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Will Greenwood: What England must do after Marcus Smith's kicking woes
Marcus Smith will run out at Eden Park on Saturday with a point to prove.
The flyhalf had a strange day in Dunedin in the first Test against the All Blacks. Arguably the best performance of his international career was marred by an uncharacteristically poor goal-kicking display.
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In what is very much a team sport, the result can so often hinge on the individual performance from the tee. But Smith will be abundantly aware of that, Will Greenwood believes.
The former England centre recently discussed how he thinks the squad would have responded this week in the wake of the 16-15 loss, and gave an insight into how his former teammate Jonny Wilkinson would have reacted to an off-day with the boot.
Greenwood said he would be “really surprised” if anyone addressed Smith’s kicking display this week, as “he’s aware of it”.
The most important thing for the World Cup winner is that Smith knows he has the backing of his teammates when he places the ball on the tee in Auckland in the second Test.
“If Wilko missed four kicks, I’m sure he must have done at one stage, I probably stayed as far away from him as possible and I would see the lights on the pitch at Pennyhill Park, and he’d be out with Dave Alred until three o’clock in the morning, trying to fix it,” said Greenwood, speaking on behalf of NOW.
“I’d be really surprised if anyone’s gone up and said to him ‘sorry about those missed kicks’ because it reinforces the narrative.
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“I think that they’d just be supremely supportive. It’s not a case of burying your head in the sand. He doesn’t need someone to tell him he’s missed kicks. He’s aware of it. He just needs to know next time he goes on the field and makes a call, people back him 100 per cent and they’re not saying ‘well you missed your kicks last week, I’m not sure I should trust your calls anymore.’
“He’ll speak with his kicking coach, I think he works with Jonny [Wilkinson] sometimes, and Nick Evans- he’ll speak to him about what he might do, and then he’ll go and work on it.
“He’ll be back on at training all week, the lads I don’t think will have called it out in a way that says ‘oh bad luck, you’ll get the next one.’ I think that’s the last thing you’d want to hear. He just wants to know that everyone’s still in and around and supportive and away you go.”
Then again, Greenwood did highlight that it comes down to building a team culture and knowing what brings the best out of players.
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That is why he stresses that time in camp for the players is critical to help them get to know each other. Greenwood believes Smith’s Harlequins teammate Danny Care, for instance, would pipe up at some point given his relationship with the 25-year-old. The former centre cited his response to Ben Kay’s dropped catch in the 2003 World Cup final as an example of this.
Ultimately, there are players that you can and players you cannot joke with, and it is about knowing “the humans behind the performance”.
“Sometimes the tackle count came up and Johnno [Martin Johnson] had missed three,” the former British & Irish Lion said.
“I’m not going up to Martin Johnson and saying ‘Johnno, you need to up your game in defence. I’d just get t*****d around my head.
“So when Ben Kay dropped that ball in the World Cup final, 13 lads went up to him- you’ve got to know people right, this is what’s amazing about good teams. The first person up to him was Phil Vickery, he said ‘come on, next scrum, give 110 kilos behind me, we make them pay for it at this scrum’. Johnno goes ‘you’re making the lineout calls, give Thommo a great call, win the next lineout’. Matt Dawson said ‘just hit the next ruck’. They’ve all gone up to him, 13 lads, and I’ve gone – I’ve known him since he’s about 16, both Waterloo boys – ‘you’re going to regret that the rest of your f*****g life.’
“Maybe I picked the wrong time but I felt, because he’s funny, Ben Kay, that he was getting too much woe is me narrative. He looks back now and goes ‘the only one who told me the truth was Greens’.
“So they’ll find a way. And it might be the next time he’s having a kick at goal, they’ll go ‘oooh’. But there’s a time for that. Stuart Lancaster used to say SUMO – shut up and move on. Jason Fox, when I wrote the book on leadership, said ‘cheerfulness in adversity’. It’s an absolute prerequisite to be in the SAS.
“It’s not beyond the realms of possibility, next time Marcus has got a kick, someone says something- but you’ve got to know him. And if that’s what he needs, that’s what he needs. I know if Danny Care was there, he’d go ‘you want me to take it?’ Sometimes it needs that and that’s why spending time in camp on these trips is critical, because you understand the humans behind the performance, the humans behind the numbers. And once you understand the human next to you, you can get the best out of him, you know which buttons to press.
“We called it best out of me- BOOM moment. If you make a f**k up, what do you want to know? I want you to tell me and unload double barrel ‘you useless git’, that’s how I wanted it. Take the piss out of me. I will respond, I’ll come back at you. But with some people, Martin Corry, don’t mention it- ‘I need to internalise this. I need to process this. I do not need you having a witty comment right now.’
“I think it’s relevant to the Marcus Smith situation around the goal kicking. What you build in a culture goes beyond the stats. That’s where I’ve been really pleased with what’s going on with England football. Feels like no matter what’s been going on internally, they’re pressing the right buttons.”
Smith will no doubt enter this match with last week’s kicking display on his mind, but this is a fixture that carries plenty of psychological baggage.
While no visiting side has won at Eden Park in 30 years, England head coach Steve Borthwick said that such a record can become a burden for the All Blacks, something Greenwood does not disagree with as the hosts look to “protect their record”.
“The more people that talk about a 30-year record, the more the team protecting that 30-year record might just play within themselves,” he said.
“England are talking about playing big at the moment, lacking fear, and the more you use that sort of language, you might just get someone playing a fraction smaller than they might have considered doing.
“The reality is, both teams will be oblivious to both bits of ping pong that’s going on in the media by both sides trying to pass the buck of pressure onto the other. I think it’s just really two well-matched teams.”
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