Loose Pass: England substitutions the ‘game-changer’ All Blacks needed while Munster fans deserve ‘answers’ after Graham Rowntree exit
England's substitutions have been questioned while Loose Pass also delves into Graham Rowntree's exit from Munster.
This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with what went wrong for England, what went wrong for New Zealand, and what’s gone wrong in Munster…
Steve Borthwick’s bench press carried too little weight
At 22-14 and with Marcus Smith having just drilled his sixth kick of the night straight down the middle of the uprights, England were in a fine position. Then it went horribly wrong.
Smith departed for no readily apparent reason (the waterboy appeared to hint at something wrong with his eye) along with scrum-half Ben Spencer, and with them went the zip and direction from the base of England’s rucks. Ben Earl went for a tired-looking chop tackle which cost his team three points. He would have cost them three more with five minutes to go had New Zealand not scored a try from the advantage. Mark Tele’a brushed off both fresh replacements George Ford and Harry Randall on his way to the line.
Earl emptied the tank as he always does and had a terrific game, but he looked as he deserved to look in the final 15 minutes, absolutely blown out. Yet it was Chandler Cunningham-South – also enjoying an excellent game – who made way for Alex Dombrandt, rather than Earl. Smith was a valid candidate for man of the match and in no way looked gassed when he departed. Nor did Cunningham-South, certainly not in the way Earl looked.
The debate about rugby’s outsized bench has rumbled on for some time now, but with the depth of resources available to coaches, it’s become a feature in many a team that certain players are likely only to go for 50 or 60 minutes, certain others are favoured as difference-makers from the bench and that many changes are pre-planned. It’s also been a feature, happily much less of a feature now, that some players are barely given more than five minutes to make a difference at the end of a game; think about the poor chap who’s had to play as France’s back-up nine the past couple of years.
There’s arguments for pre-planning all that, but England’s capitulation on Saturday is a reminder that plans can, and should, be shredded if a game is going well. Maybe there was some data and information we aren’t privy to, but not removing Earl and the removal of Smith and Spencer clearly was the game-changer the All Blacks had been searching in vain for.
That the fly-half removed was England’s best exponent of playing what’s in front of him is particularly ironic; Steve Borthwick‘s inability to do the same with his substitutions looks to have cost England dear.
All Blacks still haven’t found it
For all the accusations that England threw the Test away however, had Ford’s drop goal hit its mark there would have been a strong case for New Zealand having thrown the game away as well.
The All Blacks left at least three tries out on the Twickenham turf, a peculiar mixture of out-of-sync decision-making and over-thought execution costing them those three clear opportunities. The discipline was lacking too; while some of the penalties were earned by England, the one for diving onto George Furbank when he was on the ground having fallen on a kick through was amateurishly silly.
More noticeable though was the slow speed of it all; England’s aggressive defence helped warp the New Zealand attacking shape into a flat line of players at times, but the hesitancy of New Zealand’s play continues to undermine their better efforts.
A tougher test awaits on Friday in the shape of an Ireland team ranked one in the world and absolutely salivating at the prospect of avenging that World Cup defeat. The win will have caused relief, but the doubts about the new regime will not have been quashed.
The Rowntree affair is not a good look for Munster
Munster has not, it seems, been a good place to land for coaches over the past few years. The acrimonious exit of Johann van Graan – who has subsequently done a fine job at Bath – was far uglier than it should have been, but the departure of Graham Rowntree tops it.
Most pertinently, the Munster fans, who in contrast to when Van Graan left are audibly up in arms about Rowntree’s exit, are still left needing a few answers.
Rumours have abounded of fallings out behind the scenes, not least with Peter O’Mahony, whose contract negotiations were protracted and apparently far too soap operatic for Rowntree’s liking. And Munster have not made a good start to the season, although they were hardly high flyers in the season they won the URC either. Peaking at the right time is also an art, and Rowntree was very good at getting his team right at the right times.
But the most perplexing aspect of it all was that, in a province where you need to be able to adopt and live the local mindset, Rowntree ‘got it’. He quickly noted the similarities between the Munster way and that of his playing career club at Leicester, and thrived off being able to meld the one way with the other, something which Van Graan, for all his obvious capabilities, struggled with.
Despite Munster’s slow start to the season, few fans are happy with the decision, particularly as it has come with no real reasoning. Munster are now looking for a fourth coach in eight years, which is a high turnover. The reasons – and problems might be further up the Munster chain of command than just the tracksuit.
READ MORE: David Campese’s Autumn Nations Series Team of the Week: All Blacks dominate as ‘deadly’ rookie stars
