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[2021 Six Nations] England Squad

I understand that any England coach has a problem which many other nations don't. It's actually harder to put a team together with more players to choose from. There are some players who are obviously world-class. Maro Itoje is one; it was blindingly obvious watching him from an early age playing age group internationals (thank you, Sky Sports) that he was an exceptional player.

Below that, there are players who are obviously orders of magnitude better than I ever was, but who are in no danger of making a World XV. England, because of player base/funding/pathways, produce an awful lot of these. It's then a case of moulding a style and picking players to suit that style... or is it? When you have so many (international but not world class) players, it's also possible to select a squad to play in a different way if plan A isn't working.

Plan A definitely isn't working. We're not bullying teams up front. We're not picking Nathan Hughes to put Billy Vunipola under pressure, if that's the way we are supposed to be going. We have, however, played really well against France and New Zealand recently, based on a high tempo, ball retention, running game. We're still not picking our most exciting half-backs in order to play that game, however.

So what we see is a coach picking a 'percentage' team, which actually plays better when there's more creativity. It falls neatly between two stools and it's embarrassing.
 
ragerancher said:
Personally I think if Farrell isn't captain then he also has a limited role in the team at all. I never bought into his hype and I feel it's been exposed more recently. Ford gets stick for needing an armchair ride but really it's Farrell who has had everything set up to benefit him wherever he has been. Ford has at least shown he can produce something from nothing, Farrell never has.
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I think the majority of the problem lies with Jones and the way he is / isn't getting his messages across.

But by extension the armchair comments get to the nub of one of the big issues - our much vaunted pack simply isn't dominant, aggressive or intimidating enough and definitely not on a regular basis. We've missed some influential forwards this 6N, but this has been the case for a while.
 
For all the praise Curry gets (rightly) I think we really do miss someone like Underhill to simply be a constant disruptive and largely clean presence on the field. I think the pair of them are better than the sum of their parts and I don't think either are even bad carriers making the likes of a Billy type 8 even necessary. Another dynamic back row to replace Billy I think would give more benefit than not and then I'd choose a heavier 2nd row to compliment Itoje.
 
Wendigo7 said:
In my life I've watched England win the 6 nations grand slam 3 times, technically 4 but I was too young. 91, 95, 03, 16. 4 times in 30 years. Wales by comparison have had 5 grand slams in 15 years, nearly 6 in 15 years if it was last night. I believe france have won as many grand slams as us and they've been pants for 15 years.
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What were you doing in 1992? ;)

Wales have won 4 Grand Slams in 15 years. Don't exaggerate. And England have won 6 ***les without a Slam in those 30 years, making it 11 England ***les in total in 30 years, more than one-third of the tournaments. Not too shabby. Wales have won 6 total ***les over that period, i.e. just over half what England have won. France have won 8, and they've pretty much got the same resources as England.
 
Wendigo7 said:
In my life I've watched England win the 6 nations grand slam 3 times, technically 4 but I was too young. 91, 95, 03, 16. 4 times in 30 years. Wales by comparison have had 5 grand slams in 15 years, nearly 6 in 15 years if it was last night. I believe france have won as many grand slams as us and they've been pants for 15 years.
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At the risk of stating the obvious - to take the grand slam, you have to beat every other team.
Every other team (bar Italy) raise their game to play England.
Every team absolutely want, with all their hearts, to stop England winning a grand slam - in a way that they just don't for anyone else.
Of course, they want to win, and they want the pride of spoiling someone else's slam, but that motivation goes tenfold when up against England.

Where this ends up is that England are good enough to win plenty of championships but have a hard time converting those into slams
 
How stupid is Johnny Hill by the way? The penalties he has given away in recent weeks have been particularly egregious, stuff that should've been coached out of him at schoolboy level. What a moron.
 
Yeah, they've been daft. I was impressed by his work rate but his discipline was poor. Even though he gave away less penalties than, say, Mako or Itoje over the tournament, his felt especially dumb and he continued to be dumb through all the games.

Itoje, on the other hand, only gave away 2 pens in the last 2 games compared to 8 in the first three; sorted himself right out. And Mako's 9 penalties were, I think, pretty much entirely due to him being rubbish in the scrum; not so much that he was dumb as just thoroughly bested.

I wouldn't be surprised to see him get another shot over the summer, though.
 
Crash Hamster said:
Yep, that's exactly the sort of thing I mean. Take him as SH, take Danny Care, leave the two of them together. Give him a little game time off the bench, maybe.

I fear that 2023 is a ship that's sailed. Dan Robson is 29, which means he'll be 31 in 2023. Ben Youngs is 31 now. No-one else has a cap yet. (that may be mild hyperbole...) The idea of 'bedding a team in' for 2 years' time is now hinging on experienced players getting back to form and/or inexperienced players becoming very good very quickly. The whole squad is lacking in experienced replacements if there's an injury or two. EJ is now at 'stick or twist' time. He's mentioned that this is a team in transition, but he's showing no signs of building any depth or experimenting in any way in the positions where we have the least cover. He can argue we need a huge ball carrier at 8 to bully the opposition, but the opposition hasn't looked like it's been particularly bullied this 6N. I'm not suggesting his plan is an awful one, but a plan which relies on one bloke to be in top form and not be injured has an obvious weakness. We seem to be going into 2023 with a lot of 30+ year olds in key positions.

As an aside, JvP would be 25 in 2027 and at the height of his powers...
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Do like the idea of Care being 1/3 SH on the tour, as a mentor to JvP. The main SH should be Spencer.
 
Dont be worried people. Eddie has everything in hand.

He wasnt overly fussed about losing a few in this 6n....he just wanted to keep his core group together and keep some kind of fitness for when they start playing their new system...which we saw a glimpse of v France.

The new system requires huge fitness (almost 7's like fitness) and off the ball work...which is why we havent seen a huge amount of Lawrence or any of Odogwu etc ...as of yet.

Lets see how we go in the AI's after a summer tour where a few of the fringe / younger players like Dombrandt, Marcus Smith etc can be blooded.
 
Sorry but its been 18ish months of bad performances since the RWC SF with one good one a week ago against France. And I'm unsure if that's England playing better or just the way France plays means it opens up the game a lot more so we look better.

Reality if despite what Jones is saying there is no aspect of our game which better than it was in the RWC if there was an are we were better t I'd believe all this 'prepping the team' rubbish people are saying but we look and are completely at sea. That has led to what might be our worst result in the 6 nations he'll probably get the summer and the winter. Reality is if your going to ever sack your coach I'm unsure how if you ever would if not now.
 
So what team do you take to USA and Canada if they tour goes ahead?
 
 
 
Reiser99 said:
Press teeing off is no surprise, it's easy headlines and click bait. The bit about the clause is interesting, it's whether the RFU is brave enough 2 years out from a world cup.
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When else other than immediately after a world cup?
 
Well - they will need to line someone up. They can't surely just settle on a coach for 4 years and not have a backup if things go wrong?

I can only assume Gatland, Schmidt, Lam are obvious candidates because they are.
 

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