Danny Care will lead out Harlequins on Sunday afternoon for his first, and last, start at Twickenham in 2015, hoping that a change in England’s management team will lead to a happy new international year for the scrum-half whose only appearance at the World Cup came in the dead rubber against Uruguay in Manchester.
“It is easy to sit back now and say how it went, and say we should have done this and that, but the biggest thing is what an opportunity we missed,” Care says of a hapless England campaign that saw his international career take a decided turn for the worse.
Care started the 2014 autumn Test series as England’s first-choice scrum-half but by the time it ended he had dropped to third, behind Ben Youngs and Richard Wigglesworth. His only international appearance this year before Uruguay was as a replacement against France in a World Cup warm-up.
England’s failure marked the end for Stuart Lancaster and his management team. His replacement as head coach, Eddie Jones, wants the players to show more attitude and the feistiness of Care, who is not regarded as one of rugby’s more reserved scrum-halves, may put him back in favour.
“It is exciting with the new coaches coming in,” says Care before the Big Game against Gloucester at Twickenham, which Quins hope will be another sellout. “No one knows what is going to happen. As players you have just got to play well for your club as you can and see what happens.
“I don’t mind a bit of feistiness. I’m probably not in the spectrum of Mike Brown [the England and Harlequins full-back] but I am somewhere in the middle. It is a physical, confrontational sport and I enjoy that. I am not the biggest so I obviously have to give them a bit of stick. It is part of my game and part of being a scrum half: chippy, confrontational and confident. It’s the way I like to play.”
Care could only watch from the stand at Twickenham as England crashed out of the World Cup they were hosting by losing to Wales and Australia in the group stage and he offers a typically forthright view on why they failed to make the quarter-finals having finished the Six Nations a converted try away from being crowned champions.
“We were in a tough group but there were expectations on us to do something special yet the tournament seemed to pass us by and we sank without a trace. The frustrating thing for me is that I don’t think we really went for it; we were a bit reserved and that culminated in us losing to Wales and Australia.
“Looking back, if we had played our really attacking style of play and really gone at teams we maybe would have killed Wales off and won that game and you never know what would have happened then.
“George Ford was dropped at outside-half for that game, which was a shock to everyone because he was probably our best player in the last year. Owen Farrell came in and did brilliantly but dropping George was harsh. That said, we played well against Wales but did not take the chances to finish them off.
“They suddenly scored a try and left us struggling to stay in the group. We were then beaten by Australia, the better side, and four years of prep had gone. I just felt we didn’t go for it.
“It almost felt that you were not involved in a World Cup but an autumn international campaign or the Six Nations because we were in our usual base. It was not special, but I was glad to play against Uruguay and play in my first World Cup match.”
Care’s association with Lancaster goes back to his schooldays and he played for Leeds when Lancaster was in charge there. “I sent him a text when I heard he was not continuing with England, just to thank him for what he had done for us and the game. I said that we had not always seen eye-to-eye but that I respected him and wished him all the best for the future.
“I was straight back into it with Harlequins after the World Cup because I wanted to play again. I am loving the captaincy and I hope that a number of Quins players are in the England squad because we play the style of rugby Japan brought to the World Cup, at a really high tempo.
“We think it is the right way to play, [even] if some coaches didn’t. We’ll see what happens. I am as confident as ever: it will take a lot to bring me down and I love my rugby. If I get a chance in a white shirt again, I can show why I deserve to be there.”
