Chandler Cunningham-South handed first Test start as England name team to play Japan

I’ve not assumed you’ve got no basis. I’ve asked you what your basis is.

You’ve said every time you watch CCS he knocks it on. I did watch the 6N and a lot of Quins games this year. Quins throw it around more than most and I don’t recall seeing him knock it on all that often. CCS has never stood out to me as having “terrible handling”. So I disagree with that assessment.

Similarly, you’ve said “Marcus can’t link with his forward pods because he hasn’t done it for England or Quins”. I say he has done it for England and Quins. I’m not an encyclopaedia for plays Marcus has run, so no, I can’t give examples like “in game x at 15m 23s he linked up with so and so”. But it does happen. Quite often and effectively. In fact, his linking with Dombrandt in particular is widely considered to be one of the more effective 8/10 combos in the Premiership.

You seem to think that your stating these things makes them irrefutable. They aren’t.

At least you’ve softened your stance to say Marcus isn’t very good at linking with forwards rather than he simply can’t do it (though you still felt the need to water it down with a “technically” and an “I guess”). That’s a slightly more balanced opinion. I still don’t agree with you, but that’s okay. As I’ve said, you’re welcome to your opinions. But it’s not fact and you have no more basis for your opinion than I do for mine.

Edit: For what it’s worth, Fin may well be better than Marcus at linking with his forward pods. He certainly does it more often. But that doesn’t mean Marcus is bad at it.

Calm down lad.

I’m not slamming CCS based on one dropped catch, he’s knocked the ball on almost every time I’ve seen him play. Did you not watch the six nations? or the u20 world cup last year?

Its a shame you’ve come into this conversation with the assumption locked and loaded that everyone who disagrees with you has absolutely no basis for any of their opinions.

Fin Smith can run at defences, but he’s not quite as good at is as Marcus is. Likewise Marcus technically *can* link with his forward pods I guess, but he’s not very good at it. My evidence for this is that he doesn’t do this for Harlequins, he doesn’t do it for England, and when he has done it for England it hasn’t worked very well. Could you give examples of when it has worked?

Honestly, your obvious bias against Marcus and CCS is laughable. You’re slamming CCS’ handling skills on one dropped catch? There’s not a player in the world who hasn’t dropped the ball many a time. What if I slammed Fin’s tackling for his laughable ‘attempt’ at a tackle in the lead up to Japan’s try? Or his game management for the way England fell apart after he came on?

You keep saying Fin is better suited to play the big international games. You talk about staying linked to forward pods as if it’s some incredible skill. Standing at first receiver and popping it along is a very basic skill for a 10. I’ve asked for evidence that Marcus can’t do this and you’ve provided none. Because there is none. Of course he can do this and he has done it many a time before, for England and Harlequins. But you seem to ignore that.

Your argument that Fin is the better player is based on him winning the players player of the year? Do you think Fin is the best player in the Premiership? Surely you don’t, so you know that award means nothing in this context. He won that because he was the poster boy of the best team. Simple as that.

You’re welcome to your opinions. I disagree on all fronts. Most fans, pundits and coaches seem to agree with me that right now Marcus is the better player. Including Borthwick. But hey, seems you’ve got that hack Stephen Jones on your side.

There have been more games this season than just the Saints v Harlequins fixture. Over the season as a whole I think Fin looked better than Marcus. He won the player’s player of the season award for a reason. I also think that when two players are of fairly equal quality, it makes sense to favour the younger of the two. I also think that regardless of how good Marcus Smith looks in the premiership and against tier 2 opposition, Fin’s game is much more likely to work against teams like New Zealand, because unlike Marcus, he is able to stay linked to his forward pods.

But yeah, Marcus played well today and continuity of selection is important, so I’m not clamouring for him to be replaced.

I agree that CCS was very good today, although predictably he was off before the 60 minute mark. Also, thankfully it didn’t affect the game at all, but his dropped catch at the first kick off wasn’t especially surprising. Its odd that a player can be so talented in pretty much area of the game, but have such terrible handling skills.

I conceded that, on looking back, there were more changes than I originally remembered. So I was admitting I was wrong in my initial assessment. I don’t think that’s confusing. But when given a short run of games, in trying circumstances, results didn’t suffer. So I think, if we are going to take anything from it, it should be a positive - especially when debating with someone who thinks Farrell (the man Marcus replaced in those games) was one of the best 10s in the world.

Bottom line is, Marcus doesn’t need to be perfect or the best player in the world. He just needs to be better than Fin. On the evidence so far, I think he has shown he is better than Fin. Take today’s game and the head to head in the Prem as evidence. What evidence is there that Fin is the better player?

As for CCS, to be honest, I think claiming any professional rugby player can’t last 80 is a bit of a bold claim. Save maybe a few props. And I thought he was very very good today.

I think the 6 games were bad partly because of Marcus. That isn’t the whole story - there was a real lack of powerful runners in the backline, and overall too many changes were made to the system, but we also switched to a system that relied on having a 10 able to take a really decisive role in organising the forward pods, and Marcus wasn’t able to do that.

I’m sorry, but I think you’re completely wrong. Marcus plays the way he wants to play. It wouldn’t make any sense for Borthwick to be giving completely different instructions to Marcus and to Fin when they are playing the same position within the same system in the same match. Marcus doesn’t link much with his forwards and Harlequins either, and when he did do it For England in 2022 he mostly did quite a bad job of it. At a certain point you need to provide some evidence for Marcus and CCS being able to do the things you claim they can do.

I am a bit confused that you’ve gone from arguing that Marcus struggled because there weren’t enough changes made, to arguing that he struggled because too many changes were made. I guess you are at least not arguing against facts anymore! It might be true that England’s overall winning record was pretty much constant between the matches started by Marcus alone and those started by Marcus & Farrell, but I think the attacking performance was much better when Farrell started. By the end of 2022 England were a really dangerous attacking side, but were losing games because the set piece had completely fallen apart, and because the defensive line was so absurdly narrow.

Also, Care played terribly in 2022 for England.

A run of 6 games 2 years ago in a different team in terms of players, coaches and tactics tells us very little about how Marcus might perform in this England team. But sure, he was given 6 games in a very poor England side. Were they poor because of Marcus, or already poor and Marcus (and others, okay I’ll concede there were other changes) tasked with turning it around? I know what I think the answer is.

I also don’t think you can criticise Marcus because he stands out wider. If you want to criticise, I think you should look at the coaches. He’s playing wider because that’s what he has been asked to do. It doesn’t mean he can’t link with the forwards, just that Borthwick (and Jones) wanted to utilise him further out to try and maximise his super strength. Again, you’re conflating ‘hasn’t’ with ‘can’t’. If he tries to play in with the forwards and fails then fair enough, that is on Marcus.

As for the changes under Jones which coincided with Marcus, Steward wasn’t an attacking change. Dombrandt and Randall were used fleetingly, but fair enough, looking back, Marchant, Simmonds, Isiekwe, Ewels, Malins (and even Blamire and Dolly) were also brought in for a few of those games. But ultimately results are more important than tries and England won as many games in 2022 as 2021 with Marcus on a handful of caps instead of Farrell with around 100 caps (probably 80/90 back then, I can’t be bothered to work it out) and an inexperienced support cast missing the likes of Lawes, Billy, Tuilagi, Underhill and Care. I don’t understand how that is a stick with which you can beat Marcus? Achieving parity with such drastic turn over (and a few guys in there who were frankly never up to it) isn’t a bad starting place.

Edit: unless, of course, you think those guys that were missing were no good too. But I know you think Farrell is amazing, Lawes too. And it’s hard to argue against Tuilagi’s impact. Underhill is class, Cade was a big step up from Randall. Billy, admittedly, was well past it by 2021 in my opinion.

I havent argued against any facts. You haven’t used the word “idiot" but you’ve been extremely dismissive of different opinions.

First, you’re right that most games Smith has played have been alongside Farrell, but today was his 11th cap starting as sole playmaker, and his 12th overall game under those conditions including the game v Barbarians FC. I think those 12 games give us enough data to judge how things go with Smith at 10. He was also given a run of 6 consecutive starts as sole PM so I don’t think it’s true to say that he’s not been given a run of games there. If 6 games doesn't count as a run then Ford hasn’t been given a fair shot either.

Second, Marcus had a really incredible game today, but I think we saw a great illustration of why multiple international coaches have tried to put him at second receiver. Almost every time he got the ball he did something incredible with it, but he actually didn’t get on the ball that much. England’s phase attack basically involved Mitchell sending forwards into the Japanese line, while Marcus waited for gaps to appear out wide. Around the 70ish minute mark we saw a really good illustration of what I meant by Fin's ability to stay linked to his forward pods, as he called consecutive balls to himself not because he had seen space, but because he wanted to create space by giving it to forwards in a wide channel. There’s no getting away from the fact that in this match Marcus had much more success than Fin did, but there is reason to think that what Marcus did won’t be replicable against a team like New Zealand.

Third, I don’t think it’s accurate to say that Eddie expected Marcus to turn around the attack on his own. When Marcus came in Eddie made a number of other selection changes (Steward, Dombrandt, & Randall all came in around this time), and also tried to shift England towards a radically new attacking system (the numberless backline). Obviously many of these changes didn’t go well. In fact, it wasn’t just a case of Marcus failing to ignite a struggling attack, but of things getting worse while he was sole PM (although its debatable how much of that was his fault): in the 2021 6N England scored 12 tries, and in 2022 they scored just 8.

Is this lot the best of England rugby? All Blacks are gonna lay waste in a couple of weeks!!!!!

This looks like the starting XV they’ll go with against the ABs. There’s a lot to be happy with about this England side, but a few of the selection calls are a little bit baffling to me.

1) the only argument I can see for picking Marcus ahead of Fin is that he has more experience, so why not give Fin a chance to gain experience against Japan?

2) why is Itoje playing? He doesn’t need game time, and isn’t likely to be needed for England to dominate upfront. I understand Borthwick is going to ignore the 2400 minute limit, but this just feels gratuitous.

3) Chandler Cunningham-South seems like he struggles to last 80 minutes, so I’m slightly surprised he’s been giving the starting shirt. With a 6:2 split there wouldn’t be an issue, but with a 5:3 split Borthwick will be praying that there aren’t any back row or second row injuries.

The one other minor change I would have made is that I would have started Marler. Him being on the bench isn’t surprising, given Borthwick always wants to have one of his best scrummaging props (Marler & Cole) starting, and the other finishing the game, but in general I do just think its best to start with your best players. I am really happy that Rodd is being given a shot though - extremely underrated player.

I think Eddie is going to have egg on his face 👀 pretty handy team that