FEATURE Why defensive aggressor Felix Jones will drive new-look England

Who will end up running the England rugby team in 2024? If the answer lies with intensity of personality, it will probably be Steve Borthwick’s new defensive co-ordinator Felix Jones.

The head coach had already enjoyed a taste of what to expect from Munsterman Jones during an exploratory phone call about the job.

“Meeting with him, being on the phone with him, having a conversation with him for an hour, and not getting a word in because he has so much rugby knowledge, it is unreal,” Borthwick said.

“And [there is] a work ethic that is astounding. And I have seen people who have worked very hard. This guy, I don’t know whether he sleeps – because the amount of material he works through, the amount he sends me, what he talks about. He has the work ethic.”

During Saturday’s Six Nations opener against Italy, the camera panned across to the England coaching box intermittently. Borthwick looked impassive, but the visage of Jones was darkly forbidding, especially in a first half when his charges conceded two tries. There were nervous, impatient jerks on the water bottle. A restless discontent seemed to roll up and down his tall, lean frame. By the end, the camera looked nervous to dwell for too long on Jones, it eased away while the going was still good.

Borthwick again: “When he presented to the players last week, the room had that deathly silence. When a coach is presenting up front, I usually come down the sides just to be able to scan across the players. Hardly blinking, and transfixed by what he is saying. The ability to do that is superb. So, work ethic, incredible knowledge, and grasp of concepts – and he has the players’ attention.”

The England head coach has a very ambitious project afoot. He wants to improve his team on both sides of the ball simultaneously. Both he and Richard Wigglesworth have visited Paris in recent weeks to pass the peace pipe with Racing 92’s Stuart Lancaster, the principal architect of the most successful attack in the world, run by both Leinster and Ireland.

At the same time, Borthwick has recruited the man who coached the Springboks’ rabidly aggressive form of defence at the last World Cup. England are reaching for the best of both worlds under the ex-Bath and Saracens man. They are looking to bestride the rugby ocean to the north and south, ‘realms and islands as plates dropping from [their] pockets’.

It is a herculean labour to perfect formations and learn new shapes, and more importantly deepen the understanding which underpins them, in both attack and defence in the same phase of development, but that is the task Borthwick’s England has undertaken. If it becomes a theoretical overload for the players, the chances are it is the offence which will lose traction first.

Jones himself has hinted at the priority of learning defence in the new-model England. If push comes to shove further into the Six Nations, the entertainment factor at Twickenham will probably come a distant second as the intensity of Jones’ technical demands and personality take over.

“The perception we [South Africa] had was that the English side were an incredibly effective and difficult team to beat,” Jones said.

“I thought it was an incredible [World Cup semi-final]. I know the rain was lashing down. But in terms of an arm wrestle and the tightness of the game, I thought it was hugely exciting.

“There is the side of winning Test matches, and not blinding yourself to what is effective. You have got to find the marriage and it is challenging.”

In the course of events at the Stadio Olimpico, it was England’s defence which showed the steeper curve of improvement after some distinctly dodgy beginnings.

Jones’ defence are going to compress the line and attack the space ahead of them from out to in, they will most emphatically not be numbering up on the outside attackers. They will make mistakes as they try to get an early jump on the ball.

They want to have their cake and eat it, and Maro Itoje is already a couple of steps ahead of the offside line on a back-side blitz when the Azzurri attack bends back to the original site of the lineout. That was a penalty to Italy and it illustrated some of the problems England would experience later in the half.

It looks as though the one back on the short side [number nine Alex Mitchell] wants to drop into backfield defence, but the forwards [Itoje, number three Will Stuart and number six Ethan Roots] are all facing in the opposite direction and preparing to rush the pass.

That lack of co-ordination cost the men in white a try only seven minutes later.

The man entrusted to set England’s line- speed opposite first receiver was Leicester forward Olly Chessum, but the moment he dives in on Azzurri 10 Paolo Garbisi, the first two backs alongside him [12 Fraser Dingwall and 13 Henry Slade] are not quite on the same page, and a big disconnect develops right down the middle of the field.

Jones’ defence is roughly divided between ‘hitters’ and ‘folders’. There are those are designated to rush and apply pressure – here Chessum, Slade and 11 Elliot Daly in the red squares. Then those required to fold in behind them and cover the corners of the field – in this instance number one Joe Marler and six Roots [red arrows] – if the ball is successfully transferred out wide.

In this sequence, the hitters never look like shutting down the play, and Daly, who should be a hitter, ends up folding – turning a 360 degree circle as the last man in the line. Furthermore, the folders never look like reaching the ball in cover and neutralising the attack further downfield. Everyone is at least a couple of steps too slow to make the defensive pattern work.

If the first period was a relative failure, the second half was a success. Jones’ charges came out with a renewed sense of purpose and turned over all the first four Italian attacking possessions.

In this seminal sequence from a scrum, Slade and Daly are defending with a far more unified sense of purpose on first phase, then England twice take man-and-ball at first receiver on the two plays following. On third phase, the pressure is entirely too much for Italian ball skills and the fumble duly results in an England scrum.

All of a sudden, England were no longer a step short of meeting their targets.

Slade just flows all the way through the line on to the back-door option in the second phase of play, towing the wing [14 Tommy Freeman] along with him for the ride. Suddenly the edge defenders were just where they should be in a Jones-inspired ‘Springbok’ pattern – ahead of everyone else in the line.

When the hitters are as far upfield as Freeman in that second snapshot – fully 20m ahead of the previous ruck – it makes the job of the folders far easier. They now find themselves on a beeline to the ball, because any breach will be occurring so much further downfield. That is a picture of winning defence, Springbok-style.

Borthwick’s staff have indeed cast the net worldwide in their quest for excellence. For English fans, it will be instructive to gauge whose voice is the strongest when England come to play their three crunch games in the final three rounds – versus Scotland in Edinburgh, at home to tournament favourites Ireland, and against France in the tournament climax in Lyon.

The signposts all lead to Rome, they all point the way of Jones. Just like South Africa at the World Cup, England will claw and scrap for every last inch of ground when it really matters, and they will rely on Jones’ defence rather Wigglesworth’s attack.

Whether the Twickenham faithful will agree with the relationship the Munsterman envisages between ‘incredibly effective’ and ‘hugely exciting’ is another matter entirely. With Marcus Smith injured, it may be a bridge too far to expect England to win evenly-balanced matches through the quality of their attack, just ‘past the size of dreaming’ at the old cabbage patch.