Absent stars? No problem says Eddie Jones, there’s more!
There is a chance that his unbeaten England team could get burned in November against battle-hardened Rugby Championship opponents South Africa, Argentina and Australia. This is mainly due to a long list of injuries, and key players who, if they return, will only do so with very limited game time.
To add to the uncertainty, while the eight uncapped players he selected in his latest 45-man EPS have made strides in the Premiership, very few of them have been been ripping up trees.
Yet, no sooner had Jones acknowledged that seven of his top 23 have not been playing – with Dylan Hartley, Owen Farrell, James Haskell, Jack Clifford, Manu Tuilagi and Jonny May injured, and George Kruis making his first appearance of the season – than he took the negative and flipped it into a positive.
It takes a smart, experienced coach to make a virtue out of the potential loss of three players who have been as important to his nine-match winning run as his captain, Hartley, his only world-class goal-kicker, Farrell, and his destructive ‘six-and-a-half’ flanker, Haskell.
However, Jones did not blink. When asked how concerned he is that Hartley and Farrell might not be available to play against South Africa, he responded: “Not at all. It would be fantastic because then we will find out how the other leaders can step up. It’s a fantastic opportunity. It’s nothing to be frightened of at all.”
Questioned further about whether he felt he had other leaders in the squad ready to step forward, he said: “One hundred per cent.” As for a replacement captain, he replied, “I don’t have to consider that yet.”
What Jones had considered was making sure that 23-year-old fly-half Alex Lozowski, who has made a tremendous start for Saracens after joining them from Wasps, was not snapped up for Italy by his professed admirer, Conor O’Shea. Although Lozowski, who has slotted in at Allianz Park seemlessly in Farrell’s absence, was not called into the 37-man preparatory squad for the Autumn Tests, his inclusion in the Red Rose 45 will have been a big encouragement.
The seven uncapped players who were selected in the 37 to attend a three day training camp in Brighton from today until Tuesday were forwards Josh Beaumont, Nathan Hughes, Sam Jones, Mike Williams, and backs Dan Robson, Ben Te’o and Joe Marchant.
What they have in common is that the fresh blood is all 25 or under, with Worcester inside-centre Te’o, who is 29, the only exception. It is intriguing that age is beginning to become a factor in Jones’ selection, with the openside claims of the in-form Guy Thompson put behind those of the biggest bolter in the squad, his fellow Wasps backrower, Sam Jones.
The England coach was blunt in explaining his preference for the powerful Jones over Thompson, below, who on this season’s evidence – and that against Toulon last season before he was injured – is the fastest, most dynamic linking No.7 available to him.
He said: “He (Thompson) is 29. Sam is 24. I don’t know how much growth he has left him in at 29.”
That said, Sam Jones has been an impressive operator since he was vying with Matt Kvesic for the England U20 openside shirt in 2011, with both of them playing in the narrow World Junior Championship final loss against a New Zealand side featuring Beauden Barrett and Sam Cane.
He also put in a heart-and-soul shift for Wasps at No.7 when they escaped relegation – and probable liquidation – in 2012. Since then the 6ft 3ins Jones has played more at blindside and No.8 than openside, and has muscled-up to the extent that he is now a stone heavier at a Haskell-like 17st 8lbs (112kg).
As with Kvesic – who has again been treated harshly, missing the EPS cut entirely for the Leicester tyro Will Evans – Jones does not look as fast as he was with the increased muscle. However, when it comes to a Haskell-style replacement to play crash-bang with the South Africans, Sam’s the man according to the England boss.
“He has done really well. If you watch a game in which he is playing you know he’s playing. He stands out – when he hits people, they stay hit. He runs good lines. It was easy to select him. I tell the players we left out that if they want to get selected they have to play that well.”
He added that the Wasps man came with the George Smith seal of approval, following the Aussie great’s stint alongside him last season. “George rated him – as a very physical, aggressive player.”
He added: “It’s a matter of him coming into the squad and we’ve got to test him with our training, see where he goes, whether he can make that jump. Guys like him, it’s about how they can make the adjustment from being a club player to an international player. The way we train, we’ll test them. We have a testing session on Tuesday and we’ll test their resolve and their ability to see how they operate when they’re uncomfortable.”
What, in my view, puts Jones ahead of his main rival for the No.7 shirt, Mike Williams, is glaringly obvious. Namely, he has played openside and has good handling skills.The Zimbabwean-born Williams has enjoyed rapid promotion, and he may develop into a Test blindside, but for all his tackling graft, at the moment he has neither the hands nor the instincts of an openside.
That much was evident when Williams spilled good attacking ball twice against Bath last weekend, prompting Leicester rugby director Richard Cockerill to play down his openside credentials.
However, Jones thinks he might be able to get the 6ft 5ins Williams to adapt. “I think he has the potential to play there, but there are a number of things he has to do with his game…he is playing club rugby for them, and Test rugby for us.”
The England coach then gave us a detailed insight into his back row strategy. He said that England are looking to emulate Haskell’s destructive role at openside in Australia because, at the moment, it suits the players he has available.
Jones says his biggest back row challenge is that the Premiership is producing so few genuine opensides. “I have looked through all the Prem games very closely and I can’t find anyone else who fits the bill… I have never coached a team like this before. You watch the Prem, there are no traditional 7s, because none of the teams play traditional 7s outside Gloucester and Leicester.”
However, Jones, right, is a pragmatist, and says there are other ways to create a formidable back row.
“It is about maximising your resources. A George Smith or Richie McCaw (at openside) works… but if you haven’t got that type of player, and when you then try to copy that system you come unstuck, as we did in the third Test against Australia (you have to rethink). We wanted (Teimana) Harrison to play that sort of role, and he just wasn’t able to do so at this stage of his career.”
He said that England therefore had to put in the work, with the clubs, on developing players like Harrison and Evans to become international 7s, while at the same time producing a powerful alternative.
Jones pointed to his use of Maro Itoje and Chris Robshaw as left and right flankers after he took Harrison off as an example. “It worked well for us – the game changes all the time, you have to work out what suits your team, there is no right and wrong way. In football, people get caught up in the systems, the formation you play. It’s how you use the resources of the people you have available.”
When I asked Jones whether, if he wants to expand England’s attacking horizons in the way he has said, a linking, foraging openside is an essential component, he said it is now more about the mix in your pack than having specialists.
“It’s not about linking. The old fashioned 7 was, but the way the game’s played now in your forward pack you want three who are capable of passing the ball and the other five you want smashing over the gain line and getting the opposition moving backwards. To me it doesn’t matter what position they are. In the old days you had forwards playing here and backs playing there, now no team plays like that. After two or three phases it’s all mixed up.”
That sounds like Jones accentuating the positives in the hand he’s been dealt, because the match-winning capabilities of specialist 7s like McCaw, Smith, Michael Hooper, David Pocock, and in England’s now distant past, Neil Back, are well documented. It is also there in the importance New Zealand attach to the position, with Cane and Ardie Savea the latest cabs on the rank.
No Fear is the message that Jones wants to instil. The sort that says whatever the composition of our back row, or whoever inherits the captain’s armband if Hartley is unfit, we’ve still got the players to do the job.
NICK CAIN
