England have adopted cold war military tactics to guard against the kind of embarrassment suffered as a result of Italy’s approach to the rules of engagement during last year’s Six Nations.
The defence coach, Paul Gustard, has revealed England have introduced “military red-teaming” – a practice previously employed by the US armed forces and intelligence agencies against the Soviet Union – that involves an organisation instructing an independent group to improve its effectiveness by assuming an adversarial role and probing its weaknesses.
Rather than bring in external help, Eddie Jones – whose side begin the defence of their Six Nations title in Rome on 4 February – and his coaching staff have been conducting meetings twice a week to plan exercises specifically designed to target England’s pressure points.
England were given an almighty scare against Italy at Twickenham last year and were trailing 10-5 at half-time after Conor O’Shea’s side had adopted the unusual tactic of not competing for the ball at the ruck. England recovered after regrouping at half-time and won comfortably but Jones was furious and said: “If that’s rugby, I’m going to retire”. He was adamant his side had reacted well to Italy’s strategy but it was not until the half-time interval that England were able to counteract it.
“As coaches, we brainstorm some ideas and thoughts where we think the opposition can attack us,” Gustard said. “We’re militarily red-teaming our own side to see what weaknesses we have shown and where we think we can improve. Then we put that to the players and they come up with some ideas and we talk through some different scenarios.”
During the autumn internationals, Gustard revealed he had been challenged to develop the best defensive side in the world by the 2019 World Cup. Gustard, who recently spent two weeks with the Australian Super Rugby team Melbourne Rebels, has since claimed statistics show England have already reached that position as they aim to “hunt down” a record-breaking third consecutive Six Nations crown. “Statistically we had the best defence in 2017. We had a successful autumn and we tried to look at different things‚“ he said.
“We want a hunting mentality in this Six Nations. We want to go after teams, stamp our authority on them and dominate them. That obviously starts with a successful performance against Italy. We want to be the best team in the world.”
