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Eddie Jones has added a Championship coach to his England staff for the Six Nations

(Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

Jersey assistant coach Ed Robinson – the son of ex-England boss Andy – will join the England coaching team for their upcoming Guinness Six Nations campaign, which starts with a February 6 match at home to Scotland. England’s preparations have this week been thrown out of step. It was decided on Monday that skills coach Jason Ryles would remain in Australia rather than travel to Europe for the tournament.

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It then emerged on Wednesday that forwards coach Matt Proudfoot had tested positive for Covid-19, resulting in Jones and another assistant Simon Amor having to self-isolate.

That left defence coach John Mitchell as last man standing until it emerged that Jones had moved to fill the vacancy created by Ryles by asking Robinson, an assistant at Championship level Jersey, to be part of the staff this spring. 

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An RFU statement read: “He [Robinson] will support on skills coaching following Jason Ryles’ decision to stay in Australia for the spring due to the challenges caused by Covid-19.

“England meet up next week at St George’s Park as they begin their preparations for the championship. They will then move to their base, The Lensbury in Teddington, ahead of their first game against Scotland on February 6. Jones will name his 28-player tournament squad on Friday, January 22.”

Jones added: “We’re looking forward to welcoming Ed to our coaching staff for the tournament and we’d like to thank Jersey Reds for their cooperation and support in making it happen. He’s a talented young coach and will work to help the players improve. We understand and support Jason’s decision and are expecting that he will be back with us this summer.”

Harvey Biljon, director of rugby at Jersey Reds, said: “First and foremost we are really excited for Ed. It’s a fantastic experience for a young coach and he deserves this opportunity. At Jersey we’re very proud of our record of producing players that have gone on to play at the highest levels and it is very encouraging that one of our coaches is getting a chance to work at that level too.”

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Flankly 1 hour ago
'Absolute madness': Clive Woodward rips into Borthwick in wake of NZ loss

Borthwick is supposed to be the archetypical conservative coach, the guy that might not deliver a sparkling, high-risk attacking style, but whose teams execute the basics flawlessly. And that's OK, because it can be really hard to beat teams that are rock solid and consistent in the rugby equivalent of "blocking and tackling".


But this is why the performance against NZ is hard to defend. You can forgive a conservative, back-to-basics team for failing to score tons of tries, because teams like that make up for it with reliability in the simple things. They can defend well, apply territorial pressure, win the set piece battles, and take their scoring chances with metronomic goal kicking, maul tries and pick-and-go goal line attacks.


The reason why the English rugby administrators should be on high alert is not that the English team looked unable to score tries, but that they were repeatedly unable to close out a game by executing basic, coachable skills. Regardless of how they got to the point of being in control of their destiny, they did get to that point. All that was needed was to be world class at things that require more training than talent. But that training was apparently missing, and the finger has to point at the coach.


Borthwick has been in the job for nearly two years, a period that includes two 6N programs and an RWC campaign. So where are the solid foundations that he has been building?

4 Go to comments
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Nickers 1 hour ago
Scott Robertson responds to criticism over All Blacks' handling errors

Very poor understanding of what's going on and 0 ability to read. When I say playing behind the gain line you take this to mean all off-loads and site times we are playing in front of the gain line???


Every time we play a lot of rugby behind the gain line (for clarity, meaning trying to build an attack and use width without front foot ball 5m+ behind the most recent breakdown) we go backwards and turn the ball over in some way. Every time a player is tackled behind the most recent breakdown you need more and more people to clear out because your forwards have to go back around the corner, whereas opposition players can keep moving forward. Eventually you run out of either players to clear out or players to pass to and the result in a big net loss of territory and often a turnover. You may have witnessed that 20+ times in the game against England. This is a particularly dumb idea inside your own 40m which is where, for some reason, we are most likely to employ it.


The very best ABs teams never built an identity around attacking from poor positions. The DC era team was known for being the team that kicked the most. To engineer field position and apply pressure, and create broken play to counter attack. This current team is not differentiating between when a defence has lost it's structure and there are opportunities, and when they are completely set and there is nothing on. The reason they are going for 30 minute + periods in every game without scoring a single point, even against Japan and a poor Australian team, is because they are playing most of their rugby on the back foot in the wrong half.

43 Go to comments
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