How Liverpool helped England to victory over Ireland — the secrets of Jonny May’s success

Eddie Jones has been taking inspiration from Jurgen Klopp’s title winners

(AFP via Getty Images)

England’s dominant victory over Ireland had its roots grown among the Premier League champions after Eddie Jones revealed the influence of Liverpool Football Club on Jonny May’ stunning solo try.

The Australian’s side put one foot in the Autumn Nations Cup final with a physically overpowering performance in their 18-7 win at Twickenham, meaning they only need to avoid defeat against Wales on Saturday to book their place in the showpiece match the following weekend.

The triumph was built on the most resilient defensive performance witnessed at Twickenham as England made three times the number of tackles as Ireland, but the match-winning points came through two magical finishes from May, the second of which saw him go some 80 metres from end to end.

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“I was really pleased with our two tries,” said Jones. “It’s something we’ve been working on a little bit - our tactical kicks inside the 22 and our transitional play. I really enjoyed Jonny May’s flick the switch try, where we went from defence to attack, went 100 metres to score a try which is an area that we haven’t been fantastic in. It was a good development today.”

That transitional phase is not something often spoken about by coaches given the unpredictable nature of counter-attacking rugby. Jones depends on the brains of New Zealander John Mitchell to marshal England’s defence, South African Matt Proudfoot to manage the scrum, Australian Jason Ryles as skills coach and former England Sevens star Simon Amor to craft their attack.

But he has taken a more hands-on role towards their transitional game in recent weeks after drawing on the reigning Premier League champions for advice, with football very much the industry leaders when it comes to data analysis.

“We’re starting to develop our own database, starting to be able to use some tracking from a company called Sportable that’s helping us in that area that can measure work off the ball,” explained the England head coach.

“That’s so important, transitional parts, it’s a pretty exciting area for us and it’s pleasing to see that try today where we shifted the ball quickly to the outside and then it was a leg race. There are not too many people in the world who can beat Jonny in a leg race.

“They, and I think most football sides, are very advanced in being able to measure the movement of the players off the ball. If you look at any stats that you get, they are only concerned with information on the ball. And as we know, say Mako Vunipola today, he may have made 20 tackles, carried the ball three times, so for 79 minutes and 45 seconds he was not with the ball.

“But his movement off the ball is crucial to what we do when we transition. So we’re starting to get some measurements, we’re in nursery school now whereas Liverpool are doing their PhD at Oxford.”

Jones has been able to do his research on this while in England’s bio-secure bubble at their Twickenham base where he is reading ‘Believe Us: How Jurgen Klopp Transformed Liverpool Into Title Winners’, the recently-released book documenting the German’s revival of the Merseyside club by The Independent’s senior football correspondent Melissa Reddy. That, combined with the club’s Welsh director of research Ian Graham, is helping Jones to gain a greater understanding of his own side and where they need to be to inflict the type of damage that May inflicted on Saturday when England turned over Irish ball deep in their own territory.

“What we want the players to do there is what is obvious, but it’s their race to get in position which is really important,” he explained. “We’re starting to measure all that, we’ve got three great analysts who look at that area and give the players feedback on their effort in that area. And then we want the players to use their skills. They are the best players in England, we want them to use their skills. That was really good today.”

May’s two tries took him to second in England’s all-time top try-scorers list, level on 31 with World cup winners Ben Cohen and Will Greenwood, with his first an athletic finish to pluck the ball out of the grasp of Irish full-back Hugo Keenan to collect Owen Farrell’s hanging crossfield kick.

But it was the second that was described by many as one of the great individual scores of international rugby. With Ireland’s lineout malfunctioning, Peter O’Mahony’s knock-on fell kindly for Maro Itoje, who quickly triggered the counter attack as the ball was shipped on to Ollie Lawrence and Henry Slade. Admittedly, when Slade passed to May still well inside his own 22, there appeared to be little on. Yet the wing beat Irish centre Chris Farrell with ease with a faint in-and-out move before outpacing Bundee Aki and Jamison Gibson-Park to collect his own kick and score, which helped give England a lead they would not give up.

“He’s an incredible rugby player,” said Jones. “What I’ve seen in that boy in the time I’ve been lucky enough to coach him has been outstanding. I’ve never seen a more professional player. He continues to get better, he gets faster, stronger, more elusive and his work off the ball is exceptional.

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“Maybe when he was a bit younger he used to get a bit despondent when he didn’t score tries. Now he knows that his role is much bigger than that and that while tries are obviously cherished, they are not the things that dictate whether you’ve had a good game or not.

“Against Italy his kick-chase and kick-return were absolutely outstanding. He broke the record for the amount of high-speed running, we’ve never seen as much running as he did that day. He got no reward on the scoreboard but today he did. It comes around.”

At 30 years old May has his best years ahead of him, according to Jones, who insists he can now take aim at Rory Underwood’s all-time try record of 49.

“I don’t see why not. He’s only going to get better and better. I think he’s going to be at his best when he’s about 32 or 33. He’s 30 now so there’s no reason why he can’t keep scoring tries and being one of our most important players.”