LONG READ 'Defence has become an afterthought in the Premiership - and England may fail upwards as a result'

The distinctive privilege of ‘failing upwards’ is an axiom for modern times. Bosses can fail at their jobs and still be rewarded. Misfires are conveniently buried, or seen as opportunities for improvement. Losses are spun into wins by spectacular displays of ‘strategic ignorance’. You apologise briefly, collect your winnings, and move on. Do it often enough, and you become untouchable.

Multiple business studies have shown hiring managers are attracted more to people who demonstrate an exaggerated confidence in their abilities, even if it runs counter to actual competence, even if it usually favours men over women. A quick glance at any episode of telly’s The Apprentice will bear that out. In social psychology circles, it is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a business psychology professor at Columbia University in New York, summarises it neatly as follows: “We started focusing so much on style, extraversion, assertiveness, lean-in, be confident, brand yourself, that we forgot to focus on substance.”

The prevailing sense from the recently concluded pool stage of the Investec Champions Cup is the Gallagher Premiership has reached a crossroads in relation to style over substance. There is no doubt the league has created a highly entertaining product and a new ‘boom’ period for the game in England after the traumatic loss of three professional clubs to insolvency. But there remains a question mark over how that product translates upwards to international success.

There are more tries and points scored in England than in any of the other main European leagues.

The inherent danger is defence becomes an afterthought as clubs look to outscore each other with a ‘shootout’ mentality, and those perils were fully exposed by the end of the pool stage of the Champions Cup. By round four, Premiership clubs were conceding 10 points more per game than they were in the first round of competition, shipping an average of 36 points compared to 26.

The travel problems experienced by the South African franchises from home to away fixtures [or vice versa] are already well documented, but the English clubs have no such excuses. The results circled in red were Exeter’s two consecutive home losses to first Toulouse, then Bordeaux by over 60 points, and Leicester’s 80-12 defeat by the champions in the final round at the Stade Ernest Wallon.

The essential difference between South Africa and England is the defensive failures of their franchises in the Champions Cup are easily remedied by the quality of coaching once those players transform into Springboks, whereas the defensive limitations in the Premiership currently tend to be duplicated rather than corrected at national level.

Make no mistake, the tragic flaw in the recent Autumn Nations Series for Steve Borthwick’s England was Defence with a capital ‘D’. The men in white had no problem creating excitement and participating in high-scoring games – 46 points against New Zealand, 49 versus South Africa and a dizzying 79 in the second round against the Wallabies – but they could not stop their opponents from scoring tries, leaking an average of four per game over those three top-tier matches.

Ever since Felix Jones exited unexpectedly after the July tour of New Zealand, the Red Rose has struggled more without the ball than it has in possession. That is as untypical of England teams of the past as it is of sides coached by Borthwick at club level. But with Jones out of the equation and Borthwick’s defensive assistant at Leicester, Kevin Sinfield, seemingly on the outer, it is unclear how the downward spiral on D will be arrested.

The English league is well branded, extraverted in attitude and has a super-confident swagger in its gait. But if try-scoring has put steam in the Premiership’s stride, try-concession has raised a question about its competence, its gritty underlying substance. Right now, England is failing upwards and few seem to care.

The last round of the pool stage of the Champions Cup was symptomatic. Exeter leaked 52 points away to Ulster, and two of the better defensive clubs in the Prem [Bath and Leicester] conceded a combined total of 127. The drop in standards was noticeable, especially for Borthwick’s old charges at Welford Road.

The new Tigers head coach Michael Cheika has built his 2024-25 iteration of the club on defensive grit, and he came fully loaded with nine current internationals in the starting line-up, but all that work and expectation evaporated in the heat of the Ernest Wallon cauldron. As the dust was clearing after a brutal red-and-black bombardment, the ex-Wallaby supremo commented:

“We were given a great opportunity to come down here against the European champs and get stuck into it and we didn’t.

“From my end, I’ve got a lot of self-reflection about that because how I prepare the team is how they play, and it’s really hurt me. I’ve got to be better as a coach to make sure we’re in a better position in this game.

“It’s about the follow-through of [defensive] disciplines you do in your preparation, not just in the week, over a period of time, and then delivering those on game day.”

Club captain Julián Montoya added tellingly, “Toulouse don’t forgive you if you make a mistake”, but there was no excuse for Leicester’s failure to identify, and make plans to counter, the opposition’s key strengths in their preparation.  Every club in the Top 14 knows you cannot hope to play against Toulouse if you do not have a plan to control their offloading game, but Tigers allowed a colossal 29 successful offloads. By the end of the match, les Rouges et Noirs were making one offload for every two-and-a-half rucks they built, and that is a remarkable standalone statistic.

The writing was on the wall right from the fifth minute.

Toulouse love the quick tapped penalty to accelerate an attack and they are connoisseurs of the offload, but Tigers prevent neither only six metres from their own goal-line.

One of the keys to successful defence of the offload is quick identification of the ball-carrying arm, with the higher of the two defenders in any double-tackle looking to smother release of the ball in contact.

French second row Thibault Flament had a forwards-high four offloads in the game, so the second man in the tackle needs to be able to target his right, ball-carrying arm when he hits the line. If he doesn’t, Flament’s Toulousain mates are all far too slick to pass up the opportunity to make a decisive pass in contact and create the break.

It wasn’t the only occasion when the second element in a double tackle failed dismally in its job of clamping the ball-carrying arm of the towering, 6ft 8ins red and black second rower.

Flament always seemed to be in and around the scene of an offload, mostly as the delivery man, sometimes as the receiver.

Leicester has always been one of the more cussed, unyielding defensive clubs in the English league, and their Premiership triumph in 2022 was based squarely on an outstanding Tigers D coached by Kevin Sinfield and overseen by Borthwick.

With that in mind, the sheer lack of foresight in Leicester’s defensive preparation against Toulouse was quite breathtaking. Yes, Leicester had already qualified for the knockout stages of the tournament, but Cheika had picked a side close to full strength, in keen anticipation of testing Tiger mettle against the champions. An 80-point loss was never on the menu. Not remotely.

The challenge for Borthwick in his new incarnation as coach of the national side is that the free-scoring shoot-outs which now constitute Premiership rugby are already influencing how the England players in those clubs expect to win matches at the higher level. Defence has become an afterthought.

The best English defence coaches all ply their trade overseas – Andy Farrell in Ireland, Shaun Edwards with France – and one foreigner with the background to help [Jones] flew the coop early, allegedly citing ‘an unstable working environment’. Make of that what you will.

If you do not score tries in the Premiership, you are not sitting at the high table. Translate that style straightforwardly to Test rugby, and there is a distinct danger of ‘failing upwards’. Losing with style but calling it a win, falling for the latest Svengali spellbinder.