Nick Cain looks at the England build-up to Italy – and beyond to the Lions
Having won their first three matches in the 2013 Six Nations of course England should be thinking about a Grand Slam. The whole focus and effort of the England coaches and players should be directed at working out and perfecting a strategy not simply to beat Italy at Twickenham in their Round 4 encounter on Sunday, but to do it in such a way that it hatches the means to deliver the knock-out blow against Wales in Cardiff on March 16.
Out-thinking the Welsh is the surest route to winning a fabled Grand Slam, the biggest accolade the tournament has to offer – and much of the preparation and ground work can be put in place against the Azzurri. There is no hiding from the prospect that the next two weeks are the most important in the rugby lives of this England team, irrespective of how few caps they have, not least because many of them may never get the chance to win a Six Nations clean sweep again.
That, at least, is what the history books tell us. In the last 18 years England have won just two Grand Slams, in 1995 and 2003, highlighting that even when you have a side good enough to win a World Cup, the top accolade in European rugby is still very elusive, happening about once every playing generation.
These opportunities must be seized – and that means there is not a great deal of leeway for the sort of backline experiment Sir Clive Woodward advocated recently for the game against Italy.
Woodward suggests the games against weaker opponents like the Italians are the only opportunities that international coaches have to try out their resources, and therefore that he would field a brand new backline of Mike Brown, Christian Wade, Elliot Daly, Billy Twelvetrees, Jonny May, Freddie Burns and Danny Care.
The counterpoint to Woodward’s view is that the only way that head coach Stuart Lancaster should contemplate such a wholesale rejig against the Italians is if he intends to play most of them against Wales. This is accompanied by the strong suspicion that the 2003 World Cup-winning coach would have been a lot more circumspect about making that volume of changes when he was in the hotseat, because after the 1999 World Cup quarter-final exit consistency of selection became one of Woodward’s trademarks.
If Lancaster’s hand is forced because Owen Farrell fails to recover from a quad strain in time to play against Italy, and he intends to include Toby Flood in his match 23 against Wales, then it should be the Leicester fly-half who is Farrell’s replacement against Italy. If Burns had been able to kick-on after his useful cameo against New Zealand and gain more Test experience this season then you could argue that he should start, but his absence through injury came at the wrong time, so he has to build again from the bench.
The only other area for Lancaster to consider changing is the back three. Chris Ashton may think he’s been playing well, but his ineffective kick-chase and tendency to be turned-over in contact against Ireland and France suggests otherwise. Lancaster has to decide if it costs Ashton the right wing shirt, and also if he can afford to keep Alex Goode at full-back for his tactical kicking – or whether England will need a greater counter-attacking threat to emerge victorious from the Millennium Stadium.
These are potentially crucial selection decisions, and they carry compound interest because the back three is an area where Wales have match-winners. With Leigh Halfpenny consistently outstanding, and big wings George North and Alex Cuthbert raising a gallop as the tournament has progressed, the Welsh could have the trump cards in terms of strike runners.
In the case of Wade it is legitimate to question why Lancaster has not made the move sooner. After all, the Wasps winger showed him what he could do in the midweek games in South Africa last summer, and posted notice again with a cracking try against Harlequins in the Twickenham double-header on the first weekend of the season. Nor has Wade paused for breath since, with eight Premiership touchdowns to 11 by Varndell, who won the last of his four Test caps in 2008.
However, with the Goode-Ashton-Brown combination not only bedded-in, but Goode and Brown’s tactical kicking intrinsic to the keynote away win in Dublin, it is likely that if Lancaster does make any changes it will be Ashton in a wing for wing swap. Concerns over the size differential between the 6ft 4ins North and the 5ft 8ins Wade might enhance the claims of the speedy May, who is 6ft 1ins and has the added advantage of having played regularly at full-back for Gloucester.
Much depends on whether Lancaster sees Wade as Jason Robinson’s heir, capable of doing the same bamboozling in-out on North as Billy Whizz did on the 6ft 4ins Chris Latham in the opening Lions Test in 2001.
The drawback is that neither Wade nor May is in the senior England squad, and Lancaster, who has Strettle as back up, has implied that bringing others into the squad now may be difficult from an EPS standpoint. From any England fan’s standpoint, if the agreement does not allow the head coach to call up who he wants out of the Saxons squad with a Grand Slam at stake, then it is not worth the paper it is written on.
When everything is put into the mix it would be a surprise if, barring injuries, Lancaster does not arrive at the Millennium Stadium with the same backline that has taken England to within sight of a Slam. As for the game against Italy, with the possible exception of Flood for Farrell, and an outside chance of Ashton being bumped to the bench, Lancaster is also likely to opt for minimum disruption.
In Lancaster’s shoes I would tune-up the back three against Italy by giving Wade or May a start ahead of Ashton.
Whatever the selection permutations that Lancaster eventually comes up with before the showdown in Cardiff, what is evident is that England have sent a clear-cut message to Warren Gatland going into the final two rounds of the Six Nations. The message to the Lions head coach says that they are the form team in Europe, proven by successive wins over New Zealand, Scotland, Ireland and France.
It says that they have developed into a side that is tough mentally, and physically fit enough to play with an intensity that opponents have found difficult to match. Those are markers which inevitably will be eroded if England lose to Wales, but, bar catastrophy in Cardiff, or a first Italian win at Twickenham, they will still stand tall.
Contrary to the suggestion that they are more a product of collective force than Lions star quality, England have also proved that Manu Tuilagi and Owen Farrell have the Test-match DNA to help the Lions to a series win in Australia. In the meantime let’s hope also that Lancaster’s line about doing a Fofana on Tuilagi by moving him out to the wing is aimed at nothing more than setting a few Welsh hares running, because he is the form outside-centre in British and Irish rugby, and it would be an utter waste.
The English have also unearthed two forwards of genuine Lions Test calibre in Tom Wood and Joe Launchbury, and in Ben Youngs and Danny Care two scrum-halves with Lions Test credentials.
Add to that the front row claims of Mako Vunipola, Alex Corbisiero and Tom Youngs, the back row attributes of Robshaw, Ben Morgan and James Haskell, the sheer efficiency and consistency of Brad Barritt, the bristling elusiveness of Mike Brown, and the English have plenty to offer – and no shortage of players who have put their hands up already.
If you then factor in the all-important element of the acceleration and pace needed to make the most of the hard, fast Australian surfaces, there are other candidates currently outside Lancaster’s squad – Tom Croft, Joe Simpson, Wade and May among them – who could also come into the Lions reckoning. The same is true in terms of heavyweight scrum power in the shape of Andrew Sheridan.
In 2009 there was widespread pessimism about the Lions being able to compete against South Africa after a Six Nations that was considered ordinary in every respect other than Ireland winning a Grand Slam for the first time in 60 years. So far, this year’s tournament has outstripped 2009 in terms of quality – with the exception of Scotland v Ireland last weekend – and England have played a significant part in the uplift.
The Six Nations remains a main stanchion in Lions selection, and, so far, the English players have done their chances a power of good by ensuring their win over New Zealand was a starting point rather than an end in itself. This contrasts with the Celts, who were predicted widely at the start of the season to be the dominant Lions contingent, but have struggled in many cases to live up to their billing.
There is no question that Gatland is right to take a leaf out of Sir Ian McGeechan’s book and wait for a month or so after the Six Nations to give himself plenty of time for deliberation before he announces his Lions squad.
However, it is also right – whether or not England win a Grand Slam – that their tournament credentials as a team with multiple Lions Test candidates is reflected fairly.
