Peter Bills: Eddie's Master Plan To Beat All Blacks Lost At Allianz Park

If Eddie Jones really does have a blueprint to defeat the All Blacks he hasn’t shared it with any Premiership teams, Peter Bills writes after watching Saracens and Wasps batter each other for 80 minutes last weekend.

In his own indomitable style, Eddie Jones tells us that England won’t be copying the All Blacks. “We will come up with our own game and beat them” vows the cheery Aussie.

I wonder what that master plan might be. Perhaps Jones’s England intend to lure the New Zealanders to Twickenham, order half a dozen large pots of Super Glue and spread them all over their dressing room floor. Hey presto, they wouldn’t even run out for the game, they were so scared of Eddie’s white tornadoes.

Or maybe Jones has identified fifteen unheralded rugby men in the Fijian islands who are all 7ft 6ins, weigh 125 kilos each and all have British grandmothers. They’ll change the game as we know it.

One thing is for sure. On the evidence of last weekend’s Aviva Premiership top of the table match between Saracens and Wasps, Jones is going to have to alter a lot of mind sets if England are to avoid the impression that rugby union has morphed into a version of chess with massive physical attributes.

For sure, there was plenty of physical aggression on display. A truck full of it. Players were smashed the moment they received the ball and hammered back metres. In a desperate attempt to avoid the on-rushing hordes of defenders, both sets of backlines stood even deeper and used a slanting attacking line. Only trouble was, when the rapacious defenders got to them, frequently they were 15 or 20 metres behind the gain line. Then they often lost the ball.

Was this Eddie’s ‘new way’ being trialled? Lure the opposition onto you all the way back to your own line, then chip over the hordes and hit them on the counter attack in the style of Leicester City in the English Premiership?

All we can be certain of is that England’s players won’t have a hope in hell of getting anywhere near the ball skills of the New Zealanders if they continue to play the game in this ‘grab and bash’ style. A friendly cat strolling down the touchline would have had more grace and finesse than this lot put together.

Internationals were out in force for both sides but few had the opportunity to showcase their skills. Defenders overwhelmed everyone and everything. It left no doubt in the mind that defence continues to be the No. 1 priority in English rugby, certainly at club level. If players had spent as much time finessing their attacking attributes as they have focusing on a defensive mantra in professional rugby, there wouldn’t be a club ground in the country big enough to accommodate all the people who would want to turn up.

Instead, we are offered a physical fight to the end, a dearth of ball skills and an 80 minute slog-fest. Nothing much else. If you’re lucky, you might see some rugby in the final 20 minutes of the match when fatigue appears. But not always then.

If you want to see constant off-loading of the ball so as to maintain an attack, the clever use of fast feet to bewitch a defender or some real attacking verve with large dollops of sustained high intensity thrown in, then look far beyond English club rugby. To Super Rugby, principally.

Rugby at this level in England largely remains in the Dark Ages compared to a country like New Zealand. So should we worry?

Well, the fact is, Eddie Jones has to draw his England players from this morass. Getting them to instantly switch styles as soon as they join up with the national squad may not be the easiest thing in the world. You can’t just throw a switch from a defensive mind set to all-out attacking philosophies. You actually need to practise an attacking style. Constantly.

All England’s club players seem to practise is coming up fast in a line, smashing into people and slowing down the game. So unless Eddie Jones really does have a new masterplan, I’m not sure how much use those current habits will be to the England coach.