Whither England – November 2021

A quick look at the state of the nation i.e. where I think the England rugby team sit following the 2021 Autumn international fixtures…

Certainly Saturday’s last gasp win over the Springboks was something of a fillip for England rugby fans. The nature of the victory – winning the game late having been battered by the South African pack in the second half – showed a resilience not seen from England in a while and a huge improvement from what we saw earlier this year.

Added to the victories over Tonga and Australia, Eddie Jones can be happy with his Autumn’s work. 

The emergence of the likes of Bevan Rodd, Jamie Blamire, Raffi Quirke, Freddie Steward and, of course, Marcus Smith show that, belatedly, the team is beginning, finally, to evolve from the 2019 World Cup team and, certainly, Martin Gleeson appears to have the attacking game clicking into gear, helped enormously by having Smith calling the shots at 10.

Obviously the danger is that we read way too much into the performances and results over the last few weeks. The Six Nations, starting in February, will be a very different beast and, while England, Ireland and, particularly, France will be well fancied and deservedly so, I don’t think you can write off the Welsh or the Scots at this stage – there really isn’t very much at all between those 5 teams and surely it is also only a matter of time before Italy finally pull off a long-overdue surprise win?

Injuries permitting, the England team I’d like to see take on the Scots on 5^th February would look something like this:

15. Freddie Steward 14. Louis Lynagh 13. Henry Slade 12. Manu Tuilagi 11. Max Malins 10. Marcus Smith 9. Raffi Quirke 1. Ellis Genge 2. Luke Cowan-Dickie 3. Kyle Sinckler 4. Maro Itoje 5. Jonny Hill 6. Courtney Lawes 7. Tom Curry 8. Alex Dombrandt

16. Joe Marler 17. Joe Heyes 18. Jamie George 19. Sam Simmonds 20. Sam Underhill 21. Ben Youngs 22. George Ford 23. Joe Marchant 

Total Flanker – the older I get, the better I was