Stuart Lancaster wants England to make a major statement on Saturday and, selection-wise, he is leading by example. If the switching of Manu Tuilagi to the right wing and the prospect of Courtney Lawes, Billy Vunipola and Dylan Hartley cracking their knuckles on the bench does not concentrate All Black minds nothing will. New Zealand can expect several kitchen sinks to be thrown at them in Dunedin.
It is not just the presence of Tuilagi in the No14 jersey which carries a message of intent. Not since the opening game of this year’s Six Nations, when he named two centres and two wings with nine caps between them, has Lancaster’s choice stirred more anticipation. In many respects his 23-man squad for the second Test is the most significant he has announced since he took the job full time in 2012.
The calculated redeployment of Tuilagi to the wing after 23 Tests in the centre is barely the half of it. The decision to keep faith with Geoff Parling, Ben Morgan and Rob Webber down the spine of the pack is highly symbolic, showing recent excellence will be rewarded whatever Lawes, Vunipola and Hartley have previously achieved. Lancaster has also had to get tough elsewhere and gone are Kyle Eastmond, James Haskell and Jonny May, all of whom did some good things in the first Test. Competition for places has not been as intense for over a decade.
It explains why the head coach has rarely sounded more upbeat about one of his selections, even though his side are 1-0 down in the series. He is already looking ahead to next year’s World Cup and recognising the impossibility of keeping the same team for every game. He wants hungry players capable of playing in more than one position if necessary and that objective is increasingly taking shape, particularly behind the scrum now Luther Burrell and Billy Twelvetrees have been reunited in midfield.
Playing Tuilagi on the wing has been an idea knocking around in the management’s minds since last year but circumstances, not least injuries and the Lions tour which ruled him out of nine of England’s 10 Tests before this trip, meant the experiment kept having to be delayed.
Having seen him play there at age-group level and for the Saxons in 2011, Lancaster is confident the time is now right.
Some will scratch their heads and struggle to understand why England’s most destructive back-line runner is being banished to the wide outside. The answer is simple: Lancaster wants centres with outstanding distribution skills and argues Tuilagi could be even more lethal as an attacking menace off set plays. If there is a possibility of the big man being bombarded with high balls and twisted into knots defensively, bring it on. The positives – the raw power, the physicality, the improved midfield balance – are deemed sufficiently compelling to make it a risk worth taking.
As Lancaster put it: “I guess what we’ve now got is some real quality in the centres who can get the ball to him. We’ve got that balance in our back-line we’ve always looked for, which is pace, power, ball-carrying and footballing ability. Luther Burrell can do things and distribute in ways Manu couldn’t.”
The biggest imponderable, with Chris Ashton also preferred to May on the bench after seven months in Test exile, is precisely how the 23-year-old Tuilagi will respond. “We had a long chat with him about it,” Lancaster said. “He just wanted to be clear in his own mind about the positional stuff. But once he saw, and everybody saw, the potency of our strike players, he was happy to do what’s best for the team.”
What about jumping for high balls, not exactly a strength? “If he doesn’t quite get up in the air and someone catches it, he’ll tackle them. Quite hard.”
Preferring Parling to Lawes is also a calculated judgment call, based on the excellent lineout job the former did during the 20-15 defeat at Eden Park. Having Lawes on the bench also supplies the second-half oomph which England lacked in recent tight contests . “There’s no doubt about it … with the quality of players we have this time we have an ability to make a stronger impact than in the first Test,” Lancaster said.
With so much else to digest, tThe elevation to the bench of the uncapped Newcastle prop Kieran Brookes passed virtually unnoticed, the 125kg former Ireland under-19 representative taking over from Henry Thomas who has sustained a bang to the neck. With Tom Wood, Danny Care and Owen Farrell all back in the starting XV, however, we are getting closer to Lancaster’s dream match-day squad for the World Cup. Whatever the outcome in a chilly Dunedin, the All Blacks can expect a brutal examination.
England (v New Zealand, Saturday): Brown (Harlequins); Tuilagi (Leicester), Burrell (Northampton), Twelvetrees (Gloucester), Yarde (Harlequins); Farrell (Saracens), Care (Harlequins); Marler (Harlequins), Webber (Bath), Wilson (Bath), Launchbury (London Wasps), Parling (Leicester), Wood (Northampton), Robshaw (Harlequins, capt), Morgan (Gloucester).
Replacements: Hartley (Northampton), Mullan (London Wasps), Brookes (Newcastle), Lawes (Northampton), B Vunipola (Saracens), B Youngs (Leicester), Burns (Gloucester), Ashton (Saracens).
