Ritchie: 'Something obviously had to change from the World Cup'

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Stay vigilant,

Tulijuana Cutler

“England post-2023 have been pretty good on KR’s esp when they started to pick either Marcus or Furbank at FB.”

completely true, but not at all the point I was making. England in 2023 were brilliant at generating turnovers, but they were not brilliant at converting them into chances - so very clearly scoring loads of tries off turnovers isn’t purely (or perhaps even primarily) a product of aggressive defence. The point about Furbank and Smith actually kinda proves my point - neither player contributes much to England’s defensive linespeed, and yet they do contribute to tries being scored off turnover!

“he was the 26th worst ranked tackle success % in the 6n”

Yeah I don’t care about that. Defending at 15 is mostly about fielding high balls, which he is bad at. He can tackle alright, which is more useful at 10 than at 15, but here he’s a long way off the level of Fin Smith.

“how do you account for him having more try assists for Eng since debut, than smith, ford, farrell and slade combined”

he gets a lot of try assists because he makes a lot of breaks. It is generally easier to get an assist when the defensive line is already beat. He is good at getting assists. Better than Smith and Ford in fact. But that isn’t all there is. How do you account for how little the outside backs touch the ball when he starts at 10? How do you account for how badly england play whenever he starts at 10? How do you account for the fact that England’s centres and outside backs never play well when he starts?

Fly-half is somewhere England could do with a bit of depth. Ford won’t be around forever, and Marcus is nowhere near the level of Fin. Given Donoghue is also able to play 15, he could be an excellent back up option.

It also feels significant that Will Butt is starting ahead of Ojomoh. I said at the start of the 6N that Butt could potentially start for England at 12 in the near future, but the general consensus seemed to be that he was behind Ojomoh in the pecking order - that might not be the case!

Some English and other commentators trying to make a big deal of the 6 Nations. Ireland won the Tripple Crown easily enough this year. The only Irish loss was to France, who are an outstanding team. Alas the French are not part of the Lions set up.

So…the team that won the tripple crown will dominate the selections. And if you look at what us happening in the Champions Cup, the Irish players are only coming into their peak right now.