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Jake White: Marcus Smith was lucky to stay on for 60 minutes
By
Jake White
The dust is still settling from what was an epic Test match at Twickenham, and I’ve been reading a lot about how England chucked it away. I’ve read about how Borthwick made a bad call by changing his 10 after 60 minutes. I’ve even read stories about how New Zealand aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Now I know some of the Irish media are stoking the fire ahead of tomorrow night’s game but I don’t think it tells the whole story.
What I took away from that Test was quite different.
The All Blacks didn’t get off to a great start. They lost their hooker Codie Taylor in the fifth minute to an HIA, and he’s not just any hooker, he’s a key part of their leadership group. Packing down against him, England’s captain Jamie George plays almost every minute of every Test, such is his importance.
As for switching George Ford for Marcus Smith, I can understand the logic. I remember Austin Healey saying before Ford entered the fray, ‘this is just what Borthwick wanted, the luxury of having a 10 on the bench who can close the game out in a way England didn’t this summer’.
While he did some good things, Smith was far from perfect. In the first half he missed a kick to touch from a penalty kick and scuffed two drop goals. Defensively, he shot out of the line and had to roll on his stomach and from the resulting play, Ellis Genge was exposed in defence and Will Jordan scorched through the empty gap to score. In most coaches’ eyes, the 10 would have been replaced long before 60 minutes. If Ford had landed his penalty or that drop goal, the whole media narrative would have been different.
Personally, I thought New Zealand deserved to win. They scored three tries to one and could have scored more. They had one disallowed when Beaduen Barrett dotted down but replays showed Caleb Clarke’s hand accidentally slapped the ball down tackling Tommy Freeman. Then there was a borderline forward pass from Wallace Sititi which was spilt by Tupou Vai’i, when the grass opened up in front of him. I thought Reiko Ioane should have passed with a four or five man overlap in England’s 22 but he chose to go it alone and they squandered an easy opportunity. That’s six potential tries and England only scored because of an interception, which was again when Marcus Smith flew out of the line and Cortez Ratima passed the ball to him.
Had New Zealand’s discipline been better – they’d conceded 10 penalties to England’s two after 60 minutes – they could have been out of sight.
In the cold light of day, England failed to manage the closing stages effectively. In that penultimate scrum, England’s pack looked like they were on roller-blades. They were lucky they weren’t penalised more because they were clearly being bested up front.
For that reason, looking forward, I can’t see them building a winning run without a decent scrum. It’s one of the fundamentals of rugby. Their scrum looked fragile at points and then decidedly poor at the end of the game. They are still putting 37-year-old Dan Cole out on the paddock, and until recently, 34-year-old Joe Marler. That tells you everything. I remember Eddie Jones saying that England weren’t bringing through enough props, so I ask you, has there been a focus on rearing front rows? I haven’t seen world beaters coming through for some time. Will Stuart has won 42 caps and is 28, and yet he still feels like he hasn’t made the No.3 shirt his own. I know they have some good young kids like Asher Ford Sejour, Billy Sela and Afolabi Fasogbon, but they won’t be at their peak for some time. They’ve had quality scrum coaches like Matt Proudfoot over the years, so what is the missing link? They need to find an answer.
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I mention this because when you play 10, or quarter-back, you are only as good as the pack in front of you. George Ford took the bullets post-game, but any player who has played with or against him says he has an incredible rugby brain and is a brilliant tactician. I don’t care if you’re Superman, but if you have a five-metre scrum and your 10 ends up having to snap at a drop goal outside the 22, then you haven’t given him a very good platform. England were going backwards at a rate of knots, and the pass from Harry Randall was rushed and floaty. Believe me, if that was South Africa with that scrum position, they’d either get a scrum penalty or they’d score from there. That’s why they’re the team to beat in world rugby right now. England’s old guard, with Johnson, Dallaglio, Vickery and Grewcock, who were all watching on from the sidelines, would never have done that.
In previous columns, we’ve talked about where both sides are in their evolution but what I would say is both coaches need time. The margins are so small at this level. As Steve Borthwick said through gritted teeth, if the ball was a foot left, then George Ford is a hero and all the flaws of the scrum are forgotten about.
I accept modern rugby is all about your bomb squad or impact players and England went with a 6-2 bench while New Zealand went with a 5-3 split. Yet what we know from history is that the great 10s were almost never replaced. Think Stephen Larkham, Jonny Wilkinson or Dan Carter. There’s a reason for it, because those guys control the game. McKenzie came on at 10 only because Barrett went off with an HIA, and the irony is that Tele’a only came back on and scored that second try because of that change. Having a specialist 10 on the bench these days is more difficult because players are expected to play multiple positions. Take Damian Willemse and Sacha Feinburg-Mngomezulu, they can play 10, 12 or 15 and McKenzie can play 10 or 15, whereas Ford can only go to 10. It limits England’s bench options. Out of interest, after watching that game, I researched how often NFL side’s change their quarter-backs and it’s barely at all. A perfect example came when the Dallas Cowboys kept rotating Roger Staubach and Craig Morton in the 1970s to mixed results. Yet when they hung their Stetson on one man, they won eight on the spin. There’s a history lesson in there.
Post-match, Scott Barrett said New Zealand tried to play more of the rugby. That’s a polite way of saying England failed to show the ambition to finish the game off. Apart from that one breakaway try, they didn’t look like scoring. Old England teams would keep the scoreboard ticking over, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 and get the odd try but the big difference was back then England were dominant up front and could hold their lead. Before the game, statistics told us they’d probably need 25 points to beat New Zealand and so it proved. You can’t kick for poles every time you get a penalty, and you can’t assume you’ll get eight or nine penalties every Test. When you boil it down, rugby is a simple game, you need to score tries.
Going into the Dublin Test, I don’t think the All Blacks got enough credit for the fact they found a way to win that Test match. With 17 minutes left, thy were eight points down, away from home and had to deal with a yellow card. That takes some ticker to emerge victorious and the confidence they’d have got from that result is priceless. It’s reminiscent of what New Zealand sides did in the past.
Some Irish scribes have said they happy New Zealand won, because it puts a bit more kudos on the game in Dublin, but after the firecracker in Paris at the World Cup, I don’t think it needed any extra motivation to light the blue touch paper. The Rieko Ioane and Johnny Sexton spat means there will be fireworks in the Irish capital. Credit to Irish rugby. They have never been as competitive as they have been in the last decade and I’m expecting plenty of rugby to be played and plenty of points. I think it will be a classic.
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