Jake White: The list of issues inside Steve Borthwick's camp

OPINION: Former Springbok coach and current Bulls Director of Rugby Jake White shared his views on the state of England and the Springboks’ famous seven-one bench split tactic ahead of the crucial Test at Twickenham.

It’s a seismic weekend of Test rugby, but for obvious reasons, my laser focus will be on a small part of South-West London, and all is not well amongst the chattering classes in Twickenham’s West car park.

Why? Because I cannot believe that England can continue to make the same mistakes with the same players and expect different results. I may have pinched a bit of Albert Einstein there, but he had a point.

Funnily enough, I actually asked one of my Bulls players this week, who had played in the Premiership, ‘Why can’t they transfer how tough and attritional that league, week-in, week-out, into how they front up when they pull on the Red Rose. I don’t see the toughness – and I want to emphasise that word – and resilience and it’s a mystery why.

I know I reference my generation regularly, but you can reel those legends off without missing a beat; Vickery, Thomson, White, Johnson, Grewcock, Dallaglio, Hill, Back, Dawson, Wilkinson, Tindall, Greenwood and so on. Right now, I don’t see any England player now making that team.

They can’t blame naivety either. This is a professional team that has been together for a while. They fielded 861 caps in that 23-man squad against Australia, nearly 40 caps a man, so they can’t waive the inexperience card.

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Maro Itoje had 85 caps, Jamie George 94, and Dan Cole 116 caps – there should be no lack of leadership on the park.

I’m not saying England don’t have the players within their system, they do but maybe they need to look further afield. I don’t want to call out individual players, but I’m not seeing them paying back the loyalty invested in them.

I’d have watched the closing quarter with my hands over my eyes if I was an England fan.

As their coach, I’d have been livid if I had been watching that. I’d be thinking. Is it me? Is it the players? Is it the atmosphere at Twickenham? Is it the pressure? Something is missing. I’m also flummoxed by the Felix Jones situation. I understand he’s still being paid by the RFU and yet they’re not tapping into his IP on the Boks. It’s crazy.

I’m also worried about their scrum.

It’s funny, in the Southern Hemisphere, when players are left to play for a French or Premiership club, the one thing you were guaranteed they’d improve overseas is their scrummaging and mauling, you know fundamentals of the set-piece. That’s why players go there.

When I look at this England team, the one thing they can’t do is scrummage.

They are going to get demolished on Saturday by the Bok scrum they can’t stop and they could have 10 training sessions this week, swot up on video analysis and talk about it until the cows come home but I don’t think it will make a difference.

It’s hard to make excuses for them. The RFU are the richest union in the world. They have a powerful Premiership, and they produce the most players. Where are the players coming through in the wind, cold and rain of a Northern Hemisphere winter.

Does English rugby have a soft underbelly? You tell me, but if I was doing an audit on my investment, the RFU are definitely not getting the maximum return on their expenditure.

I know Wales are getting a lot of flak right now, but they are still green, and England have the experience and resources, so in a way their failure is more damning.

From a wider lens, the Southern Hemisphere look like they’re dominating. I remember taking the Springboks to the Northern Hemisphere at this time of the year and usually the narrative was we were, ‘lambs to the slaughter’ because England and France were battle-hardened and we were out of shape and out of sync having not played much rugby.

If you look now, Fiji beat Wales, Australia beat England, New Zealand beat Ireland, Argentina beat Italy and South Africa beat Scotland. The only win for the North was through France, who were expected to beat Japan. It’s not a full picture, but let’s see how the landscape looks after that final Ireland v Australia game.

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All week I’ve been asked about the use of Rassie’s bench.

Well, I played golf this week with an old friend. He said, ‘Jake, never underestimate the role of a coach is to win. Winning brings crowds to the stadium and gets supporters to follow the team.’ I agree, but rugby is far more nuanced and the debate around the game is also key. Right now, there’s this six-two, seven-one bench split debate going on.

Isn’t it amazing? A six-two bench comes back to bite Gatland and yet Rassie does a seven-one bench and gets Pieter-Steph to run on the wing for a period while Mapimpi is off the field and survives?

I’m not going to say luck, but favour has shone down on Rassie there, but I see he’s not rolled the dice for England and gone with a five-three split this weekend.

What do I think about the seven-one split?

Well, I read the journalist Stephen Jones’ comments about the Bomb Squad. What I’d say is that rugby is about confrontation. Modern-day gladiators who challenge each other. As the coliseum builds to a crescendo, the biggest, strongest, fittest and most ruthless gladiator is usually awarded the spoils. Well, switch Rome for a modern-day amphitheatre. If the Springboks are finding holes, through soft shoulders and tired legs in the opposition, I really don’t see the issue.

Right now the Springboks have some great forwards and a strong scrum but you shouldn’t penalise them for that resource.

Honestly, I don’t think the game was ever devised for an eight-man bench comprised of seven forwards but coaches will always push the boundaries.

People have forgotten that in the old days, there were no substitutes. If you had an injury, you had to play with 13 or 14 players. Some guys had to stay on the field when they were struggling. A hooker and a scrumhalf were introduced because they were specialised positions and now it’s gone full circle, you have outside halves and loose forwards running on the wing. You couldn’t make it up.

Finally, I want to touch on the new laws and particularly the escort law. Now the avenue to the catcher has to be open by the defending team but it’s free for the attackers to run onto the player.

I think the people who put that law did so in the hope there would be less kicking. They were hoping that the guy who catches the ball would almost give a guaranteed turnover. Perhaps they were hoping teams would kick it longer and it wouldn’t be contestable, yet from early evidence, what will happen is that there will be more kicking because every player who has blocked runners was penalised, which means if you send four players onto that receiver and any of the opposition players are in the way, it’s a penalty. The team kicking has the advantage now. Was that the intention?

And what about the shot clock? It has been brought in to speed the game up but now every kicker of a team that is leading on the scoreboard is taking the full 60 seconds, even if he’s scored under the poles. In the old days, he’d kick it over after 15 or 20 seconds. By enforcing a shot clock, they may have made the game slower again. I don’t blame administrators for trying to improve the game, but there’s never any guarantees in this most complex of sports.

This is what rugby history has always taught us, you make one law tweak to improve the game and you open up an unintended consequence, which can often be a bigger problem. From my standpoint, player welfare has been compromised, which can’t have been the objective. My understanding is that these new rulings will be brought into the URC as of the next round when the Test window ends, so let’s see how that goes.

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