George Skivington: The Zach Mercer 'ability you couldn’t coach'

Farrell also, probably, has plans for The lad (whose surname I can’t spell without scrolling up and checking and I couldn’t be bothered) in this years Lions tour. Some 6 Nations game time will be good for that.

Although I hope Finn Russell has a blinder this 6 Nations. Probably my favourite flyhalf in the world right now. He’d be my pick for the Lions series.

You mean Bollocks?

Sometimes it's necessary to look a little way behind the stats, and this is one of those times.

🥴

SA have no shortage of players but they are a team in transition from being a group of world class 33 year olds with 50-plus caps, to being a group of not-quite-world class 31 year olds with 5 caps.

Yes Burke made a big difference when he came back which is kind of the point - He is gone again. Waxing lyrical about old man JOC won't actually make him a world class 10 like the players he will come up against.

I think they have a good 23 barring not having a 10, but many very injury prone players, who will all spend extended time out this season in rehab.

Mo'unga was responsible for getting them out of so many jams with individual brilliance.

We'll see this season what they are made of, but with no Richie (well no 10 at all really) and a squad of rehab specialists up against much better packs than previous seasons, Nickerstrodamus predicts a 6th place finish.

"it's still not at all clear how England plan to attack or defend and after however long Borthwick has been in charge, that's not good"

England were poor in the first three games of the six nations last year, but their attack by the end was very impressive, given they only spent about a month properly developing it. That's an incredible rate of improvement that then immediately stalled: why? The coaching staff didn't change, and most of the personell didn't change. The only major difference was that the best game management 10 England had was replaced with someone who had previously played a bit-part role at 15 or finishing off games at 10 when opposition backlines were already tired.

"Borthwick knows England need to be able to make use of players like Smith and use their backs to convert territory into tries but it's alien to him and consequently England have no identity anymore."

to be fair, England did convert possession into tries in the autumn, the problem was that their attack was so disorganised it led to them (i) getting completely destroyed on the counter attack, and (ii) failing to retain possession, and so spending far too much time on defence - inevitably leading to missed tackles in the fourth quarter.

I'm also not sure what you mean by "players like Smith". Smith is one guy who forces a chaotic attacking style onto the team. Steward, Freeman, Roebuck, Feyi-Waboso, and England's vast plethora of opensides (I know you don't rate the Currys, but there's also Earl, Underhill, Pepper, when they are fit) would probably benefit more from a game built around contestable kicking and defence. Mitchell, Spencer, and JVP are probably better suited to that too. I'm not saying that England shouldn't build an attacking style, I'm just pointing out what I see as an extremely unbalanced framing that treats Marcus Smith as the main character of English rugby. My own personal view is that England should, depending on opposition and game state, switch between the uber-defensive system that they used against SA in the RWC, and a structured possession based attacking system similar to what Ireland have used for the past few years. I think Ford and Fin Smith, as well as almost the entirety of Englands options in the midfield and back three would do well in both of those systems, but Marcus Smith wouldn't.

The key to Hurricanes success last year was their scrum and playing in the right parts of the field which Cameron and JB were responsible for. I've honestly never seen Cashmore play, but it would be a big ask for a young man with little SR experience to step up against the Blues, Chiefs, Brumbies, and Crusaders and put in the types of controlled performances Cameron did. Those tight wins against the best teams in the regular season came down to making the right decision in one or two moments.