A handsome new book entitled Behind the Rose has just been published, largely based on the testimonies of some of the 1,368 men who have represented England at rugby union since 1871. It is both a historical treasure trove and a timely reminder, on the eve of another huge Twickenham Test for Stuart Lancaster’s team, that the modern generation are engaged in a different game.
The former grand slam-winning coach and lock forward Mike Davis whose contribution to England’s upturn around 1980 is often underestimated, recalls being unable to afford proper rugby boots when he made his Test debut in 1963, instead buying a pair of much cheaper football boots and dying them black. The Cornish prop Stack Stevens used to hitch lifts up to training in the Midlands in lorries carrying cauliflowers.
For much of the 1970s, winning with England was far from a regular phenomenon. It was the incomparable sporting all-rounder Alastair Hignell who summed it up best: “The attitude to sport then was that it was something you did on the way to something else.”
One aspect of English rugby, however, will forever be the same. Lose five games on the trot, regardless of the opposition, and people will start asking uncomfortable questions. Lose on successive weekends at Twickenham, such a daunting citadel during the best of times, and long-term ambitions tend to be overtaken by shorter-term imperatives. As Sir Clive Woodward stresses in Behind the Rose, the future at elite level is shaped one week at a time: “I still think England international rugby is all about the next game. Your mindset as a coach should be: ‘If I don’t win, I am going to get fired.’”
With a six-year contract in his back pocket, such a cliff-edge scenario is not currently an issue for Lancaster or his lieutenants. There is still a whiff of danger, even so, this afternoon’s collision with South Africa following last week’s 24-21 defeat to New Zealand. It was not so much that England lost, more their frustrating second-half regression just when they had hoped to catapult themselves to a new level.
Do something similar against a Springbok side cruising for a bruising after losing in Ireland and patience will begin to fray on all sides. There will be personnel changes for Samoa next week regardless of the outcome, but anyone intending to be a World Cup starter cannot afford to underwhelm now. England have not beaten South Africa since 2006, a sequence dating way back to the last days of Andy Robinson’s coaching regime.
Re-establishing some momentum has certainly been the no-nonsense thrust of the forwards’ coach Graham Rowntree’s pre-match message to his pack: “Of course there’s got to be a backlash after a fourth defeat,” he said. “We’re not hiding from the fact we’ve lost the last four games. We’ve got to beat these teams at Twickenham and we’ll go in all guns blazing to do that. The fact we’ve not beaten them for years is almost irrelevant. We’ve just got to win this next game.”
Apart from a hairy first half hour at altitude in Johannesburg in 2012, England have seldom been blown away by the Springboks, but these particular opponents always take some subduing. As the former England prop Phil Vickery pithily put it this week: “First you have to stop the animal, and it’s a big old beast.”
He might have been referring to the Beast with a capital B, namely the redoubtable prop Tendai Mtawarira who posed the British and Irish Lions such problems in Durban in 2009.
There was nothing seriously wrong with the South Africa set-pieces in Dublin; they just never made it beyond three phases. In slightly drier conditions they should pose rather more of an attacking threat, another reason for England to target their new half-back pairing of Cobus Reinach and Pat Lambie. If Fourie du Preez, Francois Louw and Ruan Pienaar were all fit as well, the hosts really would be anxious.
The good news is that, in the first half against New Zealand, England did plenty of things well and should have been comfortably ahead of the world’s No1 side. This time they hope ball-carriers such as Courtney Lawes and Billy Vunipola will give the Springbok forwards a dose of their own physicality and make it easier for their side’s exceptionally quick wingers to get into the game.
It is not the day, either way, for Danny Care to rest easy on the occasion of his 50th cap. The Harlequins scrum-half has had his problems since his debut in 2008 – he still jokes that “if I see Stuart walking down a corridor I usually run the other way” – but the priority has to be the here and now.
“It will come at a time when the learning needs to stop and we need to get results,” he said. “I think that we have shown in patches just how good we are but we need to turn that into 80-minute performances.
“Like Stuart said we need an extra 10% from everyone, maybe 20%. In the second half against New Zealand, execution-wise, a couple of kicks weren’t my best. As half-backs our job is to lead the team around the field and manage things. I made a couple of mistakes there and, ultimately, that cost us a bit.”
It is time, in short, for England to rise above this week’s debates about television match officials, big screen replays, hakas, concussion protocols and crowd behaviour. Brain will be required as much as brawn, with aimless kicking to Willie le Roux definitely not to be recommended.
The last time England lost five matches or more in a row was eight years ago; within a year they were facing Australia in a World Cup final. History could yet be repeated but only if Lancaster’s players get a grip and start winning close contests at home against leading sides.
While South Africa will be equally motivated, this is a hunger game England dare not lose.
