Eddie Jones should be bold and give England's young talents their chance
The autumn internationals are the ideal opportunity to experiment - plus, why Exeter should drop all Native American imagery
BRIAN MOORE DailyTelegraph
18 October 2021 • 8:04am
Brian Moore
Eddie Jones should be bold and give England's young talents their chance
Last weekend’s games were the final chance for players to make their case to be included in Eddie Jones’ England squad for the forthcoming autumn internationals. There are rumours that England will seek to play with more freedom and if this is so, Jones should err on the side of youth in his selection.
I rarely say this, but with this series of games the results are of secondary importance. Genuine England supporters will accept experimentation. Jones needs to know, and fans want to know, what England’s nascent talent can do.
We need to see whether England have the depth of talent that, say, France has at half back. Can Marcus Smith and Joe Simmonds, combine with Harry Randall and Raphael Quirke? The Ben Youngs, George Ford, and Owen Farrell options have been so fully evaluated they have become sclerotic. Without fresh impetus Jones has nowhere to go with this pivotal team unit. What will he gain by refusing to try new options?
Some pundits have advocated ignoring Manu Tuilagi’s return to fitness, but you cannot ignore what a fit Tuilagi brings to England. Farrell or Henry Slade would balance Tuilagi and give England secondary playmakers and kickers. Tuilagi also gives any new fly half a fall-back option as a powerful ball carrier. This is particularly important when England are forced to play with static ball and need to get over the gain line.
England’s back three should be an area of strength, given their depth of talent. Unfortunately, in the past 18 months we simply have not seen enough in terms of counterattacking from kicked ball or from England’s own possession.
Adam Radwan, Freddie Stewart, or Max Malins are surely worth a run in one of the starting XVs, particularly as they can be teamed with Anthony Watson and Jonny May. Mind you, of equal, or greater, importance is that whichever players are picked, they are encouraged to be positive. They must look to attack with ball in hand when there is opportunity, rather than getting embroiled in interminable kick tennis duels against opponents, like South Africa, who are much better at playing that game.
However strong the clamour for experimentation one fundamental always applies. England will do nothing if they are beaten up front and therefore calls for change in the forwards have to be tempered with realism.
Jones picked a number of young and uncapped props and hookers in his recent 45-man training squad and whilst you could play one or two of them from the bench in the first game against Tonga, that is not so against Australia and South Africa. Get your set pieces wrong and the whole team is compromised.
Last week’s column considered Jones’ possibilities at number eight and the cases of Alex Dombrandt and Sam Simmonds to start ahead of Billy Vunipola. The only addition to the argument is that Jones could play both of those players by picking one of the as a blindside flanker. This would mean Jones would not have to move Maro Itoje or Courtney Lawes out of the second row, where they are most effective. This is all the more important given that Joe Launchbury’s unavailability.
The Aussie and Springbok games will be proper tests, whoever Jones picks but the results, within reason, are secondary to what he can discover if he is bold.
Finally, and this point might be overlooked by some, Jones has to meld a new and untried coaching team. He, Martin Gleenson, Anthony Seibold and Richard Cockerill have a clean slate to fashion their plans to lead England into the next world cup. They too must step up to the mark.
Why there is no case for keeping Exeter headdresses
Forget rugby, Wasps v Exeter Chiefs was a fixture that gave you the chance to get an easy full house playing bigot bingo. Whataboutry, sophistry and excuse-making met Wasps’ call to stop Native American headdresses being worn by Exeter Chief fans. The stupidest excuse being that something could not be offensive if it wasn’t meant to be.
This is not difficult. In 1999, nobody from Exeter purposely picked a culturally inappropriate and offensive stereotype for their then semi-professional club emblem. The question is, what do they do now they have one?
Nobody defending Exeter has refuted the points made in a paper by the National Congress of American Indians, which details the harm done by stereotyping and calls for an end to the use of harmful mascots.
The name Chiefs might have been used since the 1900s, but Native American imagery has no relevance to Exeter. Refusing to stop using it and continuing to condone things like the baleful and boring tomahawk chop, is ignorant, insensitive, and commercially foolish. Using Anglo-Saxon imagery, whilst retaining the word Chiefs, would be easy, and there is nothing more that can be sensibly said.
