How Eddie Jones aims to tame the French monsters

When Dylan Hartley was knocked cold after colliding with the knee of Uini Atonio, France‘s gargantuan Kiwi-Samoan tight-head, in Paris last year, he was left in no doubt about the destructive heavyweight clout to be found in the Top 14. That Hartley picked himself up off the stretcher barely 15 minutes later to hoist the Six Nations trophy in celebration of England‘s first Grand Slam for 13 years illustrated the dedication to the cause that has seen Eddie Jones back him as captain through thick and thin.
However, there is not too much of the thin in the French squad that England will face at Twickenham in a fortnight. The 21st 7lb, 6ft 5ins Atonio is not so much a man-mountain as the entire French Alps. What’s more, if he runs out of puff France coach Guy Noves has a similar super-sized No.3 in reserve should Atonio’s La Rochelle team-mate Mohamed Boughanmi – who is a mere 20st and 6ft 4ins – be picked on the French bench. If so, the rest of their replacements will have to find somewhere else to sit.
While it is true that size is not everything when it comes to the art of scrummaging, shifting men of that bulk is a mammoth task, especially when those pushing behind them are also giants like Clermont lock Sebastien Vahaamahina (19st 9lb, 6ft 8ins) and Northampton No.8 Louis ‘The Iceberg’ Picamoles, the baby at a mere 18st and 6ft 4ins.
France also have the lower-calorie prop options of Rabah Slimani at No.3 and Eddy Ben Arous at No.1 if Noves decides he wants more mobility, but my hunch is he will want to steam-roller England up front.
If Eddie Jones and his coaches were looking for a preview of the sheer body mass and grinding power that Top 14 sides can muster it came in last weekend’s European Cup clash at the Ricoh when Toulouse were denied a win when Wasps scrum-half Dan Robson scored with the last play of the game.
A Wasps pack, which included England Six Nations squad selections Matt Mullan, Joe Launchbury and Nathan Hughes, was given a battering by a heavy-duty Toulouse eight from which loose-head Cyril Baille and lock Yoann Maestri are in the French squad. Their bruising physicality was augmented in the backline by another of Noves call-ups, centre Yann David.
The Wasps forwards were on the back foot for large tracts of the match, with loose-head Mullan under the cosh at the scrum in much the same way as he was a fortnight earlier when Dan Cole put Leicester in the driving seat. Mullan’s discomfort will not have gone unnoticed by French forwards coach Yannick Bru, and Jones acknowledges that whichever two loose-heads he picks out of the Wasps veteran, Joe Marler (if fit), or Ellis Genge, the English scrum will be a target.
However, he remained confident that it would not be an Achilles heel. “We will get a good 80 minutes out of the two – and we have got a lot of hard work to do on our scrum, but we will be fine,” Jones said.
Jones is a master at turning negatives into positives, and in the next breath he hailed Cole as a “world class” tight-head. Even the Leicester stalwart would acknowledge that he was less than world class when Argentina laid siege to the England line in the autumn, and recently
the England coach let slip his frustration at his side’s set piece inconsistency.
If Marler recovers from his leg fracture his experience will be very handy, but he has not showed the form he did as the starting No.1 in last season’s Six Nations, and was leap-frogged by Mako Vunipola in the autumn.
With Vunipola also out of action, Jones has brought Nathan Catt into the fold. The Bath loose-head’s form has been good, and his scrummaging looks more solid than it was, but his real forte is as a high work-rate carrier rather than a scrum monster.
Which brings us to Ellis Genge, above, who has been recalled after not working hard enough on areas earmarked by Jones to merit being selected in the recent 45-man EPS. Judging by his comments Jones clearly wants to keep the young Leicester loose-head focussed:
“Bits and pieces have improved. He’s definitely not the full package, but he’s a young guy – 21? It’s another seven years before he reaches his prime. We’ve pulled him back, and pushed him back in, and that’ll happen to him again over the next five, six years. By 27-28, he should be the fully matured package and he should be a very good player. It’s whether he’s got the patience to endure the process…”
There may be something of the angry young man about Genge, but if England want to unsettle the French pack there does not appear to be a better way of doing it than letting him rip into Atonio and company. Back in 2007 France had a destructive, flinty lightweight loose-head, Jean-Jacques Crenca, who would drill into the core of big tight-heads until they shattered.
Genge is not Crenca – or at least not yet – but on the evidence of his wrecking roles for the Tigers against Munster, and in their Premiership fightback against Wasps, he is becoming a handful. Unleash him against France and rattle them, because if they are allowed to bed-in so that Picamoles and his mates start rumbling around the fringes, England will find them hard to hold – just as New Zealand did.
Harnessing talents like Genge is where Hartley’s leadership qualities come to the fore according to Jones. “Being a leader means every day you rock up to training, rock up to a meeting, and you get on with the job. You do it to absolutely 100 per cent. And if the guy next to you is not doing it properly, you tell him he’s not doing it properly. And you tell him how to do it.”
He adds: “Young people don’t like calling other people out. It’s not how people are educated now. It’s skills we have got to teach the players. It’s a process.”
It is something Jones says that Hartley not only understands, but is very good at. “Dylan is very unusual in that respect. He’s a very unusual boy.”
What makes France more of a threat this time than they were in England’s hard fought 31-21 away victory in the last Six Nations, is that by riding on the back of their set-piece beast they have managed to rediscover some beauty.
Despite the narrow losses against Australia and New Zealand in the autumn, in both instances the French took it to their Southern Hemisphere opponents for long periods. The fulcrum against the All Blacks was Baptiste Serrin, the nifty Bordeaux-Begles scrum-half, linking smartly with a back row featuring four carrier No.8s, with Picamoles in the central role and a choice of Damien Chouly, Kevin Gourdon or Loann Goujon playing flanker.
Jones, above, has mentioned on a number of occasions how impressed he was by the different dimension to the French during those close encounters – especially their ability to free their arms and pass above the tackler.
He explains: “If France are playing rucks, they’re just an average team, but now they are picking guys who want to play above the defence. People talk about playing through the defence or playing around the defence – and they do – but they are now picking a lot of tall, big guys who can get above the defence and create off-loads. Once they get an off-load they go back to the old France, with the movement, tempo and rhythm off the ball coming in. We have not seen that before, and that is where they are dangerous.”
Jones adds: “If you look at the squad they’ve picked they are full of talent. Novès has got the team going in the right direction. I thought they were very impressive in the autumn. You can see they are enjoying the game more. I failed high school French, so I won’t try to use too much, but they’ve got the ‘joie de vivre’ back in their game. You can see when they get an offload now, they really get excited.
“They’ve picked a big, physical team, they’ve got exceptionally gifted back-rowers that can jump in the line-out, can shift the ball, can run, can tackle, and they’ve got the two Fijian wingers (Noa Nakaitaci and Virimi Vatakawa) that give it a bit of bite on the wing.”
Jones says England against France is the Five/Six Nations match that has always whetted his imagination. “The games I always enjoyed watching most were England versus France, because you always had that contrast in style. The English were more attritional and France, particularly in those days, used to play deep and wide. Their outside backs would run the most beautiful lines. I remember our teacher at school, a great rugby coach – he used to come in and rave about the French outside backs’ running lines. Back then, everyone would run towards the side lines but they were very good at straightening, even though they passed wide and lateral.”
So, is he disappointed that French rugby has become more bish-bash? “Well, it’s modern rugby. The great thing about Novès is that he is starting to get that (running) back into their game, but you can’t play deep and lateral now – defences just kill you. In the old days you could play like that because eight forwards would put their heads in the ruck, so you only had seven defenders. Now you’ve got 15 defenders.”
Jones switches his sights back on England’s quest for a repeat Slam. “It takes an evolution of how you bring your own national style out in the modern game. That’s what we’re trying to do with England – keep the traditional style but make it modern. So, you don’t go away from your strengths, but you add to them…”
Suggest that means being more daring, and playing with more flair than the French, and Jones gets into his stride: “Daring doesn’t mean flair. Flair to me is Allan Lamb batting – trying to do the most outrageous things. Or a 20-20 reverse sweep. Daring to me is having the mindset of going out there to win the game, not relying on the opposition to make mistakes. Going out there with a proactive game – we take it to the opposition, this is what we’re going to do, if we do it well enough then we’re going to win the game. Rather than waiting, holding, hoping that they’re going to make mistakes. Is it hard to convince the team to play like that? We’ll find out.”
He adds: “The first couple of games [last year] we were quite reticent to play any rugby. We got better against Ireland and Wales and we went back into our shell against France. That’s the challenge ahead, we’ve got a short period of time to change mindsets, but I think we can.”
Jones says England’s attack will be a work in progress during this Six Nations. “Our understanding of how we want to attack is improving. We need to improve our individual skills, which is why we’ve got (visual skills coach) Sherylle Calder in to improve our hand-eye co-ordination. And the subtleties of our attack need to improve: the accuracy of our running lines, our alignment and our passing skills.”
If England are going to deliver on that attacking pledge they are first going to have to absorb plenty of French punishment up front. Thankfully, Hartley and his crew have shown a capacity to come off the ropes to land knock-out blows of their own – and they will need to again when they tangle with Les Bleus in the Twickenham opener.