Peat, you're definitely right that England want to play a wide game, and that one of the problems is that they don't have the players for it, but the other problem is that they don't know what an effective wide game is. Just watch the first half of the Ireland game again, particularly the two times we got the ball out to Nowell on the left wing. What happened was this: Burrell hit it up in midfield; the ball went behind a forwards back to Ford; the ball was passed along the back line to Nowell. The result? Nowell taken into touch on both occasions. Is this really the best Mike Catt can come up with? On the evidence of the last few seasons I would say it is. We have made exactly the same mistake in many other games, i.e. going wide too early, and this is also what you see when you watch Brian Smith's London Irish teams, which isn't very surprising when you think that Smith was his mentor. I remember reading an interview with an England player where they talked about the improvement in England's attacking game under Smith (it did improve, but then Johnson picked Wilkinson over Flood and it went back to square one). They said that it had taken Smith a while to concentrate on something other than set-piece moves. I think Catt has made exactly the same mistake - a couple of nice set-piece moves do not make up for the complete lack of a effective multi-phase attacking strategy.
If you look at how the best teams in the Premiership (never mind the world) attack, all of them earn the right to go wide (sorry for the cliché, couldn't think how else to say it): Northampton, Saracens, Bath, Exeter. One of the reasons that England aren't earning the right is that the pod strategy you already mentioned. It works for the All Black's, because they use Retallick in the pod to vary the point of attack. Exeter and Bath are also very good at varying the point of attack in the pod. We seemed to be trying to copy this with Parling and Launchbury playing the Retallick role a couple of seasons back. Since they have been out of the team however, no one has taken up this role (unlike in the All Blacks, where Thrush has come in and played the Retallick role perfectly). In the absence of these players, the opposing team knows who the ball carrier is, and usually stops them on, or behind, the gainline. I think if we don't have the players available to play this system, we would be better off with playing around the corner like Northampton, but it is probably too late for England to change their attacking strategy, so unless Parling or Launchbury come back I can't see how we're going to improve this part of our game.
