It is exactly 25 years since the most fraught pre-match buildup in the history of English international rugby union. In this same week in November 2000 a pay row led to the entire national side walking out on strike, prompting Clive Woodward to threaten that an alternative team of lower-league amateurs would be chosen if his players did not return to training by 11am the following morning.
After a tense standoff they duly did so, a grudging truce was agreed and the weekend game against Argentina went ahead with England winning 19-0. Three years later all but two of that matchday squad (the exceptions were David Flatman and Matt Perry) were lifting the Rugby World Cup in Australia. The moral of the “strike” story? The darkest hour can be the springboard to a spectacular golden dawn.
So why does all this feel relevant again now? Particularly given England’s players are paid much better these days, they are winning regularly and Argentina’s on-field stock also continues to rise. This year alone the Pumas have beaten the British & Irish Lions and New Zealand, not to mention Scotland at Murrayfield last weekend. For good measure they also defeated England at Twickenham as recently as three years ago.
Yet for those of us lucky enough to be in the vicinity then and now, the events of autumn 2000 still have a certain relevance with the draw for the 2027 tournament looming on 3 December. If England really do aspire to hoist another Webb Ellis Cup into the Australian night sky after a 24-year hiatus, there remains plenty of additional work for Steve Borthwick’s side to do. And well-organised and increasingly tactically savvy though they are, history insists international rugby success is not a smooth upward graph.
Which is why this weekend should be less about England basking in the glow of All Black glory than taking a deliberate fresh guard. There is even a decent argument that this last game of the Autumn Nations Series, following their timely New Zealand success, should not be seen as the fag end of a calendar year but the launch of a pivotal new chapter.
That was effectively what transpired in the winter of 2000, when England took their attacking game to another level under the keen-eyed backline tutelage of Brian Ashton. In the first four rounds of the 2001 Six Nations they scored 28 tries, an average of seven per game. Graham Henry, Wales’s coach at the time, said England’s 44-15 win at the Millennium Stadium was the best performance he’d seen by a European side.
Perhaps not insignificantly Jason Robinson had also just arrived from rugby league to lend Woodward’s England an extra dimension. And given no England side has won a World Cup since, it is against that lofty bar that their modern-day successors, for now, still need to assess themselves.
Of course Borthwick’s England have made good progress – 14 tries in their three autumn games to date with just seven conceded – but it remains debatable how many of the current squad, beyond Maro Itoje and possibly Immanuel Feyi-Waboso or Tommy Freeman, would theoretically gatecrash that legendary 2003 side. You could also measure them against the formidable South African team facing Ireland on Saturday and reach a similar conclusion.
That is not to say England cannot improve that ratio substantially between now and the 2027 World Cup, merely that their current all-round package is not yet the equal of a full-strength Springbok combination. This makes this Argentina game instructive: if England can comfortably deal with a side who have taken down the Lions and the All Blacks and lost by just two points to the Boks in London only seven weeks ago, it will be another important box ticked.
Borthwick’s side can already claim to be the only one to have conceded fewer then 24 points in a Test against the Pumas this year. Moreover they have done so twice, having won 35-12 and 22-17 without their Lions contingent in their two summer Tests in Argentina, their first series with Lee Blackett and Byron McGuigan in charge of the attack and defence respectively.
Blackett, in particular, is visibly galvanising England’s attitude with ball in hand. They are thinking more clearly, too, as underlined by Fraser Dingwall’s try against the All Blacks from a cunningly disguised set-play off a lineout. The weekend weather forecast may again affect the home side’s gameplan but it is their attacking intent more generally that has been so refreshing.
Their scrum is also making notable strides and George Ford’s kicking game and feel for a Test match’s tempo – those sweet drop-goals! – have also helped significantly. Not enough has been made, either, of one or two supposed fringe players who are quietly making themselves undroppable. Fin Baxter looks increasingly at home, Luke Cowan-Dickie is back close to his irresistible best while Alex Coles, a standout for Northampton in some big games last season, has stood up in the absence of the injured Ollie Chessum.
The challenge now for all and sundry is to raise their level again. Guy Pepper, just 22, looks more than equipped to do so and it will be interesting to see if the respective booming left boots of Henry Slade and Elliot Daly complement England’s strategic approach as much as you suspect they might.
In a perfect world, too, England would be looking to be even more ruthless in the “red zone”, improve their lineout stats and seek to offload more frequently out of the tackle. Accomplish all that and no one will be keen to play them, particularly now they also have their own “Bomb Squad” lurking on the bench.
Whether or not Borthwick is deliberately copying Rassie Erasmus’s blueprint is a moot point but he is clearly not averse to cherry-picking aspects of the Springbok gameplan that suit the players at his disposal. And if 10 consecutive Test wins since early February is only the start, the next couple of years really will be fascinating.
Borthwick’s squad certainly do not lack fit, fully committed energy givers, all capable of making a repeated nuisance of themselves. The Argentina coach, Felipe Contepomi, who coincidentally played in that 2000 fixture, will be asking the visiting players for one last monumental effort at the end of a long year but, increasingly, conquering Twickenham is easier said than done. Expect England to complete an autumnal clean sweep at the Pumas’ expense, albeit by a slimmer margin than a quarter of a century ago.
