1
Danny Care's 'foolish not to try that tactic' England prediction
By Liam Heagney
Recently retired England scrum-half Danny Care has made a prediction about next Saturday’s tactical approach versus South Africa at Allianz Stadium that won’t please fans who want to see Steve Borthwick’s team continue to creatively play with the ball in hand.
ADVERTISEMENT
Despite finessing their attack since March, England have lost six of the last eight Test matches and following on from last Saturday’s high-scoring 37-42 defeat to the Wallabies, Care has now predicted that Borthwick will revert to the kick-dominated game plan that came within a whisker of success at last year’s Rugby World Cup.
England were much criticised throughout 2023 – Borthwick’s first year in charge of the team – for having a very blunted attack that was overly dependent on kicking.
However, this narrow tactical approach very nearly saw them dethrone South Africa as they were 15-13 ahead in the World Cup semi-final until Handre Pollard landed the decisive, late penalty kick from halfway following a scrum infringement.
Restored to the top of the World Rugby rankings following Sunday’s win at Scotland, South Africa are now Twickenham-bound and they will believe they are capable of adding to Borthwick’s miserable run of results.
England scored five tries versus Australia but were still beaten by a clock-in-the-red concession and Care, the Harlequins veteran who retired from Test rugby at the end of the 2024 Guinness Six Nations, believes the game plan will now revert to what was seen 13 months ago in Paris when they last played the Springboks.
Writing in his column on TNT Sports, the network he is doing Autumn Nations Series punditry with, Care said: “If England aren’t throwing offloads, throwing it from deep and staying in tight games but then losing them, people will say, ‘Why don’t we at least be a bit looser with our attack?’
ADVERTISEMENT
“Realistically, if you look at Test match rugby – and I know Steve Borthwick and the coaches rely heavily on stats and trends in games – we got massive success in the World Cup with our kicking game which almost led us to a World Cup final.
“I say almost, we were beating South Africa for 78 minutes. I would expect this weekend that England will go to their kicking game again, because it caused them so many successes in France against South Africa that I think you would be foolish not to try that tactic again.
“So unfortunately, if you are an England fan this weekend, you are probably not going to see them throwing the ball around from everywhere, but I think the fans would take a win whichever way it comes at the moment, and I’m sure the players would as well.
“The double world champions coming to Twickenham – the boys will find something extra in them this week, they just will – they have to. With South Africa comes that fear factor, every time you play against them, you know if you are not on it, they are going to make you look very silly because they are massive, massive men.
ADVERTISEMENT
“Their physicality is incredible, they have got this incredible scrum who are dominating the whole world, so they are going to try and win penalties there. If there is ever a game you have to be incredibly physical for and just properly pitch up for and leave everything out there, it’s this one.
“Like we showed at the World Cup, these lads have got some tangible evidence that a year ago, it was a game that we definitely felt like we should have won. So I’m sure England will be using that as their motivation and their evidence that they caused this team problems before. The boys are definitely capable of doing it again, the big thing is actually going and doing it.”
Women’s Rugby World Cup England 2025 tickets application phase is now open! Apply now.
Every knock-on is a SA penalty.
I suspect Danny Care is right - that there will be a lot of kicks coming from England.
But if there is one weakness I would exploit in the boks - it would be at the breakdown and the boks conceding penalties for holding on and not rolling away. It's what the scots did so brilliantly on Sunday.
They contested the breakdowns extremely well. They slowed the boks ball down at just about every ruck. They milked penalties that kept them in contention. But they couldn't covert the penalties into tries.
England needs to do the same if they want to win this game. They will need to be fit and as ferocious at the breakdowns as Scotland were. Because like Scotland, they are not going to get past the bok defence easily. And they certainly don't have the scrum dominance.
So it would be harass the breakdowns. Frustrate the boks, get penalties. Kick for the corners or take three points. England loose forwards are going to have to be on fire.
It's unlikely, but I wouldn't mind seeing Cameron Hanekom off the bench for this match. He is a terror at the breakdowns, and destroys souls with his hits and breakdown work. And he is a beast. I think England would be a great place to see him in action!
England have really struggled at the breakdown for a while - and I thought that that was why Curry was chosen ahead of Underhill (Underhill is one of the best defensive 7s in the world, but isn't a great overall player as he's pretty poor at the breakdown. Curry is more balanced). Given that things didn't improve with Curry in the team, I think its unlikely things will get turned around very quickly, but if they do I think that'll fix a lot of England's problems.
I think the main defensive issue is that turnovers and quick phase play by the opposition hasn't allowed England's line to get set and/or have forced them to play too many defensive phases in quick succession, leading to tiredness and players getting drawn out of position.
The way to fix England's defence is, I think, either to really dominate at the breakdown, or to play a much more structured attacking game that will shut down the opportunities for end-to-end counter play. If England do either of those things, there's a good chance they beat the Boks. If they do both of those things, I think a win would be almost certain at home. Unfortunately the breakdown isn't a quick fix, and its not clear if we have the personnell for a more structured attack - Marcus Smith is no good at that gameplan; George Ford is out of form; and Fin Smith doesn't have enough international experience to be thrown in to start against SA.