England are widely held to have a conundrum with the centres Henry Slade and Ollie Lawrence, and it is a chicken-and-egg question: change the game plan or change the players?
There is a scheme England are contemplating for Northampton Saints wing Tommy Freeman to do more in the centres but no-one is sure when.
Meanwhile, the former Red Rose star Toby Flood has added to the chorus of disapproval for England’s style under head coach Steve Borthwick.
While Flood praises Slade and Lawrence for doing what they are told for the sake of the team, he tells The i Paper: “These two centres, pre-tournament, were probably looking to be involved in the Lions tour, but I think they’ve done nothing – and that’s not against them; that’s not them having made errors or that’s not them having not tried to put their hand up. They have just not had the opportunity to do so. I can imagine their level of frustration is really high.”
England have two Six Nations games left, against Italy and Wales, in the next fortnight to capitalise on the wins over France and Scotland and maybe win the title.
The one-point narrow squeak against the Scots last weekend was the 13th match in a row for the Slade-Lawrence centre pairing, since February 2024.
Flood, who retired in 2021, won 60 caps for England, mostly at fly-half although he was the No 12 in the 2011 World Cup quarter-final loss to France, outside Jonny Wilkinson.
“It is right to highlight the centres, and I think if I’m Ollie Lawrence and I’m as big and strong as he is, and can do as much damage as he can do, I’d be very frustrated with the amount of times I’ve touched the ball in the previous three games,” Flood says.
“These two men, Henry and Ollie, are probably the two individuals who are getting the least out of the way Steve Borthwick is set up to play.
“England aren’t playing much rugby, and that was always going to be the case. Steve’s mantra from playing and coaching at Saracens 2008 to 2015, when they were pretty successful, was they just bullied you and battered you, and swarmed you defensively, and they may have scored two or three tries on your errors.
“To make it clear; I’ve got a lot of respect for the players because they are doing exactly what the coach wants. They’re buying into it, which is impressive. I can actually relate to it because, forgive the phrase, we had a mantra at Leicester under Richard Cockerill of ‘nobody likes us but who f***ing cares?’
“But if you watched Fin Smith at fly-half in the last attack when Scotland got pushed back, the majority of his passes would have been to a forward, not a back. The centres have probably touched the ball from his hands once or twice, hardly at all. I read the stats and I see Fin Smith making more tackles than he did passes, and that in itself is an insight into why they’re not getting the best out of everybody, including the centres.”
England’s two 2003 World Cup-winning centres have weighed in, with Will Greenwood telling The Telegraph the Slade-Lawrence combo “lacks pace” and “Scotland exposed them numerous times, with Tommy Freeman forced to bite in – which he should not have done.”
Mike Tindall highlighted to the same newspaper how Scotland gave their No 13 Huw Jones a run straight off a five-man line-out: “That is where England do not create those opportunities for people to have a go.”
Flood reckons if England aren’t forced to chase, they won’t chase – if they are within four to six points, they will stick to the kick-chase. This helps explain their amazing run of close-run results, winning or losing.
He believes Borthwick needs to change for the team’s good, and the future of the coach. The tight approach was acceptable for another of Flood’s former teams, Newcastle Falcons, in a relegation fight, or England with “the stimulus of a World Cup game, knowing it might get you into a semi-final or a final”, but “very different to a Six Nations game, or having to do it for 25 games in a row, whatever Steve’s been involved in. It’s not necessarily manageable forever when you start losing again and people start questioning the set-up and the desire from Steve.”
Borthwick has been arguing for some time that attack is the last thing to come right, and there have been positive signs throughout this season.
Flood says: “It takes a coach willing to allow mistakes, because mistakes are fundamentally what happens most with attack. Maybe there is scope on the summer tour for him to go and explore with attack they can take into the autumn – although the problem is the key decision makers and key components to your attacking system could be away with the Lions in Australia.”
Apart from a change in game plan, are there other players could England use? They could pick a big No 12 to run with power and help the No.10 with the slow ball. Someone similar to Sione Tuipulotu, Damian de Allende and Bundee Aki – and England have tried it in the past with rugby league converts Sam Burgess, Ben Te’o and Barrie-Jon Mather.
But Lawrence’s club do not see him that way, and there aren’t many others around.
Indeed, it is worth examining Bath (who happen to have a top fly-half in Finn Russell) as they have Lawrence plus the two centres who played for England A in a win over Ireland A last week: the 6ft 3ins Will Butt (No 12) and the more mobile Max Ojomoh (No 13).
Bath regard Ojomoh as a ball player, and Lawrence and Butt as power runners. When Butt and Lawrence played together this season, it worked because they had Tom de Glanville at full-back as an auxiliary ball-player.
A crash-ball centre is less widely seen these days, although it is a weapon if you have someone like South Africa’s Andre Esterhuizen, who has the size for contact and also the skill to offload as a surprise. When Harlequins had Esterhuizen, they liked to use a dummy maul to pull forwards in, get the scrum-half Danny Care to drive hard at the line, then pop it to Esterhuizen who by then had a clear one-on-one.
Giving Lawrence one-on-ones would surely be what he would enjoy. In the narrow defeat by New Zealand in November, England scored one breakaway try by the now injured Immanuel Feyi-Waboso, and Lawrence made just two carries, while posting 27 tackles.
Manu Tuilagi and Joe Marchant have moved to France, although Marchant may return soon and help solve the problem. Northampton’s Fraser Dingwall is a 14st 7lbs playmaking No 12, or Fin Smith could conceivably switch to that position. The hard-running Oscar Beard of Harlequins has regularly been in England training squads.
Maybe the most buzz has been around Freeman, who has been playing for Northampton and England on the wing this season – but last season he started 10 times for Saints as a No 13, and Borthwick does see that as a possibility for the national team. Greenwood wrote that Freeman could replicate the switch made by New Zealand’s Rieko Ioane.
Freeman has finished two of the current Six Nations matches in the centres, partly due to England’s 6-2 split of replacements, and England’s assistant coach Kevin Sinfield said on Thursday: “He gets some time there [in training]. I think it is important to keep trying to develop Tommy as a centre.”
Northampton’s director of rugby Phil Dowson told The i Paper this week: “Wing is primarily where we see him [Freeman]. But on any given weekend, depending on injuries, depending on opposition, depending on all sorts of different factors, we would be more than comfortable to switch him.”
The fact is Borthwick cannot order club coaches on the positions of players.
“We have discussions around that, and Steve’s been very good with that communication channel,” Dowson said.
“It’s just a case of the balance of power is that in our best seven [backs], Tommy is on the wing at this point in time.
“Tommy always excites me, whatever role he’s in. He can carry, he’s a big man, he’s fast, he can pass the ball. He’s got nice skills, he’s got a soft touch, decent offload. He can zip a pass.
“And you saw [against Scotland], it was on advantage or there had been a knock-on, he’s got the ability to just dink the ball in behind, or kick long. So he’s a triple threat in that sense. But we’ve got great centres at the club, he hasn’t trained there enough for us recently in order to drop him straight in.”
Lawrence swapped jerseys with Slade during England’s autumn series, so Lawrence now has the No 13 he normally wears for Bath, and which Slade has so often been seen in for Exeter. Is the problem here that England are picking two No 13s in the same team?
The way Borthwick and assistants Richard Wigglesworth and Joe El-Abd attempt to make it work is, broadly speaking, Slade to defend at 13 and attack at 12 –although Lawrence’s footwork means he can be a first-phase threat – he scored a nice try in France last year off a slow line-out maul, taking a flat pass from Alex Mitchell with the fly-half George Ford as a decoy.
This illustrates how and maybe why England should change in their remaining Six Nations matches. They could use more multi-phase play, otherwise how can Lawrence carry the ball? Unless he receives the ball in the first phase, he is unlikely to get it. To do this, the team and the coaches need to be excited by the thought of those opportunities.
Another way of getting Lawrence involved would be to use him centrally on kick returns. England had some joy with those in the recent loss to Ireland. There was a cool line break by Lawrence last week; just a shame he butchered the scoring pass when he re-entered the move.
There also has to be room for decision-making, and reading the opposition defence. Butt for England A last week was positioned to hit the ball up but he saw the Irish defence backing off so he played it out to back-rowers Alfie Barbeary, Tom Pearson and Greg Fisilau. The snazzier distribution came from Ojomoh.
Flood summarises it with a favourite anecdote: “It depends on what you have in your repertoire. I always joked that I looked like the best decision-maker on the planet, because I’d have Manu Tuilagi short, his brother Alesana out the back who was twice the size, and Vereniki Goneva in the middle – and any one of them could go through a hole.”
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