The ‘woeful’ England defence stats that should worry Steve Borthwick ahead of Springboks clash
England missed a whopping 36 tackles against Australia yesterday.
England currently find themselves in a serious rut this November, but it can be pinpointed to one area in particular – defence.
Following yesterday’s last-gasp defeat to Australia, Steve Borthwick’s men have now lost four of their past five games, but it was arguably the worst loss of the lot from a defensive point of view.
Yes, the argument can be made they are in between defence coaches following the arrival of Joe El-Abd, and therefore defensive systems, but England’s defence is simply woeful at the moment, and that’s reflected in the stats from the Autumn.
Missed tackles cost games
A blitz system will lead to more missed tackles, instinctively, however, England are missing far, far, far too many tackles to be successful at Test level.
In yesterday’s defeat to Australia, Borthwick’s outfit posted a shocking haul of 36 missed tackles and only had a success rate of 84%. Compare this to Australia’s tally of 24 missed tackles, and 85% success rate – even though they had to make far fewer tackles on the whole – it makes fairly bleak reading.
It’s also where these missed tackles came which is the most worrying. The centre partnership of Henry Slade and Ollie Lawrence are vital to the blitz system, however, they missed a combined 7 tackles between them (Slade 5, Lawrence 2) and this in turn let the likes of Joseph Suaa’li’i, Tom Wright and Andrew Kellaway to run riot at the Allianz.
Elsewhere, skipper Jamie George missed four tackles, as did usual big whackers George Martin and Chandler Cunningham-South, and Maro Itoje and Marcus Smith also missed three apiece. These aren’t inexperienced players either, except Cunningham-South, and they should be demanding more of themselves in this particular area.
Missed tackles are starting to creep their way into England’s game this Autumn, and this is also backed up by the stats from their defeat to the All Blacks. Things were slightly better, but they still missed a total of 24 tackles and posted a slightly better 88% success rate.
Again, it’s the same sort of names posting the biggest numbers. Ben Earl missed four tackles in that defeat, and Martin and Lawrence also missed three apiece.
Missing 60 tackles across two games (an average of 30 per game) is simply not good enough at Test level, and they need to address this sooner rather than later.
Too reliant on certain players?
We might have named and shamed some players, but England have been found wanting in the contact area this Autumn, and are far too reliant on their big whackers in defence.
The aforementioned duo Martin and Cunningham-South have topped the way for dominant tackles this Autumn, with Martin notching five across the two games, but just having two players doing the damage cannot be enough to be a successful defensive side.
Dominating the contact area, and therefore the gain-line battle, are crucial to Test rugby, but you can’t get that dominance if only two of your players are hitting people back.
This is also worrying, as it essentially goes against the concept of a blitz defence. It just suggests they are passive in the hit, which actually defeats the point of a super-aggressive line speed as they are just letting their opponents creep behind and then put the defence on the back foot rather than being the attackers.
Where to next?
The arrival of El-Abd actually brings about a decent marker to change their defensive principle to a more passive system. This sort of absorption defence has worked well for England sides in the past, and it would help reduce the tally of missed tackles.
Yes, it’s a huge change, and would virtually rub out all the work Felix Jones did during his tenure, but you feel it might take something drastic like this to fix their huge issues.
