Sir Steve Hansen’s verdict on England’s struggles: ‘Do they actually know how they want to play?’
England back-rower Ben Earl and an inset of head coach Steve Borthwick (credit: Guido Comisso, Nations Championship)
Sir Steve Hansen is not convinced that Steve Borthwick knows how he wants his England team to play and is not utilising his athletes’ strengths.
Springboks head coach Rassie Erasmus said that England were difficult to prepare for because of how often they change their tactics and approach, but Hansen isn’t sure that is necessarily a good thing.
“Tactically Steve is a coach who chases trends, and that is always difficult to prepare against,” said Erasmus the week before the Nations Championship clash at Ellis Park.
“If I said I knew exactly what they’ll do next Saturday, I’d be lying. There will be strong Northampton and Leicester representation in their squad, and they always evolve their structures. So, (given what we know about their club teams) we have a reasonable idea of what they will do, but on the day, they could do something completely different.”
Ultimately, the Springboks prepared well enough as they went on to claim an emphatic 45-21 victory over Borthwick’s men in Johannesburg. A big part of the win was the way that Erasmus’ side punished England in the opening quarter with Thomas du Toit, Cheslin Kolbe and Kurt-Lee Arendse scoring tries to open up a 17-0 lead.
Sir Steve Hansen: Sacking Steve Borthwick isn’t the answer
The hosts also punished the visitors’ ill-discipline, capitalising on the sin-binning periods when Tommy Freeman and Guy Pepper were both yellow-carded. In his review of the match, Hansen said that England simply cannot afford to give any team that kind of start, particularly not South Africa.
“You can’t start slow – it doesn’t matter who you are. If you start slow and you give someone a 17-point head start, it’s a hell of an effort to come back. Against the best team in the world, you just can’t give them that head start. So, they’ve got to sort that out,” the ex-All Blacks boss said on the Rugby Unity podcast.
The defeat was England’s fifth in a row, a stark fall from grace from the team that enjoyed a 12-Test winning streak before the start of the Six Nations. A poor showing in the Championship led to an in-depth review of the England coaching group, with Borthwick getting the backing of the RFU board.
“I know Steve’s under pressure, but a lot of that pressure comes from the media and I guess the fans, because they want to win,” Hansen added.
“But what’s the next coach going to do? Sacking the coach isn’t always the right answer.”
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Selection issues
Ewen McKenzie, the former Wallabies head coach, believes that there are selection issues with the England team and questioned whether the team’s approach against the Springboks actually suited the playing personnel.
“There are a couple of selection issues there,” he said.
“I think Jamie George is probably getting towards the end of his time. They need a more dynamic two, and that’s what teams are playing with. You need a good ball-carrying two.
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“So there are spot positions there that they can play with, but I think they’ve moved on now from Ford. Playing Fin Smith might take some time to bed in. So theoretically, they’ve got a high-skilled team. They’ve got big, tall backs that should be able to compete for the aerial side of the game. I’ve seen them do it, but for whatever reason, they weren’t even in the contest.”
“So, I don’t know what they’re doing at training, but there’s something missing there. Maybe it’s an attitudinal thing. I don’t know. But they’ve got the raw ingredients. They’ve got potentially a high-skill team. They’ve got good ball-carrying front rowers – we saw that in Genge’s try. They’ve got depth; I don’t know what’s missing. Maybe they just need a little bit more time, but discipline is definitely a killer, and that’s costing them. 10 yellow cards in the last six tests is pretty damning.”
Do England want to play this way?
Hansen added that while England’s tactics can be seen clearly, he is not convinced it’s the style of play that they want to play and whether it suited the playing group, which isn’t in the same mold as traditional English teams.
“Do they actually know how they want to play? They have got an English way of playing, and then they’ve got a team that I think is not English,” he said.
“I don’t mean this disrespectfully, but they actually got a team that’s really, really talented that could play with the ball, and do they want to play more rugby, or do they want to just keep doing what they are doing?
“Sometimes they can be clear in what they want to do, but is that the right thing to do with the group of people they’ve got? I’m not sure.”
“Eddie made a comment on the same vein,” McKenzie replied.
“I think you’re right that there’s an English way of playing and that’s a bit more point-to-point. Now suddenly they’re presented with a team of gifted athletes with high skill level, and they haven’t been able to turn that into a successful formula.
“I think they were thereabouts; they were winning in Argentina with their B team and whatever, and the Lions guys came back, and they were playing them off the bench. They were in a really good space then, but Eddie made the point that they can’t sustain it. It’s about sustaining that style of play. It’s almost like they’re not used to it, not comfortable, and they drift back to what everyone sort of thinks they want, but in the end they’re still a bunch of high-skilled players, and they need to make sure that they understand what they’re trying to do.
“They keep drifting back, and maybe that’s a coaching thing. You mentioned Strawbridge. He was maybe taking him into that space, and now they dropped back to with background English coaches of keep drifting back to being old England rugby as opposed to what they could potentially be with the athletes they’ve got.”
