This is not yet the greatest England team of all time but the statisticians may soon beg to differ. Find a way past France’s giant roadblock of a pack on Saturday and the Six Nations champions will have won 15 consecutive Tests, the longest sequence since they began internationals in 1871. Everyone has studiously avoided the subject this week but, rest assured, it is in the back of numerous minds.
The last England team to reach 14 victories was the 2002-03 vintage and the sight of Jonny Wilkinson and Richard Hill at final training in the wintry Twickenham sunshine reinforced the sense of deja vu. It was France who ended England’s previous unbeaten run in Marseille in a World Cup warm-up game 14 summers ago and it is not impossible they could be spoilsports again.
Even though the weather has improved, the France forwards are big and ugly enough to drag their hosts into a close-quarter slugging match. Eddie Jones remains confident his side will prove fitter over 80 minutes but it is the first 20 where England need to be wary. Go 10 points down early or lose a man to the sin-bin for a fractionally mistimed tackle and France’s failure to win a championship game in London since 2005 will have little relevance.
Ben Youngs was a teenager in the stands with his father on that distant day when Dimitri Yachvili, using a kicking tee bought from a local shop having broken his own during the captain’s run, put the boot into Andy Robinson’s England from all angles. The French have not come within eight points of winning at Twickenham since but, under the peppery Guy Novès, there is a desire to play with more tempo and jettison the plodding mediocrity of recent seasons.
England will certainly be wary of the impressive visiting captain Guilhem Guirado, the mountainous Uini Atonio and, in particular, the no-nonsense back row of Damien Chouly, Kevin Gourdon and Northampton’s bullocking Louis Picamoles. England’s forwards are hardly midgets but without the brothers Vunipola, George Kruis and Chris Robshaw there is not quite the same muscular certainty. Should the milk‑guzzling Joe Marler come through strong on his improbable return from a fractured leg, it will be one hell of an advertisement for the bone-healing properties of creamy gold top.
The fallback option is to kick everything into Row Z and invite Maro Itoje, starting in the No6 jersey for the first time, to disrupt France’s rhythm and confidence. England’s unusually well-stocked lineout must be an area of possible advantage, particularly if pressure can also be applied to the youthful scrum-half Baptiste Serin on his Six Nations debut. Then there is Owen Farrell’s kicking, perhaps the single biggest reason to suspect England will scramble home. If anyone is equipped to steer England out of trouble it is the prolific Saracen.
With Kruis seeking a second specialist opinion on his damaged knee ligaments, Jones will also be looking to Joe Launchbury and Courtney Lawes to replicate their sizeable autumn contributions. This week’s references to past Anglo-French military conflicts are just another way of ensuring England’s forwards do not expect Novès’s team to be laissez-faire or purely fixated on flair.
“Anyone who’s played against his Toulouse sides or watched them carefully knows they’ve always had this hard edge,” Jones said. “It was based on a brutal forward pack which took the ball forward and created space. They’re still as brutal as ever. What doesn’t happen is all the illegal stuff, thank goodness.”
England may have lost at home once on the opening weekend since 2000 but this latest edition is not entirely a foregone conclusion. There is a good reason why no country have ever won successive Six Nations grand slams; a French degree is not required to recognise the visitors’ desire to drag the champs back down to earth. There is a debate about what music should be blasted out when the home team score – “As long as we’re scoring tries they can play YMCA for all I care,” Jones growled – but England crave a different sort of record.
