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English rugby pundits and fans really need to get a grip
The former Springboks on The Boks Office podcast have taken to calling the hottest of hot takes “premature adjudications”. Here’s mine: England will win this year’s Six Nations. Hear me out.
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France will beat Ireland in Dublin but neither will secure a bonus point. England will then stuff Italy with a bonus point win of their own. Next, a dispirited Ireland will be held to just a three-try win in Rome, while Scotland will do that thing they always do: produce their solitary astonishing performance of the campaign by beating France in Paris. England will do the business over Wales, bagging another four-try victory.
That means that England, currently on 10 points, will end up with 20. Ireland will finish on 19 and France will limp home with a paltry haul of 15. England, from the blindside, canter home for the first Six Nations title since 2020.
Look, it might not happen. In fact, it probably won’t. But the fact that it could underlines not only the latent potential within the group, but also its current capabilities. Even if the greatest ever Ireland squad beats France to secure an unprecedented three-peat, England should still finish second. Ahead of Antoine Dupont’s France. Ahead of Finn Russell’s Scotland. That is not to be sniffed at.
Which is why I have sympathy for Ellis Genge and any other England player or coach who is sick to the back teeth with all the whinging and moaning about how they’re getting on. None of them can claim to be providing the sort of entertainment of Gareth Edwards or Jonah Lomu, but they’re winning. Winning ugly, sure, but winning. And at the pointy end of international sport, isn’t that the only thing that matters?
You’d scarcely believe it reading English newspapers and listening to English pundits since Steve Borthwick’s team scraped past Scotland by the skin of their teeth almost a fortnight ago. During the match, fans at Twickenham booed as yet another box kick was hoisted high. After the match, former pros-turned-podcasters, including Ugo Monye and Jim Hamilton, branded the team as boring. Just about every paper lambasted their pragmatic approach, proving that there really is no pleasing some people.
No doubt speaking for everyone in the camp, Genge, true to character, hit back. “It is difficult as a player to digest the fact that people were disappointed that we just won the Calcutta Cup back after five years,” he told a startled cohort of journalists.
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“We won the game and people are still upset about it. It blew my mind, to be honest. Ex-players, recently retired and long retired, and people from years and years ago, I just can’t believe how out of touch they are, the spiel that I’m reading from people saying how off it we are. We won two games on the bounce and you’re upset about it, I don’t get it. Let’s not be naive, you can feel that people were booing when we were playing. It’s the feeling at the moment, for whatever reason, it is the way it is.”
Genge’s were not the last words on the matter. The former England captain Will Carling said that Genge and the rest of the group were being “sensitive”, that supporters were entitled to ask questions about the team’s game plan, that the group was “way off” its potential.
Which is fair enough, but I don’t believe that Genge is being sensitive. To use a South African phrase, I believe they are just gatvol with the narrative. No wonder English rugby so often exists under a siege mentality.
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I used a South Africanism deliberately because I think there are lessons to be gleaned from the Springboks’ attitude when it comes to striking a balance between winning and entertaining. When coach Rassie Erasmus encouraged his players to “keep the main thing the main thing”, he was talking about focusing on winning rather than the social responsibilities the South Africans carry. But he could equally have been talking about wowing audiences with dashing tries and off-loads. Winning is the only currency Erasmus deals in. And on that front he is wealthier than any other international coach in history.
Remember when South Africa won a snooze-fest against Wales in the 2019 World Cup semi-final, a game that had as much flavour as unbuttered toast? There have been dull games of rugby throughout the sport’s long history but few could have been worse than this. Does any of that matter? No, of course not. Not to South African supporters who will simply shrug their shoulders and rightly point to the final score.
England, and more specifically those who support the team, could take a leaf out of South Africa’s book. They’ve beaten France and they’ve beaten Scotland. That really is all that counts. The fact that they’re “winning ugly”, as Carling called it, shouldn’t draw the ire of fans but should in fact prompt the opposite reaction.
Imagine how good they could be? With a sparkling backline now marshalled by Finn Smith, and with Marcus Smith given free rein, and with Ollie Lawrence replicating his club form in white, and with a back row of Ben Earl, Tom Curry and whichever gifted athlete they decide to field alongside them, this England team could start cutting others to shreds.
But doing backflips and cartwheels is a lot easier on solid ground. And that solid ground is laid with a series of victories, no matter how brutalist or fortunate they may be. England have finished third, fourth, third and fifth in the last four Six Nations. At the very least they’ll come second this year and could, with a little help from elsewhere, win it. Their underfunded and often criticised domestic league contributed half of last year’s semi-finalists in the Champions Cup. Northampton Saints topped their group this season in Europe’s premier club competition. By all accounts things are looking good, if only the fans could see it.
No wonder Genge is fed up with the discourse.
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Turlough will evacuate his bowels sleeping in his mum’s bed, again.
England will not win the 6 Nations.
Borthwicke will be fired by 2027.
Genge is right that we’ve played half decent in the recent past and lost, and have played dreadfully, at least against Scotland, yet managed to escape with a win, but these aren’t the only outcomes available are they? I mean imagine how novel it would be were we to play well and Win?!
What grates about Genge’s interview is that he seems to want us to view the performance against scotland as a hard nosed, old style English performance, where we’ve ground them into submission, that we nullified their strengths with a superb rugby masterplan. But the reality was that we were lucky, the result, in the end, was out of our hands. I think its ok to demand more on that basis isn’t it?
Most England fans believe, not that this group of players are world beaters, but that they are much, much better than they’ve shown so far. I think we’re just frustrated that the mediocrity of the RFU leadership and the coaches they’ve appointed is preventing us from being better than we are.
Hard disagree. Scraping past Scotland at home with a try that should have been disallowed and Russell missing every kick is not a benchmark for success. Neither is beating France when they drop the ball over the line 4 times. England are doing ok thanks to their decent forward pack with some excellent players. The backs are non-existent in attack, the defence out wide is terrible, the gameplan is so utterly rigid and predictable. It's not an issue of not being entertained or having a problem with winning ugly, England should be better with the players and resources they have available. They are badly coached and have been extremely fortunate to win both games and had they lost them everyone would have been in agreement that Borthwick needs to go. No other side in the world is trying to play this turgid 9 man rugby, there is no precedent for it and it isn't working. They are massively unconvincing and the fact that it's awful to watch is the icing on the cake.
Agree that England are badly coached and that success is coming in spite of Borthwick’s team rather than because of them.
However I think the “if their opponents had scored more points then England would have lost” retrospective is pointless at best and silly at worst.
If you acknowledge that England's three big wins of the past two years (Ireland, France, Scotland) were close games they were lucky to win then you have to also acknowledge that their big losses against NZ (x3), Australia, and France in the same period were close games they were unlucky to lose.
That hypothetical train runs both ways. But for the bounce of a ball or the miss of a kick or the judgement of a scrum England could have beaten Ireland, France, and New Zealand back to back to back in 2024. In that alternate universe no doubt Borthwick is being heralded as the second coming of Christ.
All that said England are fairly onerous to watch at the moment and Richard Wigglesworth should feel tremendously guilty every month when his attack coach salary comes in.