Owen Farrell's shoulder might have saved England

Just when you thought it would be safe to go back in, you watched England play rugby again this weekend, didn’t you? And like the Sunderland shoreline for those triathlon swimmers, this red and rosy water has so much floating in it, there’s no way watching England is good for you.

Yet, as you staggered, dazed and confused away from Twickenham, or your nearest online subscription service showing the match, thinking that a win was a win, you were, as you have done a lot of late, duping yourself into staying in this toxic relationship.

The chaos and excitement engendered by England’s rear guard 12-man action may have clouded the reality of the situation. For this is a 15-man team without adventure, without guile or a disposition to please. This is a team that looks a bit frightened and uncertain: they kick the ball away, play percentages and data; they somehow think (at international level) if you just knock at the defensive door with enough persistence, the opposition will eventually let you in. They are not maliciously toxic, just lost as to their own identity and personality. In truth, they need saving from themselves. To love England right now is just to be a victim of falling for a rugby team at the wrong time and in the wrong place. Undeservedly toxic, but toxic nonetheless.

How did we get here? Well, like any intriguing Facebook update, it’s complicated. Back in 2012, Stuart Lancaster picked a ridiculously inexperienced team for his first Six Nations game against Scotland. In the latest episode of the Rugby Inheritance podcast, the former England head coach speaks about this in detail.

“I was picking all the lads that are now 60, 70, 80 cappers, for their first cap… Owen (Farrell) or George Ford, Anthony Watson, or Jack (Nowell), Joe Launchbury or (Joe) Marler, Billy (Vunipola)…Because I always felt England were on an upward trajectory… In my first game in charge of England (against Scotland) there were 220 caps in the starting XV… The point I made to the RFU was that if you stick with this group of players, they’re going to become 600, 700, 800 cappers by 2019. Your Dan Carters, your Richie McCaws, your O’Driscolls, your O’Connells, they’re all gonna finish. These teams are going to have to go through a transition, as England should only get better and better.”

In addition, Lancaster capped Henry Slade, Mako Vunipola, Luke Cowan Dickie and Jamie George before his reign ended prematurely in 2015. Manu Tuilagi was capped just before he took over in 2011; Dan Cole and Ben Youngs debuted in 2010; Courtney Lawes was capped all the way back in 2009.

Lancaster will forever be associated with exiting his home World Cup after the group stages, ignominiously. But he wasn’t building a team for then. He was building it for 2019. His vision was longer term than his tenure. He knew that all those players would be at their peak in Japan and must have looked on and nodded, sagaciously, as it almost came to glorious fruition in that final.

Herein lies the subsequent issues. Personalities like England Rugby’s are not formed by experiencing one piece of relationship ill fortune, but more a run of compounding situations that deepen the wound.

Eddie Jones capped players but was crucially different to Lancaster: he didn’t stick with them. He capped and capped, giving many players debuts but kept on returning to certain pre-existing combinations in search of that magic that exhibited itself so thrillingly in Yokohama against the All Blacks. 2019 should have signalled the beginning of the end for many players. England should have a team at this World Cup with a majority of the players being 30/40 cappers, aged between 25 & 28. But Eddie didn’t quite see (or choose to see) that the squad going to France wasn’t about this World Cup, but the next one. He only had eyes for 2023, in an attempt to prove wrong all those who doubted him.

If he’d been allowed to, he would have tilted hard at the Webb Ellis Trophy with a very similar XV that had been so cruelly denied by the ‘Boks four years earlier. This is why we, and perhaps most pressingly, the inexperienced international coach Steve Borthwick, are where we are. Shackled, frustrated, trying very hard to make it through with what we have; playing a game plan that involves little risk but might, just might, buy him some time.

And no one is more frustrated than Owen Farrell. Playing in a side which feels so different to the Saracens team he enjoyed an eye-catching renaissance with this past season. It looks similar and has good people in it, but it just isn’t quite right. The angst seethes out across the training paddock. Team talks are riddled with it; he looks, to all intents and purposes, like someone you’d go into any battle with. But Faz is riled up a lot of the time. Roaring on the field, roaring off the field; roaring even when he shouldn’t be. He demands a commitment to every moment that you are experiencing. ‘We will enjoy ourselves on this team social and if I find out you haven’t enjoyed yourself, there will be trouble!’ Faz’s England doesn’t feel the same as, say, Lawes’ England. It’s pent up, at all times. There’s an edge and players think it’s because it’s England camp but it’s not. Farrell’s furious heartbeat reverberates off each and every wall. And that foreboding knell has stifled every England player into a shadow of their authentic selves.

Owen Farrell was always going to hit someone high. And as that game lingered on; as Ellis Genge was sent to the bin, only to be followed by Freddie Steward; as England’s captain cast his mind over the three halves of rugby that England had played against Wales (Wales?! Wales?!?! Wales are fooking shite!), he was going to let all that frustration out. In the way we all do when we reach a breaking point: pressure escapes from your weak spot. If Farrell has one of those, it is in his inability to bend at the waist when tackling a player running straight at him. That is where the feelings burst forth. Yellow turned to red to match the fury with which things had been allowed to take place.

So, hope, England fans. Hope for a long ban, a ban that makes it impossible to take one of the national team’s best players to this year’s World Cup. A ban that allows George Ford to step into the limelight and take hold of a different England, one inspired by the less brusque, less brutish, more impish, more serene son of the North West. Allow Ford to grab England by the scruff of the neck, like he did Leicester a couple of seasons ago, and steer them safely to a World Cup semi-final. And while doing it, give some vital game time to those who should be ready for 2027.

Because however good Owen Farrell is, he isn’t right for right now. He should be forever remembered smirking at that All Black haka, masterminding one of the finest England performances in a generation. He should be adored for four years ago. But since then, England have got themselves into a right mess.

And yet, bizarrely, Owen Farrell’s shoulder might just have saved them.