ENGLAND HAVE A good coach, a young team, and a home World Cup to look forward to.
The late loss to France three weeks ago was a blow, but optimism levels are at their highest since the days of Woodward, Wilkinson and Johnson.
They haven’t won a championship under Stuart Lancaster but he’s making steady progress. He’s stoic, ethical and likeable, and has built the team in his own image. He likes to eliminate variables and play a percentages game.
He says he chooses players as much based on character as on talent — why then has this risk averse coach backed the biggest wild card in English rugby?
Lancaster has been as good as his word when it comes to team selection. Chris Robshaw is his captain, a solid dependable man who gets referees on his side. Tom Wood and Mike Brown have become regulars thanks to their consistency and mental strength, as well as their talent.
He hasn’t been afraid to jettison trouble makers either. Danny Care was dropped after being charged with drink driving. Delon Armitage hasn’t been near an English squad since he was arrested for an alleged altercation at a nightclub. Meanwhile Dylan Hartley, the least disciplined player in English rugby, seems to be the one exception to the rule.
Hartley was born in New Zealand, came to England when he was a teenager and quickly built a reputation both for his aggression and dynamism, but also for his lack of self control. Over the years he’s been banned for gouging, biting, and punching — the anger management trifecta. Last week he claimed the bad old days were behind him, but as recently as last year’s Premiership final he called referee Wayne Barnes a f****** cheat, got sent off, got kicked off the Lions tour and received another lengthy ban.
He lost his place to Tom Youngs last season mainly due to injury, but besides that he has almost always been first choice. He is a very good rugby player, but this isn’t Alex Ferguson backing Eric Cantona after the kung-fu kick. Hartley isn’t in the unreplaceable flawed genius category. At his best he’s a slight improvement on Youngs so you have to wonder about England’s risk-reward matrix.
With only a year and a half to go to the World Cup, Lancaster must now believe his number one hooker has mended his ways. Its a bit like the gangster that tries to retire from a life of crime, though. He really wants to go clean, live the quiet life, but then his old buddies try to get him involved in one more dodgy heist, one that will make him rich for life, and he can’t quite resist.
What’s for sure is Hartley is currently playing the best rugby of his career, and hasn’t put a foot wrong since the summer. The same goes for Danny Care, Lancaster’s second biggest gamble. The scrum half’s problems have mainly been off the pitch. In 2012 he was charged with drink driving, dropped from the England set up and was then banned from driving for 16 months. On a night out in Leeds he was arrested againand cautioned for being drunk and disorderly. Throw in a fine from Harlequins and that’s a bad year by any standards.
Lancaster has shown he can bend the rules a little depending on the characters involved, and when it comes to producing performances the results speak for themselves. Care and Hartley have been two of his most reliable players this season.
While Hartley is an integral part of a good English pack, Care is a match winner on his own. He’s the most gifted English scrum half since Austin Healey, and you can understand why his coaches have given him a second chance.
In his short time as head coach Lancaster has had to deal with a surprisingly large number of wayward, but so far he seems to have got it right.
In Ireland he faces the most disciplined team in the championship, and crucially, one that contains men who know how to push buttons. It won’t be an explicit part of any Irish game plan, but its not hard to imagine O’Connell or O’Mahony or Chris Henry having a quiet word together this week.
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