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One of the criticisms of England going into the 2025 Six Nations is that they haven’t settled on a clear way to attack and a clear way to defend. England remain a conundrum, a team that could quite easily finish fourth or fifth, but could also potentially go all the way and win their first title since 2020.
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Much depends on the outcome of Saturday’s clash against the reigning champions Ireland, and whether they can dance to the same tune as Marcus Smith, the latest in a long line of England fly-halves to divide opinion, who won the game so dramatically when the sides met at Allianz Stadium Twickenham last March.
All Blacks legend Andrew Mehrtens can take a dispassionate viewpoint and he reasons that for England to prosper, they need to decide whether to go all in and back Smith’s attack-minded, give-it-a-go approach or play to type and be more conservative. At the moment, he feels, England’s game plan is stuck in no man’s land.
“I don’t think England really know what sort of team they want to be. They have got such tradition there of being strong and structured and very correct and then you have got a free spirit like Marcus Smith who is unbelievable when he is on, and it is not just him when he is on, when players around him are responding to him, they can do anything,” the 70-cap All Black said.
“You look at what they did to the All Blacks at the end of 2022. In that last 20 minutes, they basically ran them off the park. So I think the challenge is not for Marcus Smith to necessarily do anything, it is for the team to get used to him. I think they’ll only do that with more time on the field with him, if he gets more responsibility, and England says, ‘Hey, look, we can play this way, we’ve got the reins with Marcus and our responsibility is to kind of support him’.”
Mehrtens, 51, believes England’s dilemma is similar to the one Northampton faced when they signed his flashier fly-half rival, Carlos Spencer, in 2005.
“It is kind of similar to Northampton when Carlos Spencer arrived, it took them a while to work out how to play alongside that style of fly-half. New Zealand teams had gotten used to him. Auckland had guys like Doug Howlett and whatnot. They knew what Carlos was like, they knew they just had to get around him, let him make his decisions and get up and offer support as much as possible.
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“I think that’s similar to what England probably needs to do with Marcus Smith – and decide that they are going to be an attacking team rather than a conservative team. That’ll bring out the likes of Ben Earl and those sorts of players, who I think are fantastic.”
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The classic conundrum stated by Mehrtens appears to be - play to your 10's strengths or force him to play to a system. In reality it doesn't have to be an either/or and for someone as talented as Marcus Smith he and the coach should be able to accomodate both, otherwise neither coach nor player is as good as they appear to be (!)
Certain zones of the field or situations clearly require a different team and player style approach as we all know, so its not as if subtleties in 10 playing style are absent anyway. The 9, 12 and 15 are a big part of this, so not just a Smith issue. Kick, pass, run decision making strengths amongst those 4 positions spreads the load and helps the team to be adaptable. Do the styles and capabilities of those players match?
Smith has the talent and the skills - do his team mates and the coaches?
Andrew Mehrtens is correct of course. Around the debate at 10. But he’s really touching on another, bigger, issue.
If I were to give England any benefit of the doubt it would be that they have made it difficult for themselves to settle in with Borthwick (after Eddie), with a short turnaround to the World Cup in 2023. Copying the boks conservative approach (circa 2019) to make a good run at it. And doing well in fact.
Followed by adjusting to a new approach, copying the boks again, under Felix Jones after poaching him from the boks. And Walters too. Failing to retain Jones’ services (and Walters) and adjusting to whatever it is they tried to do last year after changes to their coaching team. After Borthwick brought in his best man. And Felix worked from home and dialled in via Teams.
Changing their captain now.
Their execs at least performed well and were rewarded bonuses.
Each of these examples on their own are probably not the end of the world. But their cumulative effect are significant.
England’s problems are related to management. Until they get that right they’ll keep this cycle going for another decade.
The best teams in the world are well managed.
This is exactly correct. England have no identity. They are caught between trying to make use of this precocious talent and playing the way Borthwick really wants them to play which we witnessed against South Africa in the world cup semi.
They need to **** or get off the pot.
Franky Borthwick might as well relegate Marcus to the bench and proceed with his regressive gameplan because he's never in a million years going to be able to coach a team to play around Marcus. It's the antithesis of his genetic being. Is moulding a team around one player even a good idea? The Kiwis needed to call up their 4th choice flyhalf to win a world cup. Being incapable of making use of the most talented players in the country is surely not a recipe for success either.
We may see glimpses of it coming together when the stars align but even if they do beat Ireland with a wonder performance, they'll be back to looking rudderless before the 6N finishes.