No one, Stuart Lancaster included, is quite sure what currently constitutes England’s best XV. Even he admits selection in New Zealand has been tough, complicated at every turn by end-of-season availability, fluctuating tour form and battered bodies. The side to face the All Blacks in Saturday’s final Test contains only seven starting survivors from the one that launched England’s autumn campaign six months ago.
Injuries, as ever, have partially shaped events, with Owen Farrell and Danny Care both sidelined for the third Test in Hamilton. Others, such as Chris Ashton, have gone out of contention back home only to come boomeranging back in now. Then there is Manu Tuilagi, whose lifespan as a winger has proved shorter than the average mayfly’s. The net result is seven changes, plus one positional switch, from the lineup in Dunedin.
It is as much a team picked out of necessity as invention. Joe Launchbury has been showing signs of weariness and it makes sense to give Dylan Hartley, Courtney Lawes and Billy Vunipola at least one start on this tour. With Farrell and Care out with knee and shoulder injures respectively, Freddie Burns and Ben Youngs resume where they left off in the first Test in Auckland. It is in the midfield, though, where the hottest debate still rages and where Kyle Eastmond and Tuilagi now have a chance to book their places for the next six months and, potentially, longer.
Given the expectation which surrounded the reunited pair of Billy Twelvetrees and Luther Burrell last week, their rapid removal is clear evidence that England are still cursing the way the second Test slipped away from them. As Lancaster emphasised it could simply be that Twelvetrees was short of recent match practice and the All Blacks’ extra intensity was a temporary shock to Burrell’s system. Both have also been nursing slight ankle strains. But if Eastmond plays as well as he did at Eden Park and Tuilagi has a stormer back in his old position, how can Lancaster breezily revert to a pairing which seemed to be solving England’s perennial dilemma less than three months ago?
This, in turn, has ramifications in terms of who wears No10 next season. Burns and Danny Cipriani, deservedly named on the bench after impressing against the Crusaders on Tuesday, could easily have bombed on this tour. Instead both have responded positively to the challenge. If Eastmond runs riot courtesy of the extra half-second permitted by Burns’s instinctive distribution skills, or if Cipriani helps to conjure a famous win, where does that leave the stronger but more deliberate Farrell? Small wonder no one connected with England is viewing this weekend’s game as a dead rubber.
Lancaster, for one, sees it as an opportunity for the likes of Burns, Eastmond and Ashton to show they should be regular starters. “What we are striving for is players who can play consistently well at the highest level. I still think we are finding out which players can really deliver.” That goal has clearly been made harder by England’s incomplete hand for the first Test, a situation Lancaster is determined will not be repeated. “Further down the line hopefully we’ll not be in the same situation where I am making decisions on form and fitness with players having had staggered ends to the season. It’s very difficult.”
Even with hindsight, though, he would still have picked a slightly rusty Twelvetrees last week. “I don’t regret it because I don’t think it was the key between winning and losing. It was definitely a big step but how are you supposed to know unless you try? It’ll be rare the same centres play all seven games in a World Cup. We need to find out now.”
It is the same with the Tuilagi experiment, which may yet happen again. “He contributed well to the game and it is definitely something we will look at for the future. It is more about getting our best centre combination. This week’s team is a reflection of us feeling that the centre partnership worked better in the first Test than the second.”Above all Lancaster wants England’s key decision-makers to display smarter game management, without which any top side will struggle.
“It’s about getting players to understand that in the heat of battle, when a couple of moments have gone against you, territory and possession become more important. How you manage the game and playing in the right part of the field are critical. To use football terminology sometimes you need to put your foot on the ball.” So can England belatedly crack the All Black code? “I’ve got the same sense of anticipation for the third Test I had for the second and the first. We’ll be ready for Saturday, I’m 100% certain of that.”
England squad for the third Test
Brown (Harlequins); Ashton (Saracens), Tuilagi (Leicester), Eastmond (Bath), Yarde (Harlequins); Burns (Leicester), Youngs (Leicester); Marler (Harlequins), Hartley (Northampton), Wilson (Bath), Lawes (Northampton), Parling (Leicester), Wood (Northampton), Robshaw (Harlequins, capt), B Vunipola (Saracens). Replacements: Webber (Bath), Mullan (London Wasps), Brookes (Newcastle), Launchbury (London Wasps), Morgan (Gloucester), L Dickson (Northampton), Cipriani (Sale), Burrell (Northampton).
