England v Ireland: Five takeaways as Andy Farrell’s ‘radical’ selections inspires Twickenham ‘humiliation’
Ireland's Stuart McCloskey, center, is tackled from behind during the Six Nations rugby union match between England and Ireland and an inset of Henry Pollock.
Following Ireland’s 42-21 victory over England in round three of the Six Nations, here are our five takeaways from the Allianz Stadium in Twickenham.
The top line
England were humiliated in their own backyard as Ireland ran up a record-breaking five-try demolition at Twickenham, something almost unheard of in the modern era of Test rugby and a result that will reverberate through English rugby for months to come.
It was a performance from the visitors built upon the most unfashionable of foundations, discipline married to precision, simplicity married to relentless execution, as England collapsed in waves beneath the green tide that washed over them from the very first whistle.
Jamison Gibson-Park was the heartbeat of everything Ireland did, his service precise and aggressive, his running lines constantly probing the edges of England’s defensive structure and never once allowing them to settle or reorganise. Jack Crowley, handed the 10 jersey with unequivocal trust after Sam Prendergast’s removal from the squad entirely, responded with a performance of quite extraordinary composure and game management, controlling territory, controlling tempo and controlling the entire narrative of the afternoon.
But Stuart McCloskey at 12 may prove the most significant selection revelation of this entire championship, physical and direct in the most punishing sense, intelligent with the ball in hand and utterly relentless in creating the angles that dismantled England’s defensive alignment time and again.
England’s rap sheet tells its own brutal story. 14 penalties, two yellow cards, 28 missed tackles, and possession surrendered 24 times in total. This was seismic, for both sides, but in the most contrasting ways imaginable.
Incredible Ireland shock Twickenham in Six Nations stunner as England embarrassed
Ireland find their identity
Andy Farrell did something radical today. He picked his best players in their best positions and trusted them completely to play the rugby they know, and the simplicity of that decision, so obvious in retrospect, so elusive in the fog of selection pressure, has proven to be the most important tactical call of this entire Six Nations campaign.
It sounds straightforward because it is straightforward, and perhaps that is the most profound lesson Twickenham has delivered to Irish rugby on this extraordinary afternoon and something England need to take note of. Starting with the back-row because the back-row tells the whole story.
Tadhg Beirne, Josh van der Flier and Caelan Doris is not a combination you tinker with or experiment around. It is one of the most experienced back-row units in world rugby and today, given the platform and the belief, they were utterly magnificent. Doris carried with the authority of a man who knows exactly what he is and what he brings. Van der Flier was everywhere, a constant menace at the breakdown, a relentless presence that England could never fully account for. Beirne was immense, dominant in the lineout, ferocious in the carry and perpetually intelligent in everything he did around the park.
James Ryan and Joe McCarthy in the engine room gave Ireland the forward foundation upon which everything glorious was subsequently constructed. When your locks are winning collisions, stealing ball and setting the physical tone, the backs behind them are liberated to express themselves fully.
This feels like a genuine turning point for Farrell and for Irish rugby, but it is a turning point underpinned not by complexity or innovation but by something far more powerful. The courage to back your finest players in their finest positions and then simply get out of the way. Ireland today were not complicated. They were just brilliantly, beautifully themselves.
Back to basics
Sometimes, the most devastating thing a team can do to an opponent is simply execute the fundamentals with a precision and relentlessness that makes complexity entirely redundant. Ireland needed just to be better in this match, completing the simple things well. And in every single area that defines the foundation of Test rugby, they were emphatically, brutally better.
Nine aerial contest wins against three; just think about that for a moment. Nine times Ireland competed in the air, and nine times they came down with the ball or forced the error, strangling England’s kicking game before it started, denying Borthwick’s side the territorial platform they desperately needed to function.
The defensive numbers complete the picture of a team operating in a completely different dimension than their opponents. Ireland’s defensive efficiency sat at 80%. England managed just 72%, and those missing 11 percentage points tell you everything about why the scoreboard looked the way it did.
And then there was the Crowley and McCloskey combination, which was a constant source of devastation. Crowley, identifying the moment, slipping the short pass directly off his shoulder, McCloskey hitting the line with that powerful, direct running, and Crowley looping beautifully around the outside, always available, always threatening. Ireland have found the right man at 10, a player that operates at a different plane of thought and speed of deed than other tried this season, and they looked far more threatening as a result.
Ireland were not spectacular today; they were something far more dangerous. They were meticulous in everything they executed.
Collision killers
England’s attacking woes in this match were hampered by their complete inability to win collisions with depth and power and to maintain momentum past the initial phases.
Ireland’s canny experience and sheer size differential made life almost impossible for the English back five forwards as Beirne, Van der Flier and Doris, aided and abetted by McCarthy and Ryan, hammered everything in white back from whence it came.
The numbers themselves paint a painful picture; Ireland turned England over 24 times, but more telling is that their collision dominance was over 70% for the entire game, a key margin when inches at Test level are the key to momentum. For all the great work of Joe Heyes, Ben Earl and Tom Curry, the rest of the England forwards simply lost the shoulder all afternoon, hardly surprising given the poundage differential in the back five of the respective packs.
England arrived slow to clear, often high and attacking ruck shapes, where Ireland had already won that initial moment, removing any form of straight line carrying intensity to bring the space into play that George Ford so desperately craves to run a backline. Nothing could have summed up the laterality and inability to tighten the Irish belt defence than when Ford himself ran deep into the Irish right corner, Freeman stayed outside him, rather than looping around to make himself available. When no tracking support arrived on the inside, the England fly-half went to ground, without anyone available to clear. Turnover to Ireland and the story of the gainline summed up in one singular moment.
England implications
This was a demolition that exposed something far deeper than a bad afternoon at Twickenham and turned out to be an existential crisis for Steve Borthwick and everything he thought he had built.
The fast, small backrow experiment has been tried and found catastrophically wanting. Henry Pollock, Curry, and Earl are mobile, yes, but, as an unbalanced unit, utterly unable to impose themselves against the physicality and precision of an Irish pack that simply overwhelmed them at the breakdown and in the carry- that part of the blueprint is shredded.
For sure, Pollock’s persistence in midfield was a key part of the Ollie Lawrence try, but it served to amplify the question if he’s more of a fantastic rugby player over and above a Test-quality flanker? England need simple options right now, and Steve Borthwick might reflect that statistics tell us that hybrid sales are on the down slope, whilst simple petrol and diesel are back in fashion.
Ford at 10 remains a brilliant option against most opposition, but, as has been proven on so many occasions, 2% short of the quality needed at fly-half against the elite defences of Test rugby. No pace, no threat line, no power to trouble the defensive fringe, meaning Ireland’s defence never had to account for him, and never had to respect what he might do. When your ten becomes invisible, your attack becomes entirely predictable.
But it was the defensive disintegration that will haunt Borthwick longest. Three separate occasions where two England defenders bit on the primary carrier, leaving the offload channel criminally exposed. Simple misalignment, basic drift errors at Test level, against a team of Ireland’s quality, are never going to end well, but the issue appears to be systemic now. Scotland showed the cracks at Murrayfield, but Ireland drove a truck through them at the Allianz.
England’s World Cup narrative, so carefully constructed and so proudly polished, lies in pieces on the Twickenham turf. This is a watershed moment. Everything changes now.
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