Time to seize the moment and aim high
ENGLAND
Coach: Steve Borthwick
Captain: Owen Farrell
Never mind swinging low, those steering England's chariot are aiming low – and missing.
Approaching the 20th anniversary of their World Cup success in Australia, the only time the competition has been won by a northern hemisphere nation, the men in white will arrive in France eighth in the world rankings, a team bang out of form.
Ireland's captain Johnny Sexton was asked last week what gave him confidence of winning the World Cup when his side has yet to reach a semi-final. “What we have done over the last couple of years,” he replied. “I have been in groups before where you go to a World Cup and say you are there to win it but you often do not have the achievements to back it up.
“We've got things like the Grand Slam, going to New Zealand and winning a series, stuff that other teams that have won it, like England in 2003, have achieved. We have some evidence to give us that little but of confidence, but it is the toughest group we have ever had and the toughest quarter-final draw if we get through our group.”
England's head coach Steve Borthwick reached for words like ability and confidence after last week's defeat to Fiji, their first against a non-championship nation, and while he could not have been expected to say anything different, he has no evidence that his side will flourish in France.
The four World Cup warm-up matches left him with many more questions than answers. Three defeats and a late victory over Wales at Twickenham secured despite three players in the sin-bin at one point revealed only where England are coming from, a long period of decline that a change in coach at the end of last year has yet to arrest.
Which would suggest that the many problems facing England were not all down to Borthwick's predecessor, Eddie Jones. The national side is just one part of the equation. England won the Grand Slam under Jones in 2016 and the title the following year and in 2020.
They were three years when a Premiership club won the Heineken Champions Cup, Saracens twice and then Exeter. In the last three years, when England's major scalps are confined to home wins over France and South Africa and, further down the scale, a series win in Australia, England's record in the Champions Cup has been more modest.
Eight quarter-final appearances have generated just one victory, Exeter's over the Stormers last season, and there has been a solitary, unsuccessful visit to the last four. With no stepping stone between the Premiership and international level, the growing gap between the two has been exposed.
Jones came to use Premiership matches not as indicators of form but to detect traits in players, not least attitude, that marked the seeds of a Test player. It was why he called so many up for his squad sessions, seeing how they would handle the greater intensity.
In his first stint with Wales, Warren Gatland regularly got his players to perform at a few levels up from their regions. He was picking from four teams rather than the 12 and 13 Jones had to choose from and they were all along the M4 corridor.
The issues in the English game go far deeper than the national side. The rows of empty seats at Twickenham last weekend told their own story: an expensive day out has to be seen to be worth it and England, deep in a rut and lacking players who empty bars, have become a hard sell.
The former New Zealand coach Steve Hansen last week lamented that the game in general had become bogged down in structure with too many sides failing to encourage players to see what is in front of them. Instead of reacting to what is on, they rely on instruction, passing the responsibility, and blame, to the stand.
He would have had England in mind, but what did the RFU expect after changing coaches so close to the World Cup? Did it consider letting Borthwick see out the season with Leicester and join up with the national side for the summer training camps and World Cup, something France did with Fabien Galthie in 2019?
It allowed Galthie to hit the ground running when he took over after the tournament and would have seen the resumption of what had been a successful partnership between Jones and Borthwick, first with Japan and then England.
For all Jones has been written off as someone who got England stuck in reverse gear, England won the Six Nations three times compared to just once in the 12 years before him. And they reached a World Cup final, crushing the holders New Zealand along the way.
It was after the Saracens affair, when the RFU abdicated its responsibility as the governors of the game and allowed the Premiership clubs, despite a clear lack of proper governance, to administer the punishment on the salary-cap breaking club which provided Jones with the core of his side, that England started to lose their way, compounded by the pandemic which revealed the game's parlous financial state.
The decline, gentle at first, has gathered momentum. Since the start of last year, England have lost six times at Twickenham with four of the defeats coming by more than seven points and they have won four, against teams nowhere near the top of the rankings, Wales (twice), Japan and Italy. They also drew with New Zealand after mounting a late comeback.
Small wonder it has become a struggle to fill a place that was for so long a refuge. As send-offs for a World Cup campaign go, Fiji last weekend could not have been flatter. Some England players posted messages afterwards, but they were more defensive than defiant. They will be no one's favourites, but even in their current condition, reaching the semi-finals is not a fanciful notion.
As Scotland curse their grouping with the number one ranked team Ireland and the holders South Africa, reward for not reaching the quarter-finals in 2019, another team that failed to make the last eight four years ago, Argentina, have been more blessed.
They are with England, a team they defeated at Twickenham last November, and Japan, who have fallen back after beating Ireland and Scotland four years ago to reach the quarter-finals. Samoa, who pushed Ireland all the way in Bayonne last weekend, may prove harder to knock over.
England argue that they should be judged not on the World Cup warm-ups but how they perform in the World Cup, but even if they lose their opening match to Argentina they should then beat Japan and Chile to leave them needing to overcome Samoa in their final group match to progress.
An unusual feature of this year's World Cup is that finishing top of the group does not hold much in the way of advantage. On the one side of the draw, it could be France or New Zealand against Ireland or South Africa (which is not to rule out Scotland who are peaking at the right time) and on the other it may be England or Argentina against Australia, Wales or Fiji.
So on the one hand, two potential winners are not going to make it to the last four while two sides who go into the tournament having lost more matches than they have won in the last year will make the semi-finals.
The evidence may not be there that England will win the World Cup, but a semi-final is far from beyond them, even if they do not radically depart from their safety-first gameplan which resembles how England won the Premiership under Borthwick, although the Tigers' forwards, who included an Argentina hooker and two South African back rowers, were more dominant, in the set-pieces and the loose, than the national side.
Yet the team that started the 2022 final against Saracens included three forwards who took the field against Fiji, Ellis Genge, Dan Cole and Ollie Chessum, while George Ford and Freddie Steward were among the backs and Ben Youngs came on as a replacement. Borthwick has taken the Leicester route with his coaching staff, valuing familiarity with time not on his side, but international rugby is a very different beast.
Injuries and suspensions have not helped Borthwick with Anthony Watson ruled out of the tournament and Owen Farrell missing the first two group matches while Billy Vunipola will be absent for Argentina. Tom Curry, a galvanising presence, has not played since last season while Elliot Daly and Henry Arundell have been nursing knocks.
More than that is the state of mind of the players. George Ford was honest enough to admit last week that England had been playing the way they were training, making too many mistakes. “Maybe it is a bit of over-eagerness or a little bit of inaccuracy, or a bit of understanding. If is probably a bit of each but one thing for sure is that we cannot keep doing it.”
England have also been tactically inflexible, struggling to react when a game does not go as planned. It has been a long-term weakness but with the experience in the side, they have the means to problem solve with- out needing to be told what to do at half-time or when water-carriers come on to the field.
Coaches lead but players have to drive and watching England last month was to see a team lacking belief in what they were doing. Borthwick did not turn around Leicester in a week: they had some big defeats in his first 10 matches when the 2019-20 season resumed, shipping 47 tries and winning twice. And that was when he had daily access to the players.
England should benefit from getting away from Twickenham and the increasingly poisonous atmosphere there. Messages sent after the defeat to Fiji suggested there would be moves to call the management board to account not just for what has happened to the senior England side but the way the game was being run.
A vote of no confidence was mentioned, but that is not likely to be called ahead of a World Cup. And if England do make the semi-finals, at least, would that thwart any attempted rebellion? Probably not given that the main concern is about the direction of travel and breaks in the chain between the grassroots and the top level.
So while victory for England against Argentina is not a must for quarter-final qualification, defeat would add to the discord. It is very different to October 5, 2019 when the two sides met in the group stage at the Tokyo Stadium. England won comfortably then, aided by Tomas Lavanini's 18th-minute dismissal for a high tackle, and five of their six tries were scored by backs.
Twelve of the starting line-up that day are in France along with three of the replacements so it is not as if England do not have the players. They have lost their way and are in need of a light-bulb moment, an inspired move that brings out the quality that is in a side which should be a level above of the other sides in their half of the draw. Is it moving Marcus Smith to full-back? He lifted England when he came on against Fiji, a player whose natural instinct is to move the ball. Freddie Steward has been one of the few players who has shone in the gloom, but teams are aware of the hazards of kicking directly to him.
England need to shed their tactical timidity and start aiming higher. They seemed after the 2019 final to look to emulate their conquerors, South Africa, who looked to throttle opponents through their powerful back, backed up by six replacements, and kicking half-backs.
The Springboks were at it again nine days ago against New Zealand, barging them out of the way in a sustained physical fury. This time they had the guile and gas out wide to take the game away from their opponents earlier: Kurt-Lee Arendse and Canan Moodie, two of the newcomers from four years ago, add glitter and Andre Esterhuizen is repeating at Test level what he does for Harlequins, flying the Premiership flag.
The Fiji defeat showed that England need a second playmaker behind the scrum. Smith can provide that from full-back with Farrell missing the opening two matches, but England also need Ford to be himself. He is a player totally aware of what is going on around him, and the times England kicked last month when moving the ball was a better option showed they were playing to orders rather than with their heads up.
England should expect to beat Argentina. Since the last World Cup, the Pumas have won 11 Tests out of 33, drawing three times. England have won 23 out of 40, drawing against New Zealand, but since the beginning of 2021 they have a 50 per cent record, down to 33 per cent this year.
Argentina lack the forward power of old, but they are durable and resilient. They also have ambition, a quality England need to rediscover. Never mind the turbulence they may be feeling or the lack of expectation, what England have going for them is probably the best group of the four in terms of accessibility to the knock-out stage. None of the teams is in form.
There were moments in 2003 and 2007 when the players asserted themselves to get the campaigns back on track. The current squad needs to do so before a ball is kicked. They find themselves backed against a wall and have to come out fighting.
As the All Blacks have so often discovered, a World Cup campaign is not about what has gone on before. Seize the moment and aim high.
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