Coach Steve Borthwick isn’t afraid to experiment. As a prime example, he’s taken to using a strapping, 107kg loose forward, Ben Earl, as a midfielder in the second half of tests.
Having said that, the All Blacks will need to be ready to counter what has always been an old-school strength of English teams, rolling mauls and one-off running. If the English revert to type, any lapses in defensive concentration are much more likely to be damaging than they were last weekend against Scotland.
It was how England scored their last victory over New Zealand, beating a very good All Blacks side 19-7 in the 2019 World Cup semifinal in Yokohama. Sir Steve Hansen’s melancholy but accurate summation of the game was: “England win the ball, give it to a big bloke and run hard. Win that collision. It’s rugby in a simplistic form, but it’s beautiful.”
The current New Zealand side have big blokes too. The key will be that all of them are on guard for every minute of the game.
The huge tweak, which will not be lost on the capacity crowd at Twickenham, is that a New Zealand victory will basically guarantee a Grand Slam tour. Beat England and only Wales, now a sad shadow of the side they once were, stand in the way of a four-test clean sweep.
A great stage
Hopefully, Sunday’s match will be one for the ages. If so, it will be played on the stage it deserves. With all due respect to the other great rugby stadiums of Europe, Twickenham has always felt special.
Give a lot of credit for that to English rugby fans, who manage somehow to be passionate about their team while never feeling threatening. For more than 30 years, I’ve travelled back from the ground to London’s Waterloo Station in carriages packed with English fans who have just seen their team lose. Never once have I seen a hint of animosity towards All Blacks supporters.
In passing, it’s worth mentioning, given that Eden Park detractors seem to imply that every major rugby stadium overseas is located downtown, that Twickenham, like Murrayfield in Edinburgh and Lansdowne Rd in Dublin, is a train or tram ride from the city centre. In Paris, it’s a 20-minute or longer Metro journey to Stade de France. The only major rugby ground in Europe in the middle of town is in Wales, at a ground I’ll always think of as Cardiff Arms Park.
Changes in attitude
Professionalism has changed a lot of attitudes in rugby and one, you suspect, is the almost universal distaste for English rugby in other countries. The great Australian player George Gregan, who had played against England in the last days of the amateur era, was asked before the 2011 World Cup who he thought would win. Gregan said: “I don’t care, as long as it’s not England.”
It is a fact that rugby in England began as, and for more than a century continued to be, a sport dominated in boardrooms and on the field by the rich upper class, at all levels. How rich? As a wide-eyed Kiwi youngster, I once lived in Sevenoaks in Kent, working for the local paper and playing for the rugby club. One freezing mid-winter’s night after training, I asked the team captain, Peter Hunt, who drove a gold-coloured Bentley, what he did for a living. “I run a yacht charter business,” he replied. “Gee,” I cloddishly replied, “there wouldn’t be much demand for that at the moment, would there?”
In the tone a kind teacher would use for the slowest kid in class, he said: “It’s in the Bahamas.”
The posh image at the highest level was cemented the first time England hosted a World Cup in 1991. Their captain Will Carling, an Army officer, presented almost as a caricature Sloane Ranger, all languid vowels and Rolex watch. You could picture him strolling straight from the officers’ mess to the footy field.
It’s difficult to imagine a former Community College student like prop Joe Marler, not long retired after 95 tests, settling in with the Eton old boys in England teams in the amateur days. Now that rugby can provide a good livelihood for working-class heroes like Marler, the English game feels easier for Aussies and Kiwis to identify with.
Phil Gifford is a Contributing Sports Writer for NZME. He is one of the most-respected voices in New Zealand sports journalism.
