It is make or break for England’s tour and Eddie Jones’ selection has me utterly baffled.
A week ago the first Test was lost with England not looking like they knew how to beat an Australia team down to 14 men.
I saw that as a coaching rather than player issue yet Danny Care, Joe Marchant and Joe Cokanasiga carried the can for the defeat.
Why would you bring Care back for one Test at the age of 35 and then drop him for no obvious reason?
Jack van Poortvliet came on for a minute or two and scored a nice try, well done him. But enough to depose a bloke who’s been the best scrum-half in the Premiership by a country mile for the last two years?
Why would you pick a big physical winger like Cokanasiga then singularly fail to use him as a power runner? I can’t see Marchant did a whole lot wrong either.
To me this selection by Jones smacks of ‘I don’t know what my team is, I don’t know who my best players are’.
We are constantly told this is a ‘new’ England developing a new way of playing - but you don’t develop anything by giving them one shot then dropping three of the back line.
If Jones can see enough to warrant three changes in the back line I question what his analysis was before last week? Surely, you can’t learn that much in one game.
All the partnerships he thought were right for Perth should be that bit better this week. Yet most of them aren’t there any more, other than the one which didn’t really work at all, Marcus Smith and Owen Farrell.
When there’s uncertainty about what you need to do to stay in a team you end up with mistrust.
You’re left unsure whether it’s actually about what you put on the field - or just on the whim of a guy who decides I’m going to change that because I’ve got a feeling.
As much as we want the boys to go out there and absolutely pile in, for Tommy Freeman to score a couple and England to play brilliantly, I find it hard to put my finger on what they’re trying to do.
And I repeat, that is not a player issue.
