[2023 Six Nations] England Squad

[TRF_Olyy]

Borthwick did sign Gopperth at Tigers, so dual 10s is probably something that's at the back of his head - plus Ford/Farrell were 10/12 when he was an assistant under EJ. Could also be influenced by Slade getting injured and wanting the extra playmaker?

I still think it's the wrong move, though - as much as Tuilagi isn't half the player he used to be he still draws defenders better than any other option we have on reputation alone, and he is playing pretty well atm (compared to the last two seasons, at least)

Not sure who I'd prefer at 13 from Marchant vs Lawrence

 

[Vieux Talonneur]

Borthwick did sign Gopperth at Tigers, so dual 10s is probably something that's at the back of his head - plus Ford/Farrell were 10/12 when he was an assistant under EJ. Could also be influenced by Slade getting injured and wanting the extra playmaker?

I still think it's the wrong move, though - as much as Tuilagi isn't half the player he used to be he still draws defenders better than any other option we have on reputation alone, and he is playing pretty well atm (compared to the last two seasons, at least)

Not sure who I'd prefer at 13 from Marchant vs Lawrence

Faz went OK at 12 for a while - with Ford at 10 and some time ago. Never quite worked with Smith. Faz, Manu and Marchant for me.

I want to see Lawrence given a crack but Marchant gets the nod on experience. There's only so much experimenting you can do and one of our locks, most of the back row, possibly the 9 and probably one of the wings will be fairly inexperienced - that's individually and there's the knock on effect to unit / team cohesion. Performance is important, but the overriding priority has to be starting Borthwick's reign with a W, especially at home.

 

[will311293]

Still feel like the man i felt most sorry for will always be Sam Jones, big physical 6/7, playing outstanding rugby at Wasps, makes England squad, gets bodied by Itoje in a Judo session with England, seriously injures ankle.... career over.. Brutal.

 

[Teddington Logic]

I want to really get behind Borthwick's England and I think there are some positives:

Not selecting Billy V or Jack Nowell
Not retaining Alex Mitchell - great attacking flair but suffers from the same hero complex as Harry Randall which loses possession and can expose the rest of the team
Not retaining Johnny Hill who was a bit of a liability in the Autumn, but:

When is the last time Manu gave anything like a commanding performance, he is now just Premiership average
How does Ben Youngs enable the quick ball that Nick Evan's attack philosophy is based off?
Is Watson really on form? His main role at Leicester seems to be slapping back box kicks and restarts, which are easy to counteract. His defence was pretty poor at the weekend against Northampton, got danced around for one try.
Why is there no challenge to Itoje who is nowhere near his previous best (except in the clapping and hollering stakes) - I think we will end up in AWJ territory here if not careful. Important to remember that as a relative lightweight, Itoje's automatic selection drives the structure of the rest of the pack and also under powers the scrum.
And through no fault of their own, Manu and Watson seem to be injury magnets, as indeed was Nowell, so to have them as a core part of your squad seems completely illogical.
It looks like we are heading towards box kicking/kick return ping pong like Leicester in the first half of this season which I am pretty sure will get a very negative reaction from home supporters

Also my personal view is that it is unhelpful to choose a Premiership boss as National Coach. The unavoidable unconscious bias driven by familiarity with club players/signings leads to a constraint on selecting the best from around the Premiership (VRR would be prime case in point, as is releasing Murley). This is also evident in the retention of some players who were integral to the Jones era alongside Borthwick. No-one can seriously make the case for Mako V, or indeed Sinkler, when the stated intention is to strengthen the scrum

 

[Geordie]

It will be odd if Ribbans starts considering he was left out of the original squad. He cant have been that amazing in training that demanded his inclusion.

Not really....Ribbans has been playing very well...and Hill just hasnt hit the levels hoped of him. Training counts for a lot and maybe in training Ribbans has shown he can be a better foil for Itoje...aswell as offering other facets such as a good offloading game etc which may appeal to Evans as attack coach.

Its all hypothetical as it could well be Chessum or Isiekwe in at 5 alongside Itoje.

 

[Vieux Talonneur]

"From white orcs to soft pillows"

Very interesting piece on England's scrum if you can get behind the Times paywall.

Corbs quoted as saying we're using outdated techniques in the set sequence meaning we're losing the engagement. Saying that Genge is incredibly powerful, but wasn't using any of his power mechanics (whatever they are….) on the engage leading to him hinging / collapsing. Corbs is World Rugby's scrum consultant and studied every scrum in the Rugby Championship and AIs.

So Proudfoot basically proved that you and I could also have coached that Boks scrum. Corbs saying that they're not actually technically brilliant, but being monstrous definitely helps.

If I said yesterday it was insane how young Tom Rees is, Corbs is younger than Cole. He really was a what might have been.

 

[Not Mike Brown's Sock]

How does Ben Youngs enable the quick ball that Nick Evan's attack philosophy is based off?

This is interesting actually - I remember a couple of those in game graphics from last season / the first part of this year that suggested we actually don't have particularly fast ball at quins, it's just an illusion

 

[Geordie]

Youngs gets alot of criticsim but isnt his pass from the ruck / breakdown the quickest of all the SH's?

Wont it be JVP anyway?

 

[Crash Hamster]

Youngs gets alot of criticsim but isnt his pass from the ruck / breakdown the quickest of all the SH's?

Wont it be JVP anyway?

Youngs seems to have an extra half step, before passing it to just behind/above/below a man standing still.

And much as I love Mitchell, I reckon his passing sometimes gets a little loopy.

It surprises me just how infrequently England manage to get the ball out quickly, to a yard in front of a man moving forward.

JvP at 9 for me.

 

[TRF_Olyy]

#GusWarrForEngland

 

[Scotty]

"From white orcs to soft pillows"

Very interesting piece on England's scrum if you can get behind the Times paywall.

Corbs quoted as saying we're using outdated techniques in the set sequence meaning we're losing the engagement. Saying that Genge is incredibly powerful, but wasn't using any of his power mechanics (whatever they are….) on the engage leading to him hinging / collapsing. Corbs is World Rugby's scrum consultant and studied every scrum in the Rugby Championship and AIs.

So Proudfoot basically proved that you and I could also have coached that Boks scrum. Corbs saying that they're not actually technically brilliant, but being monstrous definitely helps.

If I said yesterday it was insane how young Tom Rees is, Corbs is younger than Cole. He really was a what might have been.

Corbs is younger than Cole? Thats insane, fair play to Cole for improving with age.

 

[Scotty]

This is interesting actually - I remember a couple of those in game graphics from last season / the first part of this year that suggested we actually don't have particularly fast ball at quins, it's just an illusion

But care does get the ball away quickly and accurately and is fully in tune with the quins systems, for england w3 need quick ball so a lock at 6 wont work, id have had Willis at 20 even with less time in camp his breakdown skills wlwith and without the ball would help alot,

That back row needs to produce quick ball because we aint getting speed from youngs, like expecting Cole to score a 50m try down the wing

 

[Reiser99]

So long as we've moved on from pass, pass, punt, it will be an improvement. I have no issue kicking tactically, but kicking because it's statistically more likely that you will get the ball over chances of losing it was ridiculous.

 

[Crash Hamster]

So long as we've moved on from pass, pass, punt, it will be an improvement. I have no issue kicking tactically, but kicking because it's statistically more likely that you will get the ball over chances of losing it was ridiculous.

Slow ball begets slow ball begets a cater-kick.

Quick ball gives gainline which facilitates quick ball... which is then wasted if your SH passes inaccurately to a static receiver. English teams seem to find it really hard to do this for more than a few phases, so I suppose kicking makes sense.

I'd agree that Care generally seems good at this, also JvP (and I can't deny that Gus Warr has indeed been very good this season...)

It'd be nice to see quick ball to moving players coached more though. I had a brief foray as a scrum half, age 11 before we all discovered I was awful at it, and even I was taught to pass ahead of the midriff of the advancing FH. I have no idea why we're often so poor at it.

 

[Reiser99]

Slow ball begets slow ball begets a cater-kick.

Quick ball gives gainline which facilitates quick ball... which is then wasted if your SH passes inaccurately to a static receiver. English teams seem to find it really hard to do this for more than a few phases, so I suppose kicking makes sense.

I'd agree that Care generally seems good at this, also JvP (and I can't deny that Gus Warr has indeed been very good this season...)

It'd be nice to see quick ball to moving players coached more though. I had a brief foray as a scrum half, age 11 before we all discovered I was awful at it, and even I was taught to pass ahead of the midriff of the advancing FH. I have no idea why we're often so poor at it.

Yes, but there were times under Jones when we had quick ball and we had overlaps and it was still punted into the air, hell even inside the opponents 10m line. I'd love quick ball too, but we also need the backs to do something with it and I hope they have been given the freedom to do that.

 

[Crash Hamster]

Yes, but there were times under Jones when we had quick ball and we had overlaps and it was still punted into the air, hell even inside the opponents 10m line. I'd love quick ball too, but we also need the backs to do something with it and I hope they have been given the freedom to do that.

Absolutely agree, it was dreadful. It's still my pet theory that Jones' mission statement was "We're going to play heads-up rugby and I'm going to keep coaching my players in obsessive micro-detail until they do it. Mate."

 

[Vieux Talonneur]

It'd be nice to see quick ball to moving players coached more though. I had a brief foray as a scrum half, age 11 before we all discovered I was awful at it, and even I was taught to pass ahead of the midriff of the advancing FH. I have no idea why we're often so poor at it.

That should be a prerequisite for selection for Old Fartians 2nd XV, let alone a professional, let further alone an international. Sometimes the very basics at the top level can be shockingly bad.

Dombrandt stands out because he often comes from deep and aims at space. Even if the latter is more of a footballing brain issue scrum halfs far too often only have static forwards to pass to which kills momentum. While it's been easy to criticise Youngs hesitancy, how often has he simply looking around for a decent option?

 

[Ragey Erasmus]

Absolutely agree, it was dreadful. It's still my pet theory that Jones' mission statement was "We're going to play heads-up rugby and I'm going to keep coaching my players in obsessive micro-detail until they do it. Mate."

I feel England just played to numbers. They worked out the optimum number of kicks that led to the best outcomes, the optimum time at which they were done, where they were done etc etc and just built their game plan around hitting this averages as often as possible without any care for the context of what was happening. Sort of thinking that if we as a team were statistically similar to the optimum across certain measures then that must mean we were also the optimum team.

 

[Jimbo]

IMO Youngs offers little he does just seem to slow the hell out of everything and the way he has been selected regardless of form has hardly incentified him to do better with this in mind and the fact that Both Youngs and Care have a lot of caps means they should be fairly interchangeable whilst JVP continues to familiarise himself, if Smith and Dombrant are going to have heavy involvement Care should defiantly have been selected especially when you factor in Evans involvement, although being a yc magnet in recent times probably doesn't help an already poor disciplined side stay on the good side of refs.

 

[TopTen2003]

Youngs gets alot of criticsim but isnt his pass from the ruck / breakdown the quickest of all the SH's?

Wont it be JVP anyway?

Youngs does this irritating step which at a 0.5s delay, is everything for the opponent in terms of setting their defence.

The best I ever saw him play was RWC 2019 when he seemed to have eradicated that step habit.

Borthwick seems intent on quick ball so I'm hoping the message is very clear to Ben.