LONG READ Did innovative England emerge strongest from the Six Nations?

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If that is indeed the case, then Rassie Erasmus will be luxuriating in a spa weekend for the Gods, courtesy of a complimentary voucher from his French counterpart Fabien Galthié.

Rassie’s latest triumph arose indirectly, courtesy of France copycatting his 7-1 bench innovation. Les Bleus used the 6-2 split for their first two rounds against Wales and England, winning one and losing the other. The French supremo introduced his massed forward substitutions around the 57^th minute at Twickenham and England won that final 23 minutes 19-12.

Over the last three rounds of action, les bataillons en masse have arrived fortified by one extra forward off the pine and on average 10 minutes earlier. The men in blue have been supercharged by la colonne serée in that extended half-hour, winning it by an enormous combined margin of 70 points to 24 against Italy, Ireland and Scotland.

In the end, France lifted the title deservedly as a result. The 7-1 split suits the tight forwards produced by the Top 14 down to the ground: massive physical specimens built for stop-start play, and short, intense spurts of power. It also gels with the typical absence of out-and-out open-side flankers. Top 14 breeds number sevens in its own image, men who would play six or eight in other domestic competitions across the world.

There is every prospect 14 forwards with an afterthought of two-man rearguard behind will feature when the world and Six Nations champions clash this coming November. It will not be a day for any back who is not fleet-footed enough to escape the carnage being wrought in the middle the field. You would have to be a winged Hermes like Louis Bielle-Biarrey or Kurt-Lee Arendse to avoid those nuclear explosions between the two forward packs at scrum, maul and breakdown. It will be a sight to behold, at least if you have Sunblock 101 and a pair of Norman F Ramsey’s atomic goggles to hand.

In truth, planet rugby is moving in two different directions at once, and they are beginning to pull at one another in a philosophical tug-of-war. While Les Bleus were busy with their championship celebrations at Stade de France, the head coach of their doughty last round opponents Scotland was raising serious questions about the future viability of the 7-1.

At World Rugby’s ‘shape of the game’ event in London last week, Gregor Townsend had focused the issues for the majority of nations who cannot produce huge forwards in the required numbers.

“I do not think the bench was set up to suddenly have a new forward pack coming on,” he said. “But that is for World Rugby to decide what you do with the bench, and to make any changes.

“But just now you can put eight forwards on the bench if you want. We have faced it already with South Africa [South Africa won 32-15 at Murrayfield last November].

“If it happens again this week [versus France], we have got to do even better.

“Where do we think the game might end up? Is it going to be more a game where we need forwards in a 6-2 or 7-1? Or is it a game where we need backs because it’s going to be so open that we’ve got to make sure we’re bringing backs off the bench?”

In the event, France did employ the 7-1 split, and the ‘nuclear’ bench arrivals in the 47^th minute were too big a wall for the stubborn Scots to climb.

The nation best placed to either follow, or buck the trend north of the equator is England. Like the senior side, the England Under-20s were edged out by France on the final weekend of the Six Nations. An unexpected 23-13 loss to their Welsh counterparts at Cardiff Arms Park denied the English juniors a Grand Slam, but the cards are stacked in favour of the those east of Offa’s Dyke in the coming years.

Two of their outstanding young forwards, hooker Kepu Tuipulotu and number eight Kane James, could have chosen to represent Wales but picked England instead. Tuipulotu’s father Sione played for Pontypool and the Dragons and his cousin Carwyn only recently moved from the Scarlets to Pau in the Top 14, but it is unlikely either will represent Wales in future.

Tuipulotu had received a call from then-head coach Warren Gatland to join a national training camp in 2024, but declined the offer.

“It was surreal to receive that phone call,” he said. “But I wanted to finish my academics [at Harrow School in London] and focus on rugby [at Bath Rugby] after that. I was already going through the England pathway.

“I feel like I’ve made the right decision. At the time I had not played a game of men’s rugby. I just took a step back and realised what is the best case for me in the long term.”

Likewise, James is on the books at Exeter Chiefs, will continue his education at the city’s university and follow the road carved out by Immanuel Feyi-Waboso into the England set-up.

The good ship Wales went down with all hands at the weekend by a record score to the auld enemy, and Gatland knows it will get a whole lot worse.

“There’s a lot of work to be done in terms of the pathways, the U20s programme,” he said.

“We got rid of the National Academy in 2015, which I think was a mistake. Wales U20s won a Grand Slam in 2016, and since 2017 they haven’t finished above fourth.

“We were saying for a long time, we’re just plugging the dam here with the success that we’re having [at national level], we’re papering over the cracks – and when the dam bursts, it’s going to take a while to [recover]. It’s going to take time to develop some strength in depth, to put the resources into the academies and the pathways.”

In future, there is far more chance of Wales becoming a semi-professional farm system for young players diverted on to English pathways and entering the academy and school network east of the Severn, than there is of a national revival of Welsh fortunes. Yes, it really is that bad.

Whether the regions are eventually absorbed into the English league, or are simply bled dry of young talent by it, is a conversation for another day. But make no mistake, it is the Premiership and England which is now driving northern hemisphere innovation, and the latest proof arrived with their unique use of the bench in their Super Saturday demolition of Wales.

England employed a 6-2 split but Steve Borthwick went without a specialist second row replacement. When Leicester lock Ollie Chessum left the field in the only the 18^th minute, he was replaced by a dedicated number six in Harlequins’ Chandler Cunningham-South. England had already started the match with the three number sevens they selected against Ireland in the first round – the Curry twins on the flanks plus Ben Earl at eight – but by minute 48 Earl had shifted to inside centre to replace Tommy Freeman with another natural seven [Northampton’s Henry Pollock] filling in for him.

With half an hour left, and with skipper Maro Itoje having also started for England on the blind-side flank, England had no fewer than six bona-fide back-rowers on the field, four of whom were natural open-side flankers. That version of England scored 35 points in the last 32 minutes at a rate of over one point per minute. The men in red were lucky they didn’t ship 80.

The back-row surplus was phenomenal, on both sides of the ball.

Approximately two-thirds of England’s total effective forward was derived from back-rowers – even with a tight five featuring at least three outstanding performances from props Will Stuart and Ellis Genge, and skipper Itoje.

With all those number sevens in harness, Borthwick’s men were able to build line-speed and blanket the field in defence with more confidence than at any other time in the championship, knowing that another fetcher would be loitering around the next corner with a breakdown pilfer. They were also an integral part of England’s attacking boom period in the final 10 minutes.

First Cunningham-South rips the ball out of the top of a Welsh maul, then Ben Earl does his best impersonation of a 12 on the first carry, with young Pollock [he of Scottish parentage] in close attendance at first cleanout. A few moments later, Tom Willis is galloping straight through the soft centre of the Welsh D, crazy-legs style, to set up a touchdown for prop Joe Heyes. The first two to congratulate him? That would be a pair of England’s indefatigable ‘Duracell bunnies’, Tom Curry and Pollock.

It was another Cunningham-South turnover, this time engineered via a last-ditch tackle on Welsh wing Elliot Mee, which sparked England’s next score.

The Quins dynamo drags Mee down, Willis and Itoje complete the turnover, and Pollock is on hand to finish the move off a sumptuous inside pass from George Ford. The final score was also the cream on the back-rowers’ cake.

First Earl carries deep into the Welsh half from scrum, with Willis and Pollock applying the first clean. Then Earl and Cunningham-South combine on the next play, before Willis offloads to Itoje and the Harlequin finishes the move. It is back-rowers paradise.

Jac Morgan and Aaron Wainwright may have every right to believe they will be selected in Andy Farrell’s 2025 British and Irish Lions squad, but the Welsh loose trio were buried by the sheer quality and volume of English back-row presence. By the end, it was an avalanche.

Galthié’s France may have won the Six Nations, but it is England who are closer to the sharp tip of innovation. Their coven of not-so-secret sevens is showing it is possible to play the bench game a different way, without copying the Springboks 7-1 split and loading up with an entirely new tight five for the final half-hour.

France’s tour of New Zealand in July, and their game against the world champions on 8^th November, will demonstrate whether copy-and-paste is enough to uproot the world’s best. For one of the very few times in their history, England will follow their own star, and give hope to the rest of a rugby world which cannot generate factory-fitted leviathans. It cannot come a moment too soon.