England's Six Nations post-mortem reveals multiple pathologies

Joe Schmidt’s men secured just the third Grand Slam in Ireland’s history on Saturday afternoon, St Patrick’s Day, at Twickenham no less.

Could it have been any more perfect?

Whilst Irish eyes smile, and the players, coaches and fans alike look forward to their summer tour of Australia, the feeling is quite different for their English counterparts.

The loss at Twickenham is their third straight defeat and, most worryingly, the persistent faults in the team seem entrenched and that changes in personnel or public declarations that the wrongs will be put right, have had a negligible effect on the team’s fortunes so far.

The players are tired. There is certainly a British and Irish Lions hangover for plenty of individuals, but we have covered this before.

More concerning, however, is that there now also seems to be a clear regression.

If the 2015/16 season was a flourishing of English self-confidence and a showcasing of the enviable player depth at Eddie Jones’ disposal and the 2016/17 season was one of reinforcing those credentials and, admittedly, plateauing, then the 2017/18 campaign has been one of a worrying backslide.

The success of those first two seasons papered over some of the more significant cracks in English rugby, something which Jones has admitted himself, and the problem is time is beginning to run out ahead of the 2019 Rugby World Cup, when those cracks will be exploited by teams who are beginning to peak at the right time.

The next opportunity England have to bolster their sagging reputation and relay the foundations they thought they had been building upon, comes this summer in South Africa.

This column was devoted to the tiredness argument last week, so we won’t delve deeply into that again, but it is worth mentioning regarding where England need to go next.

Jones being a taskmaster of a coach and the newly-agreed club-country agreement complemented each other nicely for the first two seasons of his tenure, but on the back of a Lions tour, it has left England looking flat. Let’s be optimistic and say that issue will right itself next season, organically, as the England players enjoy a well-earned offseason and come back refreshed and ready to make an impact once again.

It would help if some of England’s more prominent players over the last two years were to be rested this summer, although it seems an unlikely move from Jones at this stage.

Relying on a fresher England in 2018/19 and a healthy-again Billy Vunipola might seem tempting at this point for despondent fans, but there needs to be more done than that.

The breakdown is the en vogue area of criticism and, again, one we have looked at closely before, identifying influences from player development to recruitment strategies, and from adaptation to the new breakdown laws to refereeing tendencies in the Aviva Premiership.

In fairness, it’s an area of the game where England were more efficient against Ireland.

Kyle Sinckler was pinged for being off his feet, but that was a penalty attributable to a decision-making error from Chris Robshaw, who came in and pinned Sinckler whilst trying to steal the ball himself, instead of helping Sinckler support his weight and steal the ball, as the first man in at the contact area.

As a team, England were more precise with their clearing out, too, giving the England back line quicker ball than they enjoyed against Scotland or France. The problems have not been solved – not even close – but credit where credit is due, there was an improvement.

That improvement helped highlight another fault in the England team, though, and that was their inability to consistently create attacking opportunities, even with quicker ball and more direction from the half-backs.

How long ago do those late, game-clinching tries against Wales and Argentina in 2017 seem?

Confidence has seeped out of this England team gradually over the last year and over the last three games, HMS Red Rose has sprung a serious leak below the waterline.

If you take those three games – against Scotland, France and Ireland – in a vacuum, England have been totally reliant on a moment of magic or brilliance from Owen Farrell to spark any attacking opportunities, a complete contrast to their fortunes in 2016 and 2017 when there were six or seven players you felt capable of stepping up and delivering a moment of composure and clinical play to deliver success.

Simple skills, like squaring up defenders and drawing their attention, something they excelled at previously, currently seem like alien concepts.

There’s no escaping the fact that England have looked at their fluent, attacking best when coaches like Glen Ella, Sam Vesty and Rory Teague have been on the staff. Too many cooks may spoil the broth, but with the RFU’s resources, it seems odd that England do not have a full-time attack coach to complement the work that Jones, Paul Gustard and Steve Borthwick are doing.

With just one full season remaining before the RWC, hiring an attack coach, especially if someone like Ella, who has had such a beneficial effect on England, is available, is a no brainer.

Another coaching addition worth looking at is a specialist collision or contact coach.

Against Ireland, England’s ineffective carrying was exposed in a stark way. It’s been poor all campaign, but with Ireland’s defensive aggression, fast line-speed and excellent double team tackling, they repeatedly rocked English carriers back before or on the gain-line.

England’s upright carriers were no match for the low body positions and strong power bases of the Irish tacklers.

One player missing at Twickenham, Courtney Lawes, is a good example of how a solid player can become a very good one when they work on their body position.

His upright stance used to see him drilled backwards time after time and given his size, it was the glaring weakness in an otherwise well-rounded game. He has worked hard on erasing that weakness over the last few seasons and the improvements have been clear for all to see. He still gets caught upright every now and again, but he’s a big man, that will happen. Eight or nine times out of ten, he’s in a much better and lower position and his carrying has reaped the rewards of that.

It’s a two-way street, too.

Not only are England’s carriers standing too tall, they’re staying too upright in the tackle, as well. Many of the England team frequently go high in the tackle. Many of them frequently get palmed off in the tackle.

Targeting the ball is one thing but going high around the chest and shoulders is asking to end in a missed tackle or worse, a yellow or red card.

There’s a mantra in American football that the “low man wins”. This typically refers to the battle between the offensive and defensive lines and involves leverages of the like that aren’t too applicable to rugby, but the larger concept remains the same. England aren’t getting low on attack or defence and using a wide base to drive the power through their legs, they are standing tall and hoping that brute, unrefined power will carry the day.

If there’s no “No 8. Billy Vunipola” on the teamsheet, that’s a long shot.

The RFU are the richest union in the world, with resources most others can only dream of, and it’s time for them expand their horizons and look for help from outside the sport.

There is no reason why an NFL defensive line or running back coach couldn’t have a game-changing effect on England this summer. The NFL has been quick to bring in rugby coaches to help them work on their tackling, but it’s two-way knowledge pathway and one which rugby has, as yet, failed to capitalise upon.

If you look at England’s pool of players, they are as physically impressive as you’ll find in world rugby. They boast players with speed-size combinations that make for a salivating prospect, but who are failing to realise their considerable potential and are, worryingly often, outmatched by players with less physical ability, but who use what they have more proficiently.

There were so many echoes of Bath’s home loss to the Scarlets in the England performance. Bigger, more physical players being denied success in their power game by a side making much more of their resources with textbook technique.

It’s not something that is going to go away. A fresher England next season will have more joy, but they will still be denying themselves use of their fifth gear if they do not hone this side of their game.

Aside from the fatigue, breakdown and physical issues facing England, the other glaring weakness is their indiscipline.

Unfortunately, there’s no quick fix or obvious solution for this.

That mental and physical fatigue undoubtedly plays a part, with players unconsciously seeking shortcuts on the pitch, but it doesn’t explain why so many of those players keep their discipline when they’re at Saracens or Exeter or Wasps, but not, recently, with England.

It could be that a rejigging of emphasis within the England camp is required, moving away from a hard and fast approach of running the players into the ground looking for an extra percent or two in physical performance and intensity, towards a more cerebral approach, with more video and technical sessions.

There are things Jones says in his press conferences and to the media that are designed to distract or draw attention away from certain areas and players but his persistence in talking about England’s fitness is not one of them. Based on the way he makes his players train, it’s a genuine goal and something, despite impressive improvements over the last two years, he is still not content with.

Until the senior England players that have formed the core of Jones’ successes over the last two years have an opportunity to get away from rugby and recharge, there is unlikely to be much change in England’s fortunes, no matter how hard he pushes them.

Hopefully fresh faces will be drafted in for the summer tour of South Africa but as the game against Ireland at Twickenham showed, even fresh legs cannot erase indiscipline, a lack of an offensive game plan and a reliance on brute force, without the physical subtlety to exploit mismatches in size and speed.

“England haven’t become a bad size overnight.”

It’s the lather, rinse, repeat of English rugby this season.

We can keep saying it, but until something changes, it would be madness to expect different results from the same actions.