Let’s consider the case of Henry Slade, the gifted Exeter 22-year-old who makes his England debut on Saturday. Most people consider Slade has a decent England career ahead of him. Maybe a few World Cups, but probably not this one.
To get into Stuart Lancaster’s squad Slade will probably have to play out of his skin at Twickenham and then cross his fingers until the final 31 are announced after the return game against France but before the final warm-up game in Ireland, where Lancaster says he will show his hand.
The odds suggest Slade, playing at outside-centre, is on a hiding to nothing. Inside him and also going for a final centre vacancy is Sam Burgess, not an overwhelming success as a distributor at 12 with Bath and, from the bench, Billy Twelvetrees, like Slade a multi-talented player but one who hasn’t been pulling up any trees for a while now.
In such circumstances it is hardly fair to expect a rookie, even one as good as Slade, to give of his best. But he isn’t alone. Here we are, five weeks out from a World Cup, and England give starts to four of the five debutants still in a squad close on four years in the making.
England aren’t the only ones still looking for that magic blend – a starting 23 with which the coach is comfortable – and over the next few weeks there are sure to be more who play their way out of the World Cup than those who secure a berth. This weekend Argentina, who seven days ago beat South Africa for the first time in competition, make nine changes for the return. New Zealand respond to their defeat in the final week of the Rugby Championship by rejigging a back row which came off second best, while the victors Australia make six changes for the Bledisloe decider in Auckland.
World Cup warm-ups, it seems, expand to fit the time available. So what have we learned so far? Well, after Cardiff last week we know little has changed with Wales and, once Warren Gatland strays beyond his first-choice squad, the pool of talent is quite shallow while Ireland continue to look every bit champions of Europe, now rated second best in the world.
South Africa, despite looking good for much of the Rugby Championship, have now lost four on the bounce and their coach, Heyneke Meyer, is in trouble all over the place, making a hatful of changes, ill at ease with the way his scrum is being refereed and at odds with trade unions who claim some of his selections are racist.
However, there is one emerging theme that fascinates and that is the way coaches are refashioning their back rows to increase the influence of the openside flanker, the “fetcher”, and how many of them to play. Most notable was the success the Australian coach, Michael Cheika, had in playing his two world-class fetchers against New Zealand – the first time Michael Hooper and David Pocock had started a Test together.
It is not an experiment that Cheika repeats on Saturday in Auckland, but in Sydney the twin threat caught the All Blacks on the back foot and all week there has been speculation in New Zealand about changes designed to stop the captain, Richie McCaw, who will break Brian O’Driscoll’s record by playing his 142nd Test, from being outgunned at the breakdown.
The talk was that Sam Cane might come in at the expense of Jerome Kaino; instead it is Victor Vito. However, the Blacks are not the only ones with a back-row puzzle on their plate. Meyer and the Springboks were successful against the Blacks with Heinrich Brussow and Francois Louw, until the Bath flanker damaged his shoulder.
Conversely, it was the former London Irish back-row Juan Manuel Leguizamón, a genuinely fine man and the guy I had as captain for the Barbarians in May, who set the trend for Argentina’s win in Durban last weekend while Justin Tipuric was one of the few Welsh successes in Cardiff. That game against Ireland probably decided the immediate futures of a few Welsh players and it reopened the question of whether Gatland could or should play the Osprey openside alongside Sam Warburton, as he did so succesfully against England a couple of seasons ago.
As with most things in rugby, it’s not a win-win situation. More give and take. For all the success of Cheika’s experiment, the Australia lineout paid dearly and was all over the shop. There were also defensive consequences which the All Blacks either failed to see or did not exploit and surely would given a week to watch the video.
So Pocock starts from the bench, but that doesn’t mean Cheika is consigning his option to the bin and there are many reasons why it could be resurrected in the World Cup proper – the way referees choose to control the breakdown, the tempo at which sides want to play and, because it’s Britain in the autumn, the weather.
England don’t have that option. In deciding (understandably) that Steffon Armitage was unselectable, Lancaster turned his face away from one of the better “fetchers” in Europe and when Matt Kvesic was cut adrift, the last conventional openside left the squad. What Lancaster went for was a back row with other virtues – industry, strength, resilience, stamina.
It has worked perfectly well for him, especially when grounds are wet and heavy, but you sense Six Nations thinking. Are others thinking late summer?
