Give Joe Cokanasiga a run on the wing
Steve Borthwick has proven during his career that he is a great coach and he is starting to show that he is a good selector of coaches too – Richard Wigglesworth, Felix Jones, and now Joe El Abd have made real improvements in England’s game – the one area that he needs to improve is in player selection.
Although it could be argued that he picked the right players for the gameplan that he used at the last World Cup, given those that were available, it is not clear that he is currently a good long-term selector of talent.
The one exception to this is Immanuel Feyi-Waboso, an inarguable success. The other players that have played well for him since the last World Cup, such as George Furbank and Tommy Freeman in the backs, were identified and first selected by Eddie Jones. The fact that Eddie did not subsequently pick them as often as Borthwick has suggests that he had some reservations about them.
If you follow a stats-based approach, as Borthwick apparently does in other areas, their shortcomings at international level should be fairly evident.
Try Scoring Woes
Both have only two tries from over a dozen starts for England. If you compare this with the New Zealand back three they played at the weekend, both Mark Tele’a and Will Jordan average a try a game at international level (as Feyi-Waboso indeed does), while Caleb Clarke averages a try every other game.
The result last Saturday? New Zealand scored three tries – from Tele’a and Jordan – while England scored one. So do England have the players to bridge this gap? Yes, and they have already proven it at international level.
The first is absent from England team selections due to reasons beyond Borthwick’s control: Henry Arundell. The second though, who averages a try a game over a similar number of starts to Tele’a, Furbank, and Freeman, is Joe Cokanasiga. Borthwick might see him as being too defensively or aerially limited, but two out of New Zealand’s three tries came down Freeman’s wing at the weekend as a result of Freeman hesitating to blitz, while he also failed to win any of his aerial battles, and had the most knock-ons in the game.
Forwards Try Scoring
The same argument could be made about the forwards. The only forwards available to Borthwick that score a try every other game at Premiership level and at Champions Cup level are Alex Dombrandt and Alfie Barbeary. They need to be given the chance to show that they can do this at international level.
Ben Earl has many excellent qualities, but he has not shown he can do this at Premiership or Champions Cup level, never mind at international level. Borthwick could even eventually fit both into the same team if he convinced Barbeary (with the offer of an EPS contract) to reconvert back to hooker.
The other way in which Borthwick could improve as a selector is by taking a leaf out of Clive Woodward’s book who selected rugby league talent to great effect.
The talent is there for Borthwick to do the same: Kai Pearce-Paul and Will Pryce are massively talented individuals that are currently playing and earning plaudits in the NRL in Australia. Again, Borthwick could use the offer or at least the promise of an EPS contract to bring one or both of these players over to rugby union.
These two, with Arun-dell and Cokanasiga alongside them in the backs, and Dombrandt and Barbeary in the forwards, would give England a cutting-edge in attack that would match or even exceed that of New Zealand, Ireland, or South Africa.
