England have taken the novel approach of announcing their matchday squad to face Italy and referring to their replacements’ bench as the “Finishers” in the official RFU press release.
Jones has heaped praise on his “finishers” after late victories over France and Wales in the Six Nations so far that have owed much to the performances of his replacements and Ben Te’o, James Haskell and Danny Care have all been rewarded with starts against Italy.
In naming Care ahead of Ben Youngs, Jones pointedly said that “Ben will then come on and finish the game” while Jamie George, who again settles for a place on the bench on Sunday despite outshining the captain Dylan Hartley in Cardiff, has previously said: “We don’t ever see ourselves as ‘the bench’. Everyone on the bench would love to be starting, but we are all of the mindset that we’ve got to make sure that we have an impact on the game. Eddie puts a massive amount of importance on us and a lot of pressure and we’ve got to make sure we react to that.”
Such is Jones’s strength in depth that calling his bench “Finishers” would appear to be a method of keeping the replacements motivated but it does not seem to have been well received by the Six Nations, who switched “Finishers” back to “Replacements” in their official release of the team.
The term was brought into rugby union parlance during the World Cup in 2015 by the Australia’ coach Michael Cheika and borrows from the phrase “Closer”, used to describe pitchers in baseball who come on to see the game out.
