Ford not suffering more turnovers
England assistant coach Mike Ford believes turnovers have become a scourge of modern-day Test rugby, saying that much of England’s collapse in Bloemfontein against South Africa was down to problems in the contact area.
South Africa scored seven tries and dominated possession for long periods, while England rarel;y broke the gain-line.
Any repeat performance will inevitably result in them being blitzed again when the countries clash at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday – and there will be some heavy-duty labour on that area of the game this week for the English.
“The damage was done in turnover situations,” Ford said of the 58-10 defeat.
“If you analyse the tries scored during the Six Nations Championship this season and the autumn internationals, I think 60 or 70 per cent of them were scored from turnovers. They are really hurting teams at the moment.
“We have got to have a mindset of when the ball is turned over, there are no excuses and we have to defend just as well as we would from a set piece.
“The first five tries South Africa scored all came from when we had the ball first. The glaring mistakes we made gifted them opportunities.”
England have arrived at their secluded training base in Centurion just outside Pretoria, still dusting themselves down from the physical confrontation they encountered in Bloemfontein.
Gloucester pair Iain Balshaw and Nick Wood have already flown home due to injuries, while the tourists still cannot report a clean bill of health from the stomach virus that swept through the squad last week.
Head coach Brian Ashton will not announce his starting line-up until Wednesday at the earliest, with fly-half Jonny Wilkinson (facial laceration and bruised back), flanker Andy Hazell (knee) and stomach virus victims Andy Farrell and Peter Richards among those being closely monitored.
“We know what we have got available to us, and we will want to see what we can take into the Test match,” said forwards coach John Wells.
“We are pretty comfortable with what forwards are fit, but two guys have said they are not feeling well on Monday. Let’s just see what happens over the next 24 hours.
“What was thrown at us last Saturday was what we expected, and it was how well we could deal with it.
“Some things we dealt with okay, and there were some things we weren’t capable of dealing with particularly well.
“We talked as a group about delivering good ball from set piece. There were a couple of line-outs where the ball was tapped down and, while we might have won the ball, it didn’t give us good possession to actually launch anything from.
“But by and large, everyone stuck in there, took the bumps, bruises, knocks and collisions and had a go. They did the best they could – there were a lot of bashed-up bodies.
“The nature of this group is they are under no illusions about how tough a challenge this was going to be.
“There was a sense after the game on Saturday that the world had caved in – they knew what was at stake – but they have taken it on the chin.
“Fair dos to the lads, they are dragging themselves up from what was a very low position after the game on Saturday and they are gagging for another game this weekend.”
