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[2023 Six Nations] England Squad


Quite interesting - suggest Dombrandt was not as bad as some have suggested, and Itoje still getting through a lot of work.

Pretty damning on Marchand making 0 dominant tackles despite making so many, especially interesting given comparisons about his physicality compared with George etc
 
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Quite interesting - suggest Dombrandt was not as bad as some have suggested, and Itoje still getting through a lot of work.

I'd be genuinely interested to see what his handling errors are like compared to his rivals.

Edit: Had a quick look.

Cannone - 0 Errors from 41 balls (0%)
Alldritt - 0 Errors from 46 balls (0%)
Doris - 1 Error from 55 balls (2%)
Faletau - 2 Errors from 62 balls (3%)
Fagerson - 2 Errors from 38 balls (5%)
Dombrandt - 4 Errors from 52 balls (8%)

An international No. 8 can't be dropping near enough 1/10 of the balls that come their way.
 
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Cant read that, whats the general thought?
Why do empires fall? Australian author Max Barry argues it is not for lack of power. It is the opposite. "Their power lulls them into comfort. They become undisciplined. Those who had to earn power are replaced by those who have known nothing else."

And so it is with the Rugby Football Union who for years boasted a world-leading coach and youth development programme, with the England Under-20s winning the Junior World Championship three times in four years and providing a steady pipeline of talent to the senior team. Through neglect, complacency and almost willful sabotage the foundations of English rugbywere allowed to crumble and now the consequences are being felt. A run of three successive two-win Six Nations campaigns is not a blip. It is a trend. Particularly when the England Under-20 team also finished fourth, below Italy

It is well documented that the current Ireland set-up is spearheaded by the coaches who the RFU jettisoned in 2015. Stuart Lancaster is Leinster's senior coach, Munster are now led by Graham Rowntree while Ireland head coach Andy Farrell and his assistant Mike Catt, are now basking in the glow of a Grand Slam.

What is less well known is that RFU never held an exit interview with Lancaster or his assistants. All that experience and crucial learnings were just left in the ether and are now directly benefiting Ireland. Contrast that with how ferociously the New Zealand Rugby Union protects its intellectual property, particularly when the RFU came sniffing around Wayne Smith, and how it retains contact with all its foreign-based coaches.

With Eddie Jones winning a Grand Slam in 2016 and another ***le the year after, the cracks in the English system were not yet coming to surface. Behind the scenes, however, there was turmoil.

In 2016, Dean Ryan was appointed as the Rugby Football Union's head of international player development. This effectively replaced the role that Lancaster held before he became England head coach in 2011.

Ryan was always a curious appointment. Previously director of rugby with Worcester Warriors and Gloucester, he had little background in development. He was, however, close friends with Nigel Melville, then the RFU's director of professional rugby and he wasted no time stamping his mark.

England Under-20s coach Martin Haag was let go four months after winning the Junior World Championship in 2016. Two years later, John Fletcher and Peter Walton, the enormously popular coaches of the England Under-18s, were sacked in the middle of a coaching conference, to a chorus of mutiny among current and former players on social media.

Others who left during this period included Kevin Bowring and Richard Shuttleworth within the coaching development programme, Russell Earnshaw, Alun Powell, the head of regional academies who has taken up a similar role with the English Cricket Board, sports psychologist James Bell and strength and conditioning coach Neil Taylor. It amounted to a wholesale gutting of the development pathway as well as a move towards a more structured approach.
Ryan would argue that his hands were forced by budget cuts. "When I first came we had a £750,000 budget for coach development, now we have nothing," Ryan said in a newspaper interview in 2019. "The department here has just been squeezed and squeezed."

Earnshaw says that there are a lot of good people back involved at Twickenham, but the damage caused by letting so much expertise go will take years to rebuild. "Development takes a long time to build but can be destroyed quickly," he said. "It is not just the expertise, it is the relationships that they have built up with clubs, schools and parents. That level of trust takes years and years to build."

It was not just the relationships further down the pyramid that were being damaged. Jones' public spat with Bath owner Bruce Craig, whom he called the "Donald Trump of rugby", in 2018 was symbolic of a breakdown in relations with Premiership clubs. At least one Premiership club banned England coaches from visiting their training ground, although Borthwick is already mending fences in this regard.

There was little coordination around the programmes for some England Under-20 players who ended up playing as few as half a dozen matches a season. This is an area that urgently needs to be addressed by next year's Professional Game Agreement between Premiership Rugby and the RFU. In Ireland, talent is funnelled through the schools and academy system into the provinces and national team. In England, the talent is there – see the recent emergence of Lewis Chessum and Robert Carmichael –but too frequently it ends up being poured through a sieve.

For all the envious glances currently being cast towards Ireland, whose Under-20s sealed their own 'green sweep' this weekend, it was not too long ago that England had a world-leading youth programme. It is also worth remembering that Leinster's playing pool is about the same size as Yorkshire's.

The implicit assumption that the world's largest playing pool and financial resources would keep England ahead of the opposition must come to an end.

Size counts for nothing unless you have the structure to harness it.
 
I'd be genuinely interested to see what his handling errors are like compared to his rivals.

Edit: Had a quick look.

Cannone - 0 Errors from 41 balls (0%)
Alldritt - 0 Errors from 46 balls (0%)
Doris - 1 Error from 55 balls (2%)
Faletau - 2 Errors from 62 balls (3%)
Fagerson - 2 Errors from 38 balls (5%)
Dombrandt - 4 Errors from 52 balls (8%)

An international No. 8 can't be dropping near enough 1/10 of the balls that come their way.
True, but to be honest I'm far more concerned about how effectively he's used the other 92%.
 
Why do empires fall? Australian author Max Barry argues it is not for lack of power. It is the opposite. "Their power lulls them into comfort. They become undisciplined. Those who had to earn power are replaced by those who have known nothing else."

And so it is with the Rugby Football Union who for years boasted a world-leading coach and youth development programme, with the England Under-20s winning the Junior World Championship three times in four years and providing a steady pipeline of talent to the senior team. Through neglect, complacency and almost willful sabotage the foundations of English rugbywere allowed to crumble and now the consequences are being felt. A run of three successive two-win Six Nations campaigns is not a blip. It is a trend. Particularly when the England Under-20 team also finished fourth, below Italy

It is well documented that the current Ireland set-up is spearheaded by the coaches who the RFU jettisoned in 2015. Stuart Lancaster is Leinster's senior coach, Munster are now led by Graham Rowntree while Ireland head coach Andy Farrell and his assistant Mike Catt, are now basking in the glow of a Grand Slam.

What is less well known is that RFU never held an exit interview with Lancaster or his assistants. All that experience and crucial learnings were just left in the ether and are now directly benefiting Ireland. Contrast that with how ferociously the New Zealand Rugby Union protects its intellectual property, particularly when the RFU came sniffing around Wayne Smith, and how it retains contact with all its foreign-based coaches.

With Eddie Jones winning a Grand Slam in 2016 and another ***le the year after, the cracks in the English system were not yet coming to surface. Behind the scenes, however, there was turmoil.

In 2016, Dean Ryan was appointed as the Rugby Football Union's head of international player development. This effectively replaced the role that Lancaster held before he became England head coach in 2011.

Ryan was always a curious appointment. Previously director of rugby with Worcester Warriors and Gloucester, he had little background in development. He was, however, close friends with Nigel Melville, then the RFU's director of professional rugby and he wasted no time stamping his mark.

England Under-20s coach Martin Haag was let go four months after winning the Junior World Championship in 2016. Two years later, John Fletcher and Peter Walton, the enormously popular coaches of the England Under-18s, were sacked in the middle of a coaching conference, to a chorus of mutiny among current and former players on social media.

Others who left during this period included Kevin Bowring and Richard Shuttleworth within the coaching development programme, Russell Earnshaw, Alun Powell, the head of regional academies who has taken up a similar role with the English Cricket Board, sports psychologist James Bell and strength and conditioning coach Neil Taylor. It amounted to a wholesale gutting of the development pathway as well as a move towards a more structured approach.
Ryan would argue that his hands were forced by budget cuts. "When I first came we had a £750,000 budget for coach development, now we have nothing," Ryan said in a newspaper interview in 2019. "The department here has just been squeezed and squeezed."

Earnshaw says that there are a lot of good people back involved at Twickenham, but the damage caused by letting so much expertise go will take years to rebuild. "Development takes a long time to build but can be destroyed quickly," he said. "It is not just the expertise, it is the relationships that they have built up with clubs, schools and parents. That level of trust takes years and years to build."

It was not just the relationships further down the pyramid that were being damaged. Jones' public spat with Bath owner Bruce Craig, whom he called the "Donald Trump of rugby", in 2018 was symbolic of a breakdown in relations with Premiership clubs. At least one Premiership club banned England coaches from visiting their training ground, although Borthwick is already mending fences in this regard.

There was little coordination around the programmes for some England Under-20 players who ended up playing as few as half a dozen matches a season. This is an area that urgently needs to be addressed by next year's Professional Game Agreement between Premiership Rugby and the RFU. In Ireland, talent is funnelled through the schools and academy system into the provinces and national team. In England, the talent is there – see the recent emergence of Lewis Chessum and Robert Carmichael –but too frequently it ends up being poured through a sieve.

For all the envious glances currently being cast towards Ireland, whose Under-20s sealed their own 'green sweep' this weekend, it was not too long ago that England had a world-leading youth programme. It is also worth remembering that Leinster's playing pool is about the same size as Yorkshire's.

The implicit assumption that the world's largest playing pool and financial resources would keep England ahead of the opposition must come to an end.

Size counts for nothing unless you have the structure to harness it.
So as we all expected, the stupid tossers in blazers giving jobs to their mates and gutting the whole system as they treat it as a fun little jolly.
 
Is Bell injured, or loan?
He's only played once for chiefs and it was in November - considering they had a good run in the Prem cup I'd have thought he'd be playing, especially with Jenkins and Tshiunza with Wales for parts of it
He's injured I think, it was in a Chiefs update a while back.
 
Why do empires fall? Australian author Max Barry argues it is not for lack of power. It is the opposite. "Their power lulls them into comfort. They become undisciplined. Those who had to earn power are replaced by those who have known nothing else."

And so it is with the Rugby Football Union who for years boasted a world-leading coach and youth development programme, with the England Under-20s winning the Junior World Championship three times in four years and providing a steady pipeline of talent to the senior team. Through neglect, complacency and almost willful sabotage the foundations of English rugbywere allowed to crumble and now the consequences are being felt. A run of three successive two-win Six Nations campaigns is not a blip. It is a trend. Particularly when the England Under-20 team also finished fourth, below Italy

It is well documented that the current Ireland set-up is spearheaded by the coaches who the RFU jettisoned in 2015. Stuart Lancaster is Leinster's senior coach, Munster are now led by Graham Rowntree while Ireland head coach Andy Farrell and his assistant Mike Catt, are now basking in the glow of a Grand Slam.

What is less well known is that RFU never held an exit interview with Lancaster or his assistants. All that experience and crucial learnings were just left in the ether and are now directly benefiting Ireland. Contrast that with how ferociously the New Zealand Rugby Union protects its intellectual property, particularly when the RFU came sniffing around Wayne Smith, and how it retains contact with all its foreign-based coaches.

With Eddie Jones winning a Grand Slam in 2016 and another ***le the year after, the cracks in the English system were not yet coming to surface. Behind the scenes, however, there was turmoil.

In 2016, Dean Ryan was appointed as the Rugby Football Union's head of international player development. This effectively replaced the role that Lancaster held before he became England head coach in 2011.

Ryan was always a curious appointment. Previously director of rugby with Worcester Warriors and Gloucester, he had little background in development. He was, however, close friends with Nigel Melville, then the RFU's director of professional rugby and he wasted no time stamping his mark.

England Under-20s coach Martin Haag was let go four months after winning the Junior World Championship in 2016. Two years later, John Fletcher and Peter Walton, the enormously popular coaches of the England Under-18s, were sacked in the middle of a coaching conference, to a chorus of mutiny among current and former players on social media.

Others who left during this period included Kevin Bowring and Richard Shuttleworth within the coaching development programme, Russell Earnshaw, Alun Powell, the head of regional academies who has taken up a similar role with the English Cricket Board, sports psychologist James Bell and strength and conditioning coach Neil Taylor. It amounted to a wholesale gutting of the development pathway as well as a move towards a more structured approach.
Ryan would argue that his hands were forced by budget cuts. "When I first came we had a £750,000 budget for coach development, now we have nothing," Ryan said in a newspaper interview in 2019. "The department here has just been squeezed and squeezed."

Earnshaw says that there are a lot of good people back involved at Twickenham, but the damage caused by letting so much expertise go will take years to rebuild. "Development takes a long time to build but can be destroyed quickly," he said. "It is not just the expertise, it is the relationships that they have built up with clubs, schools and parents. That level of trust takes years and years to build."

It was not just the relationships further down the pyramid that were being damaged. Jones' public spat with Bath owner Bruce Craig, whom he called the "Donald Trump of rugby", in 2018 was symbolic of a breakdown in relations with Premiership clubs. At least one Premiership club banned England coaches from visiting their training ground, although Borthwick is already mending fences in this regard.

There was little coordination around the programmes for some England Under-20 players who ended up playing as few as half a dozen matches a season. This is an area that urgently needs to be addressed by next year's Professional Game Agreement between Premiership Rugby and the RFU. In Ireland, talent is funnelled through the schools and academy system into the provinces and national team. In England, the talent is there – see the recent emergence of Lewis Chessum and Robert Carmichael –but too frequently it ends up being poured through a sieve.

For all the envious glances currently being cast towards Ireland, whose Under-20s sealed their own 'green sweep' this weekend, it was not too long ago that England had a world-leading youth programme. It is also worth remembering that Leinster's playing pool is about the same size as Yorkshire's.

The implicit assumption that the world's largest playing pool and financial resources would keep England ahead of the opposition must come to an end.

Size counts for nothing unless you have the structure to harness it.
An interesting read, thanks for posting it.
Just shows how big a mountain we have to climb to be competitive in all age groups again.
 
I think the development is on track again though ..but will take a whole to filter through to the U20s and seniors.
 
I think the development is on track again though ..but will take a whole to filter through to the U20s and seniors.
Any suggestions on how long though, clearly it doesn't happen over night, is a realistic hope/expectation for England to be much improved throughout by the 2027 WC?
 
Any suggestions on how long though, clearly it doesn't happen over night, is a realistic hope/expectation for England to be much improved throughout by the 2027 WC?
Well i would say theres a lot of players now 18-20 who are ready for regular prem games now, some are more advanced than others. We've spoken alot about some of the locks coming through and the 12's etc

Its critical that these lads get plenty of premiership time now...and European competition. Thats the final critical part of their development.
 
Four years is ages tbf - think it's 76 test matches?

You've got young players making their club breakthrough atm who could be 50cap test match animals by then
Trick is for Borthwick to select the right ones and they also need to get regular game time, which hasn't always happened. Might do now with trimmed squads.
 
I think the development is on track again though ..but will take a whole to filter through to the U20s and seniors.
I'm not entirely convinced having watched the U20s. Tight 5 looked underpowered, they got embarrassed in the scrum Vs Italy for example. 3/4s looked average as did 9/10. Some very good back row options and centres looked handy.

At u20 level England should be right up their in most tournaments given the player pool and resources. As we are not, something is clearly amiss
 
I'm not entirely convinced having watched the U20s. Tight 5 looked underpowered, they got embarrassed in the scrum Vs Italy for example. 3/4s looked average as did 9/10. Some very good back row options and centres looked handy.

At u20 level England should be right up their in most tournaments given the player pool and resources. As we are not, something is clearly amiss
Yes...but the players are filtering through now in to those age groups again so we "should "start to see an improvement and also hopefully the knock on will be to the seniors. But it will take time...
 
Yes...but the players are filtering through now in to those age groups again so we "should "start to see an improvement and also hopefully the knock on will be to the seniors. But it will take time...
I guess we shall see next year. I'm yet to be convinced by anything I've seen in the past 12 months
 
I guess we shall see next year. I'm yet to be convinced by anything I've seen in the past 12 months
Maybe im overly optimistic but i think we have the players to get the team back to basics and then over the next few years really build.

Scrum and lineout were the best in the 6n. So we have a solid base to go from and as mentioned above, we have an array of young locks coming through over the next few seasons.

We also have a number of young props such as Brantingham, Joe Hayes etc...maybe Exeter can turn Painter in the player we hoped. Plus the likes of Tim Hoyt at Tigers who they hopefully can develop. We still have the likes of Tom West now at Tigers whos only 27 and i think hes a cracking LH prop....should be in over Mako now.

Our physicality was brutally exposed. We have young players like Ted Hill, George Martin to come in, Tom Curry to come back, Underhill if he is deemed safe to do so....etc so we can fix that. I think Chandler Cunningham South will be brought in quite quickly as well and he has the lot..very physical AND has skills at 8.

We have 4 10s to choose from. Farrell, Ford, M. Smith and i suspect Fin Smith will come in to the equation. From those we have to be able to get the right 10 that we want for the tactics.

Midfield - For so long a problem...but light at the end of the tunnel. Lawrence finally came good...but i'd like to see him move to his actual 13 spot. From there we have a host of 12's coming through as mentioned earlier on this thread. Kelly the most advanced and ready to start IMO. Then theres Olly Hartley, Seb Atkinson, Ethan Grayson, Max Ojomoh...all looking to push on for their clubs this season and next.

We have a raft of good wingers...we need to decide what style of winger we want and pick them. Id love to see a top class strength and condition coach get hold of Cokasaniga and get him up to his dynamic best.

So personally im very optimistic...lets see how Borthwick uses this...
 

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