There's a lot of guff coming from the England camp at the moment. Here's Sinfield on England's failure to execute in Scotland:
"That was an anomaly for us. We certainly haven't seen that throughout training at all".
Well, who'd have guessed that the pressure in the heat of a test match is just a smidge up from the training field…..
OK I'm being slightly facetious, but I have not seen or heard anything to give me real confidence in this coaching set up.
Even Cole parroting the line about attack being the "cherry on top". Cole's a thoughtful guy, but that is nonsense. The game is multi faceted and you can only ever be as strong as your weakest link. All aspects need to be developed - attack isn't a mythical mirage or a nice to have, its just another aspect along with defence, breakdown, set piece, kicking etc. And once you've identified a weak link, that's where more time should be invested to strengthen the whole.
Labouring the point, take Jessica Ennis-Hill. In 2007 she became joint GB record holder in the high jump but she knew that to become the best heptathlete she could she had to power up and concentrate on developing her previously weak throws rather than search for an extra cm or 2 in the HJ. Consequently, she never hit those heights again, but the few points she lost there were more than made up for in the throws where she became reasonably competent and the rest is gold medal history. To improve you concentrate on what you're less good at (and I don't fully buy SB's line that he inherited a squad who weren't good at anything - that just smacked of getting excuses in early…..and if things really were that bad it should have been easy to show at least a degree of immediate impact).
