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England have vowed to double down on their kick-heavy gameplan against France on Saturday despite their drastic decline in recent weeks. It is a move that risks further provoking the anger of their supporters.
Steve Borthwick and his side have come under intense scrutiny after last week’s first defeat by Italy and the manner in which they stuck rigidly to their kicking strategy left fans irate. England have kicked the most times and for the most metres of all the Six Nations teams and while it was a tactic that paid dividends last autumn when they were on a 12-match winning run, it is no longer having the desired effect.
The 2003 World Cup winner Matt Dawson has warned that relying too heavily on their kicking game in Paris would be a “red flag against England’s coaching ticket”. The Rugby Football Union was compelled to give Borthwick a qualified vote of confidence on Sunday.
In his BBC Sport column, Dawson said: “England are never in a million years going to Paris and beating France by deploying the same kick-heavy strategy. If they do, that is a red flag against England’s coaching ticket. It may have worked during the 12-game winning run, but Scotland showed you need more than 40 points to beat France – and that was in Edinburgh.”
But the scrum-half Ben Spencer, who was brought into the side against Italy for his box-kicking prowess, has revealed the gameplan is unlikely to change, suggesting England did not kick as much as they should have in the losses to Scotland and Ireland. “Our plan has stayed the same or we haven’t changed our plan too much game to game. We’ve seen results from it so I don’t think we need to change too much,” he said. “We all believe in the plan. We haven’t gone too far away from what we did when we had 12 wins on the spin.
“There are loads of ways you can go about it, but if you look at the two defeats we had previous to Italy, both Ireland and Scotland kicked more than us. It is just how you go about it, how you implement it, it is your accuracy. There are loads of things that can influence that.
“Whether it’s kick to compete, kick to score, kick to turn teams, I think we got a lot back in the air at the weekend. Our wingers were brilliant at that and that got us an in for the game and for 60-65 minutes the game was there to be won. A couple of things in the last 20 minutes let us down, but it wasn’t our kicking game that [cost us].
“As players, we’re fully aligned with the coaches in terms of the way we want to move forward and where we want to go with the gameplan. And then on Saturday night, it’s up to us to implement that gameplan and execute it as best as we can.”
Borthwick is expected to make minimal changes to the side, but Tom Curry has been ruled out with the calf injury he sustained in the warm-up on Saturday. Tommy Freeman is likely to remain at centre with neither Ollie Lawrence and Henry Slade travelling to England’s training camp in Verona with Tom Roebuck sticking on the wing.
Roebuck said: [The kicking contest] can be seen as quite random, but there is a skill to it still. We speak about being able to win the middle and the air, getting your body in the contest, not going in half hearted. Yes, it is random, but if we can put a skill to it and make sure we’re better than other teams it can go our way.
“When we’re on our best we can go and beat teams. We just want to make sure we stick to it, bring the best version to it, rather than, like we haven’t been recently, bringing a bit less of it.”
English (US)