Perhaps if his former boss Steve Borthwick had had a chat with current Springbok assistant coach Felix Jones he may have kept his wits about him and not made a record number of changes for Saturday’s fourth round Guinness Six Nations fixture against Italy in Rome.
The normally level headed and even conservative Borthwick veered dramatically from his usual script this week when he reacted to the defeat against Ireland in London 11 days ago by making wholesale changes to his team. He has changed his entire backline, with just Tommy Freeman retaining his place among the backs, but in a different position - he moves from wing to outside centre.
Borthwick’s radical reaction to the two successive defeats to Scotland and Ireland has been interpreted as him getting tough on players who have underperformed and making sure that the message he put out immediately after the Irish defeat is writ large to his players - “I will not tolerate a drop in our standards”.
Jones, part of the Springbok World Cup winning management in France in 2023, spent the first post RWC year with England as their defence coach, so he knows Borthwick well and knows the English system well.
So he was a good person to ask during the Bok media day at SARU House on Monday what he thought of the latest developments at his former team. The answer he gave could be simplified down to “There’s no need to throw the baby out with the bath water”.
EXPECTS ELLIS PARK GAME TO BE ‘TASTY’
Of course, he may have just been trying to be polite. No-one wants to provide extra motivation to the team that the Boks will be facing in their first ever Nations Cup game at Ellis Park at the beginning of July. But the 38-year-old Irishman nonetheless expects the battle between the two teams in Johannesburg to be “tasty” despite the two back to back England defeats.
“England’s trajectory over the last two seasons has only been going in one direction and it hasn’t surprised me,” said Jones.
“Obviously they had a blip in these last two games but you have to put that in perspective. They were up against an extremely determined Irish team at Twickenham. Anyone who was hearing the noises coming out of Ireland, hearing the questions that were being asked, would have known that Ireland were playing with their backs to the wall.
“They had massive desperation to deliver the performance they knew, and we all know, they are capable of. As for the Scotland game, the Calcutta Cup is always one of the most hotly contested fixtures, not just in the Six Nations. Certainly they’ve been right up there when it comes to games I have been involved in or been aware of in the past couple of years.
“If you look at their trajectory, before these two defeats against very determined opponents who were desperate to make a point, England had won 12 in a row. I don’t think them losing two games against really determined opponents necessarily changes the upward trajectory they were on. I think they will keep their upward trajectory. Our game against them will be tasty.”
RECORD 12 CHANGES FOR ROME
Jones was talking before it was learned that Borthwick was going to make such radical shifts to his team, with a record 12 changes made to his starting team (no England coach has ever made that many changes from one fixture to another in the Six Nations). There is some concern among England leading pundits, because the different pairings in the backline haven’t played together before and mostly come from different clubs.
But what was becoming obvious was that the excitement about George Ford as a flyhalf had been premature, with the clinical efficiency of his kicking game being outweighed by his limitations as an attacking player.
It always seemed odd that Borthwick had two flyhalves who were part of the British and Irish Lions squad that won in Australia last year in Fin Smith and Marcus Smith, and yet went for a player who wasn’t recognised as good enough by Lions coach Andy Farrell, who just happened to be the man who plotted England’s demise in their most recent game in his daytime job role as Ireland’s coach.
So it shouldn’t surprise that Borthwick has eventually seen the light and gone for Fin Smith, who was good for England in last year’s Six Nations, but the extent to which the rest of the team has been changed is surprising and does open the possibility of them being vulnerable to an Italy team that beat Scotland at home in the first game and then pushed Ireland away.
FRANCE WILLING TO EVOLVE AND HAVE TWEAKED THEIR GAME
It is France though, who the Boks only play in the away portion of the Nations Cup in November, that have been making the most waves in the Six Nations, and while he didn’t say it in as many words, they are clearly the nation that Jones sees as the biggest challengers to the Boks’ global supremacy.
“They have definitely tweaked their game plan and it is paying off for them,” said Jones.
“You have to give Fabien (Galthie) and his coaches credit too for the way they have been willing to try things and also for the gains they have made to their depth. I think it is the last two times that they’ve gone to New Zealand that they went with what I wouldn’t quite call a B team, because they were competitive in their matches, but let’s say that at the time we saw it as an alternative team.
“They are now leading the Six Nations with a lot of those guys (who went to New Zealand) in their team. They are building impressive depth, with a lot of those guys now leading the big metrics. The French coaches have shown a willingness to evolve, and of course they also still have incredibly competent world class players like Antoine Dupont and Emile Ntamack.
“They’ve been innovative. It was said that they might struggle because they had five back rows and not really (specialist) locks in some of their teams, but their selection has worked to their benefit. They have changed their outlook on selection and they have made it work.”
France will be heading to Edinburgh this weekend to play Scotland in their fourth round fixture and victory there will leave them playing for the Grand Slam when they host England in Paris the following week. At the start of the competition that was the game that England’s Borthwick had hoped would be the stage for his team’s own quest for a Grand Slam but it hasn’t quite worked out that way.
Weekend Guinness Six Nations fixtures
Ireland v Wales (Dublin, Friday 10:10pm)
Scotland v France (Edinburgh, Saturday 4:10pm)
Italy v England (Rome, Saturday 6:40pm)