a way to make it happen. I don’t think Wales are ducking anyone but it’s a bad look haha.
3 Go to commentsIt will be fascinating to see the effect that Jo Yapp has. If they can compete with Canada and give BFs a run for their money that will be progress
1 Go to commentsFollowing his dream and putting in the work. Go well young fella!
3 Go to commentsPerhaps filling Twickenham is one of Mitchell’s KPIs. I doubt whether both September matches will be at Twickenham on consecutive weekends. I would take the BF one to a large provincial stadium so as not to give them the advantage and experience of playing at Twickenham before a large crowd prior to the RWC.
2 Go to commentsvery unfortunate for Kitshoff, but big opportunity potentially for Nché to prove he is genuinely the best loosehead in the world, rather than just a specialist finisher. Presuming that if Kitshoff is out, it will also give Steenekamp a chance to come into the 23? Or are others likely to be ahead of him?
1 Go to commentsA long held question in popular culture asks if art imitates life or does the latter influence the former? Over this 6 nations I can ask the same question of the media influencing the thoughts of its audience or vice versa. Nobody wants to see cricket scores in rugby, as a spectacle it is not sustainable. With so many articles about England’s procession and lack of competition it feeds the epicaricacy of many looking for an opportunity to pounce. England are not the first team to dominate nor does it happen only in rugby, think Federer, Nadal, Red Bull or Mercedes, Manchester Utd, Australia in tests and World Cups. Instead of celebrating the achievements why find reasons to falsify it pointing towards larger playing pool, professional for a longer period or mitigate with the lack of growth in other nations. Can we not enjoy it while it is here and know that it won’t last for ever, others coveting what England have will soon take the crown, ask the aforementioned?
6 Go to commentsShame he won’t turn out for the Netherlands now they’re improving. U20s are Euro champs and in the U20 Trophy this year. The senior sides gets better every year too.
3 Go to commentsWill rugbypass tv be showing these games?
1 Go to commentsWell where do you start, the fact that England have a professional domestic league and Ireland’s is fully amatuer, that they have fully seperated professional squads at Fifteens and Sevens (7’s thinly disguised as GB), and Ireland have fully pro Sevens squad who loan some players back to the Semi-Professional Fifteens squad (moved from amateur for only a year or so) for a few games at 6N & RWC’s. The Women’s games is a shambles, and is at risk of killing itself by pushing for professionalism when the market isn’t really there to support it outside one or two countnries..
6 Go to commentsWayne Smith's input didn't have as much impact on the last final as Davison's red card for Thompson. England were 14 points up and flying when that happened.
6 Go to commentsBilly's been playing consistently well for 2 - 3 seasons now and deserves a look in at the top level. Ioane and ALB are still first choice but there needs to be injury cover and succession. His partnership with Jordie gives him first dibs you'd think. Go the Hurricanes.
3 Go to commentsIt’s not up to Wales to support Georgian Rugby. That’s up to International Rugby and Georgia. I sympathise with Georgia’s decent attempt to create this fixture. But for Wales the proposed match up is just a potential stick to beat them with and a potential big psychological blow that young Welsh team doesn’t need. (I’m Irish BTW.)
3 Go to commentsCale certainly looks great in space, but as you say, he has struggled in contact. At 23 years old, turning 24 this year, he should be close to full physical maturity and yet there exists a considerable gap in the power and physicality required for international rugby. Weight doesn’t automatically equate to power and physicality either. Can he go from a player who’s being physically dominated in Super rugby to physically dominating in international rugby in 1 or 2 years? That’s a big ask but he may end up being a late bloomer.
28 Go to commentsIf rugby wants to remain interesting in the AI era then it will need to work on changing the rules. AI will reduce the tactical advantage of smart game plans, will neutralize primary attacking weapons, and will move rugby from a being a game of inches to a game of millimetres. It will be about sheer athleticism and technique,about avoiding mistakes, and about referees. Many fans will find that boring. The answer is to add creative degrees of freedom to the game. The 50-22 is an example. But we can have fun inventing others, like the right to add more players for X minutes per game, or the equivalent of the 2-point conversion in American football, the ability to call a 12-player scrum, etc. Not saying these are great ideas, but making the point that the more of these alternatives you allow, the less AI will be able to lock down high-probability strategies. This is not because AI does not have the compute power, but because it has more choices and has less data, or less-specific data. That will take time and debate, but big, positive and immediate impact could be in the area of ref/TMO assistance. The technology is easily good enough today to detect forward passes, not-straight lineouts, offside at breakdown/scrum/lineout, obstruction, early/late tackles, and a lot of other things. WR should be ultra aggressive in doing this, as it will really help in an area in which the game is really struggling. In the long run there needs to be substantial creativity applied to the rules. Without that AI (along with all of the pro innovations) will turn rugby into a bash fest.
24 Go to commentsSouth Africa rarely play Ireland and France on these tours. Mostly, England, Scotland and Wales. I wonder why
2 Go to commentsIt was a let’s-see-what-you're-made-of type of a game. The Bulls do look good when the opposition allows them to, but Munster shut them down, and they could not find a way through. Jake should be very worried about their chances in the competition.
2 Go to commentsHats off to Fabian for a very impressive journey to date. Is it as ‘uniquely unlikely’ as Rugby Pass suggests, given Anton Segner’s journey at the Blues?
3 Go to commentsSad that this was not confirmed. When administrators talk about expanding the game they evidently don’t include pathways to the top tier of rugby for teams outside of the old boys club. Rugby deserves better, and certainly Georgia does.
3 Go to commentsLions might take him on if they move on Van Rooyen but I doubt he will want to go back, might consider it a step backwards for himself. Sharks would take him on but if Plumtree goes on to win the challenge cup they will keep him on. Also sharks showing some promising signs recently. Stormers and Bulls are stable and Springboks are already filled up. Quality coach though, interesting to see where he ends up
1 Go to commentsAnd the person responsible for creating a culture of accountability is?
3 Go to comments