What’s going wrong with English rugby
Rejoice, as you don’t normally say after a hammering like the peerless French dished out to England at Twickenham. But looking on the bright side, at last English rugby knows its place, and it’s not pretty. The consensus in the hospitality lounges appeared to be that it was all Eddie Jones’s fault, though that feels a bit unfair to me. But hey ho, the darkest hour before the dawn and all that. And you can learn more from defeat than victory… fingers crossed.
What we can see is that France and Ireland are in a different league, with Scotland close behind. Certain players, poor Jack van Poortvliet at scrum-half, and Alex Dombrandt in a hopelessly outclassed back row, should go back to their clubs. George Ford, a hugely talented fly-half, should be given a chance by England in Dublin for the climax to the season on Saturday.
Once the England scrum started to founder, there didn’t seem to be anyone who could rescue it
The preposterous rule that says players who go abroad cannot be picked should be scrapped forthwith; and the ludicrously overpaid RFU chief executive, Bill ‘Sweeney Todd’ Sweeney, who wins every week on £668,000 a year, should stand aside. Most important of all, what about playing with intensity, and not dropping the ball? There seems to be a lack of leadership in the scrum, partlyI guess because many of the best club scrums in the Gallagher Premiership are being marshalled by powerful South Africans and Argentinians. Does that mean that English forwards with a taste for leadership aren’t coming forward? It’s hard to believe, but once the England scrum started to founder last weekend, there didn’t seem to be anyone who could rescue it.
The best moment of this brilliant Six Nations came in Paris a month ago when Antoine Dupont, France’s prodigiously gifted scrum-half, was the last line of defence against Ireland’s flying winger Mack Hansen. Hansen had just a couple of inches to go to the tryline. Dupont, who is only 5ft 8 but solid muscle, literally lifted Hansen up and hurled him into touch.
Hansen was brought up in Australia and looks like someone you might run into in an up-country Queensland truck stop – you certainly wouldn’t want to get on his wrong side. He says there was nothing to learn from the tackle simply because it could never happen again – nobody else could do it: Dupont is that good. Hansen also weighed in on the weekend’s battle against England: ‘There’s a fair bit of hatred, isn’t there? I think everyone hates England in general.’
This season’s award will probably go to Arsenal’s Mikel Arteta, but Football Manager of the Year surely has to be Burnley’s Vincent Kompany. He was a stalwart of Manchester City’s many title-grabbing sides before going first to Anderlecht and then on to Burnley, where, with the aid of some talented young players from the City academy, he has transformed a team that was relegated last season into a whizzy, high-intensity, high-possession side that is running away with the Championship. The sophisticated Belgian is now working with his old City teammate Craig Bellamy, who is, you could say, somewhat less sophisticated. They make an all-conquering duo.
The daffodils are out, the days are getting longer – you can almost taste it. That first catch; that first clip through mid-wicket for four. That first two-hour drive only to be out first ball, and the rest of the day spent fielding at deep fine leg, the only action coming when you spill a skier and nudge the ball over the boundary. So anyone who has ever tried to turn their arm over should spare a thought for Qais Ahmad of the Quetta Gladiators in the Pakistan Super League, whose figures after just two overs against the Multan Sultans were no wickets for 54 runs. We’ve all been there: though not always up against Usman Khan of the Sultans, who whacked 120 from 43 balls with nine sixes.
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