Rarely has the snap reaction to an England squad announcement been so scathing. In Bath the general view was omitting their wing Semesa Rokoduguni was even crazier than the US election result. “Roko released by England is ridiculous,” tweeted the club’s experienced forward Matt Garvey. “The best winger in the Prem by a country mile. Baffling.”
His team-mate Matt Banahan felt likewise: “Guess two years of form, metres made, defenders beaten and tries scored means nothing.” At Saracens they were similarly nonplussed by Eddie Jones’s decision to omit Alex Goode, the player of the year for last season’s double winners but yet to emerge as an obvious Jones favourite. Recent form in the Premiership has rarely seemed more irrelevant to back-three selection than it has this week for Saturday’s Test against South Africa.
Clearly Jones is the man in command and is entitled to do what he likes. Nine successive wins suggest England’s coach has a reasonably sure touch. But with his regular wings Anthony Watson and Jack Nowell out injured these are defining weeks for players such as Rokoduguni. If he cannot get in now, on the back of scoring 15 tries in his past 15 Premiership games, what are his chances when Watson and Nowell are available again?
It also forms part of a wider debate about what, exactly, England are looking to achieve out wide. The statistics are interesting. Rokoduguni, who won his solitary Test cap against New Zealand under Stuart Lancaster, has scored 17 tries in his past 27 Premiership games over the past year and a bit. Over the same 15-month period, Wasps’ Christian Wade has scored 16 and the suspended Chris Ashton has 11. Marland Yarde and the fit-again Jonny May, the two wings set to start against South Africa, have scored four and zero respectively.
This is not to dump on Yarde or May, both of whom contribute in assorted areas and tend to pop up infield more often than Rokoduguni or Wade. Memories of May’s electric try against the All Blacks in that same 2014 Test at Twickenham also remain gloriously fresh. But how is Yarde, a player whose solitary try in six Premiership games this autumn came against Bristol on the opening day of the season, rated ahead of the 29-year-old Rokoduguni? Yes, the Harlequin played and scored in the first Test against Australia in June and has long had the potential to be a top-level operator. That said, one half-decent European pool game against a pitiful Stade Français at The Stoop, in which he also endured some wobbly defensive moments, hardly demands Yarde’s retention above his Fiji-born rival.
The truth can be down only to one of three things – or two if we ignore the fanciful theory that, in Nowell’s absence, Jones craves at least one striking hairdo on the wing. Either Yarde has been tearing it up spectacularly in training or the management have taken against anyone who appears to be even slightly understated. Neither Rokoduguni nor Goode is a natural on-field ranter but, underneath, they are as quietly competitive as anyone.
Rokoduguni, in fairness, can misjudge the odd high ball, not necessarily ideal against this Springbok side. Going forward, though, there is nothing remotely deficient about his game, as George Ford was stressing only this week. “He is probably the most dangerous player and the best finisher I have ever played with,” Ford said. “Give him the ball in a bit of space and you can see what he can do.”
Ford also reckons Rokoduguni, who has served in the army since 2007 and carried out foot patrols in Afghanistan, is underrated in other areas. “I think what people don’t see with Roko is the work he does when he doesn’t have the ball. The decisions he makes in defence, his understanding of when to come infield to look for the ball, his kick chase, his aerial skills ... people see his unbelievable finishing quality but he is a great guy to have on your team.”
Spool back to that mesmeric May try, for example, and it was Rokoduguni who set the killer play in motion by safely fielding Aaron Smith’s clearance kick. The rejected Bath man, whose father, Ilaitia, is a staff sergeant attached to a United Nations peacekeeping force, may well get his chance later this autumn – perhaps against his homeland next week – but he tends to be a player who responds best when coaches show faith in him.
Either way Rokoduguni has scored a try in roughly every other game in his Premiership career – 34 in 71 matches – compared with Yarde’s ratio of one in three (25 in 81). The other home unions would surely pick him and he could yet be a half-decent outside bet for the Lions squad next summer.
“He’s an unbelievable talent … if I could pick one player to be it would probably be him,” muttered Dave Attwood after Rokoduguni had stolen a dramatic late victory at Exeter last month. His Bath colleagues cannot all be wrong.
