England's Central Problem

Ages ago, a friend of mine suggested I write an article about England's centres, and the part they played in the current non-performance of the wingers.

Well, this is that article. Sort of.

At the time (around the Six Nations) the article I would have written would have concentrated on the lack of passing. Whether it was that they couldn't pass, or they wouldn't pass, my feeling was that England's centres basically had no interest in quickly getting the ball to a winger in space. And that is still my feeling. The conclusion would have been either we need to teach them to pass, or pick players who can pass. Twelvetrees would have sprung to mind, followed by a lot of coughing and looking awkward. England's stock of centres is still in the process of being rebuilt. There’s a couple of other names - Anthony Allen, Jonathan Joseph - but the case for them feels a little weak. But now I feel there is a great deal more to it than that. Why aren't they being encouraged to pass the ball more? Why aren't the wingers coming short for offloads more? Or running off the half-backs? Speaking of the half-backs, could they get the ball to the centres quicker? Barritt in particular was left to deal with a lot of slow, crap ball.

And, does it even matter? Cast your mind back to 2011, England's last Six Nations win. The Hape/Tindall combination we used has to stand out as one of the worst distributing centre partnerships ever to play international rugby. But we won the Six Nations. We did it scoring 13 tries, the joint highest total from a winner since 2007. Seven of those tries came from Ashton or Cueto. Is our centres' handling really the issue?

Scoring tries is England's biggest issue right now. England's last two Six Nations recorded five and seven tries respectively, a poor return indeed. If you read Lancaster's latest interview, the following quote is prominent:

“I have got a vision. But it is dictated by what it will take to win. Most sides are the same from a strength and conditioning point of view. There isn’t the drop off in physical condition in the last 20 minutes like you used to get. The second tier nations – Samoa and so on – are as organised defensively, harder to break down. So the difference will be in the point of attack. If we base our game on being in good condition physically and being great defensively I don’t think that will be good enough. It has to be attack."

So, tries. As such I'm going to compare this current England side to 2011, when a very similar looking backline did a great deal better. Because, yes, the centres are failing the wings - but the wings are failing the centres and the half-backs, and the half-backs are failing both. The whole thing doesn't work, so let us look at when it did.

The first thing that jumped out at looking at the stats was at scrum-half. Ben Youngs was scrum-half then and is scrum-half now, but seems a very different player. He seems less decisive, less instinctive. This is unsurprising. When Youngs came onto the scene, he fizzed, and he was very definitely a scrum-half that loved a dart. Well not now. Below are his Kick/Pass/Run stats from ESPN for 2011 and 2013.

Youngs has stopped taking it on himself to anything like the extent he used to. He has gone from running 1 in every 13.86 times to 1 in every 27.88. Instead, he kicks the leather off of the thing, even allowing for the distorting effect of the torrential rain of Dublin 2013. The immediate questions that spring to my mind is "Does this represent him suppressing his natural game, and does that account for why he looks less decisive?" That Youngs running the ball less takes away one of England's more potent weapons and gives support runners less to work with seems obvious. Is this a dictate from above? That too would seem an obvious yes, but if we find Danny Care's stats from his start against Italy in 2013, they read 5/56/6 - very similar to Youngs two years ago. Whatever the reason, if we are to score more tries, it seems obvious we need our scrum-half to run the ball more. And, if Youngs isn't running the ball, why is he playing? His box kicking has improved, but is no thing of beauty. His passing doesn't commend him above the other options either and as noted, his decision making is erratic. 

Looking outside him, and statistically, there's not a lot of change in some senses. Farrell is a bit more likely to kick and a bit less likely to run than Flood, but their K/P/R is fairly similar. Similarly, both Barritt and Hape pass as often they run - something that may surprise their detractors. It certainly surprised me. Indeed, the greedy man is supposed playmaking messiah Billy Twelvetrees, who routinely runs about 75pc of his possession. Where the stats do differ, however, is in terms of yardage. R is Runs, M is Metres Run, and CB is clean breaks - and TT is Twelvetrees.

In terms of simply making yards, Farrell isn't doing badly. But he is far less likely to make a clean break than Flood. The real eye opener is Barritt's stats compared to, well, everyone. Say what you like about Hape - everyone did - but he made ground, and more of it than I remembered. Barritt hasn't. Now, these are just statistics, which take no account for other circumstances, so maybe this isn't his fault. But it doesn't seem to matter which fly-half he plays with for England, and both fly-halves have got good performances out of other inside-centre at this level. And, whatever the reason, it is baldly obvious that England's current favoured 10/12 combo offers far less penetration than Flood and Hape did. Maybe this is due to Youngs not fixing defenders, or the pack not performing - or maybe it's a simple matter of quality. Again, however it's happening, those outside have a great deal less to work with.

Now, it will surprise no one to learn Tuilagi only passed the ball six times in his three Six Nations starts in 2013, with only one offload. In 2011, Tindall and Banahan (yes he did play there for one game) weren't a great deal more interested. In fact, Brad Barritt has been England's greatest passing 13 of recent times, with 15 against Scotland in what was England's biggest try scoring bonanza in the 2011-2013 time period. 2011's version was the game against Italy, the only time in the tournament Tindall made more than 5 passes (7 to be precise). As such, I can confirm the shocking news that scoring tries and the outside centre passing the ball are in fact statistically linked. Just to throw in another example, Tuilagi passed 6 times against New Zealand, to pick out the other try fest. That might not seem much, but it is compared to how much our outside-centre usually passes it. Ok, maybe I should look for a bigger sample base before saying they're statistically linked in general, but they have been recently for England. Still, there's not a great difference between what has been happening in this channel between then and now - a big man ran straight forwards and passed the ball on an intermittent basis. If outside-centre is a problematic area in our try scoring, it is because we have changed our approach to the game.

Out wide, Ashton and Cueto made more more runs in 2011 than Ashton and Brown did in 2013. Ashton's contribution in particular is markedly different; 45 runs in 2011, 36 in 2013; 6 tries in 2011, 1 try in 2013. This is not explained by less passing from outside centre (20 in 2011, 23 in 2013). That Ashton has not had the same level of success with his tracking runs as he did when he first broke through is obvious. Possibly the decreased running presence of our half-backs is to blame here for why Ashton is not getting the ball as much and not scoring the tries he did. It is Ashton's detoriation which has really led to us no longer scoring tries on the wing; Cueto's swansong involved a lot of graft, but not many tries. Replacing him with Mike Brown has not changed a great deal. I'm not going to reproduce Ashton's stats in full, but it is like comparing chalk with cheese or more accurately, a world class winger with a barely international class winger. Reversing or replacing this is vital. Mind you, another possible cause of Ashton's decline is the absence of Ben Foden, with who Ashton had a very useful understanding in 2011, and who was a generally better attacking player than Alex Goode. More tries (1 to Goode's 0), more defenders beaten (9 to 5), more clean breaks (3 to 1) and more often turning up in a wide channel looking for the ball. No stats for the latter, just my opinion. Foden wants to turn up outside of 13 and look for the outside break; Goode wants to step in at 10 or 12 and create something. But he's not even doing that at the moment.

So, to return to the original thing about centres, yes they could pass more - or rather, Tuilagi could. It seems to result in more tries being scored. But this is too simplistic. Is the low number of passes indicative of selfishness alone, or are there also not enough opportunities to genuinely put the winger away? There is unquestionably some element of selfishness (Tuilagi ignoring an unmarked winger to go himself in the 2013 Grand Slam game is burnt on my retinas) but it does not appear to be the major problem. 

The major problem appears to be 12, compounded by and possibly caused by a lack of penetration in the half-backs. The extent of how much worse a ball carrier Barritt seems to be than Hape and Twelvetrees, statistically speaking, is quite worrying. Possibly this is due to other factors, such as the quality of ball provided. Barritt can produce a top quality attacking performance at international level at inside centre. He did so against New Zealand. But that match was a one-off in a number of ways. Was Barritt's performance a one-off too? I don't wish to condemn the man unduly, but the numbers seem to point at his attacking play being an issue. Consider that if this England team is a problem, you'd expect other players at 12 to struggle. Twelvetrees didn't, but that was against a Scotland team with a poor back row and a leaky defence. However, Tuilagi's also had two games against 12. Both against South Africa in South Africa, behind a patched together and weak looking pack. The result? Two decent performances with a lot of metres made, coinciding with the 14-14 draw, and the 36-27 loss. The latter sounds more impressive if you take into account the last time we scored that many points against a SH side in the SH was 2000. So other players can make things happen in this England set up at 12 - and when they do, we score points and get results. Bearing this in mind, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Barritt is a brake on attacking progress. The same can be said to a certain extent of Farrell and Youngs at the moment too (those 27 points against South Africa? Flood). As for Ashton - I do not care for his persona, but a winger is only ever as good as the ball he receives. When you look at the retrograde steps England have taken in the 9-10-12 axis - his favoured suppliers - it is not surprising he has been failing. Judgement on him should be reserved until the team returns to playing in a way that suits him.

Lancaster's next move will be interesting. There are reasons to remove all of Youngs-Farrell-Barritt and replacements available for all. I strongly doubt he'll remove all of them, but he surely has to change the unit in some way - turning ourselves into a major attacking force with such a subdued attacking presence in those positions would be an incredibly tall order. Barritt is the obvious sacrifice, with Billy Twelvetrees and Kyle Eastmond both putting up their hands as serious attacking 12s who stand their ground in attack. There's also the option of moving Tuilagi in, although that's less likely to gain popularity unless Jonathan Joseph recovers his form of two seasons ago, or some other outside-centre makes waves. Both Freddie Burns and Toby Flood could offer the running threat Farrell has not offered yet in an England shirt. Their defence and goal kicking will be heavily scrutinised if they were to replace Farrell, but then Farrell hasn't been perfect himself in that regard. Flood also may bring the best back out of Youngs again - although Care and Simpson offer the sniping option, and Lee Dickson and Richard Wrigglesworth are better scrum-halfs who never run if that's what Lancaster actually wants. It probably isn't, but you never know.

In a few months, we'll get a better idea of what Lancaster is looking for. Hopefully, it will contain a change in the 9-10-12 axis that seems to be failing England.

And maybe a shock collar to encourage Manu to look for the pass more often.

Once more unto the breach

For about 30-35 minutes, what I thought was Gatland's plan appeared to be working, and then it started to unravel.

Right now, I would express the Lions' problems as boiling down to two simple things. Both of them have dogged us throughout each Test and from them all sorts of mischief occurs.

Problem 1 is the huge difficulty we are having in getting over the gainline. We are not creating the initial dents that create the breaking up of defensive coherency that allows our backs a real chance to make a linebreak.

Problem 2 is Will Genia, who continues to look the best scrum-half in rugby and the most important man on the pitch. We cannot shackle him and as such the Australians are always a danger.

If we can fix these two things I feel very confident that this will be a Lions series victory. If we fix neither, then hope is not lost as we have shown we can stay close to the Australians even with these issues, but it will be difficult. They were far more disciplined with their kicking in the second test, creating less broken field opportunities for us. Lealiifano looks a far superior kicker than the flakey twins of O'Connor and Beale. They have seen enough of the Lions' lineout to challenge it, something that is unfortunate with Tom Youngs' throwing. They are in a stronger position than they were in the first test when it comes to the basics of their game. Look at how much better the Australian backline seems to be on the pitch and it becomes apparent the Lions need to be far better at the basics - well, the basics other than attacking play in the backs - if they are going to win. Well, we could get a backline that's as likely to score tries, but that requires the forwards to get the Ozzie backline going backwards first. Back to Problem 1.

We can probably actually roll both problems into one single problem. The Big Problem is the pack are not winning enough collisions. We obviously aren't winning enough when carrying the ball. We are not winning enough at the breakdown, in that ball is not coming back quickly on a regular basis. And we are not knocking them back enough in the tackle, which means we limit the amount of pressure we can put on Will Genia at the breakdown. Any player can cause him issues if he has to run backwards from the last ruck, if his team mates are running backwards or lack depth, and the that player has stepped forwards into a guard position. No player is really going to do much if they've only just reset their position as a guard after retreating when Genia starts to run. We could win the series without solving this problem. But it will be difficult and it is certainly not how I would do it.

So bring in Sean O'Brien and Toby Faletau. Not only will they be fresh, but they are the two most brutal ball-carriers and tacklers available in the back row. Bring back Corbisiero too if fit, and not just for his scrummaging; Vunipola's a big beast of a carrier, but he's not as good at Corbisiero and simply setting himself low and driving forwards a few metres. In the centres, Davies has to make way for one of Roberts or Tuilagi. Again, they will be fresh, and again they bring an extra level of brutality. Already that would give the Lions a more imposing look as there's only so much that can be done. Bringing back Mike Phillips would also be a good move; maybe not justified on form, but then neither Youngs nor Murray has a great deal better. Whoever is scrum-half, they should watch plenty of footage of Genia bringing his big runners onto the ball. Short run from the base, commit defender, pop to large man running really fast, repeat.

There is one other possible change I can see that would be useful, and one I hesitate to suggest. But, for all that Dan Cole has been a bit up and down in form, and looks exactly like a guy who's racked up huge amounts of gametime this season, and for all that Adam Jones has been his usual excellent self in the scrum, one guy gets to collisions around the park and the other one doesn't. And right now, we need more men at those collisions. Would I make the change? I'm not sure.

But what I am sure about is that the Lions will have to pick themselves up and go out there and finally cannon the Wallabies out of their way - or there's a good chance they'll lose what is a very winnable tour.