England vs Ireland: Home side hold the aces for once as Irish come to town

Home team can be confident of success if they can nullify Irish kicking game in Jones’ first match at Twickenham

(Getty Images)

If England walk the walk against Ireland at Twickenham this evening with the same energy they have shown in talking the talk during the build-up, they will find themselves three-fifths of the way towards a first Six Nations clean sweep since the World Cup-winning year of years in 2003. The senior players have spoken so fervently, and with such regularity, about what is required of the team on its return to the scene of last autumn’s crimes against red-rose rugby, they are in danger of taking the field with laryngitis.

“There was an impassioned meeting at the back end of last week, the squad had a good talk when they came back into camp on Sunday and five players have just spoken now – and in no uncertain terms – about what’s ahead of them in this game,” said Paul Gustard, the defence coach, whose record as a member of England’s backroom staff currently reads “two games, two shut-outs”. He seemed more than happy with the mood music in the home camp.

The fact that neither Scotland nor Italy found the wherewithal to break Gustard’s defensive system in the opening rounds of this championship is not sufficient to send the sporting world spinning off its axis.

Since the turn of the century, when the old Five Nations became the new Six Nations, four teams have recorded an average tournament try-count in double figures. Those teams are England, France, Ireland and Wales. The other two have been limping along at 5.68 and 6.06 tries per series respectively.

Equally to the point, the Irish are second only to England in the list of heavy scorers. But the hugely productive centre partnership of Gordon D’Arcy and Brian O’Driscoll has gone the way of all flesh, the Lions wing Tommy Bowe is hors de combat and there is no guarantee that the high-performing No 8 Jamie Heaslip can bring his attacking game to bear in a reshaped back row featuring an effective but inexperienced blind-side flanker in C J Stander and a debutant breakaway in Josh van der Flier.

All things considered, it is a long time since England have been in a better place ahead of a meeting with the green-shirted hordes. Having found their way across the finishing line at Murrayfield and run away with things in the final half-hour on the banks of the Tiber, they now have the crucial advantage of back-to-back home games against the very opponents they find most difficult to subdue. And while Wales, who head for London in a fortnight, are a little stronger than Ireland at present, they too have issues in important positions.

Talking of issues, the vexed question of Jonathan Sexton, the concussion-prone Dubliner who runs the show for Ireland from the outside-half position, cropped up again yesterday, just as it had when Eddie Jones, the England head coach, was holding court 24 hours previously. Would the home side be targeting the Lions Test No 10? Was he really a weak defender, or a whole lot stronger than he lets on? And what of his direct opponent in this contest, the miniscule George Ford? Might he be the one more at risk?

Gustard, never one to give a sucker an even break during his playing days as a teak-hard flanker with Leicester, London Irish and Saracens, saw all this coming and avoided the elephant traps with considerable assurance.

“Sexton? He’s a very talented footballer,” he said, taking care not to get drawn into an extended discussion on the ethics of professional rugby vis-à-vis player welfare and the duty of care. “We have to be aware of the tricks he can play on opponents. We’ll need to stay awake for the full 80 minutes.”

And Ford? Did he ever worry about the Bath playmaker’s physical well-being? “David didn’t have too many problems with Goliath, did he?” Gustard replied, drawing not so much on his knowledge of the Good Book as on his acquaintance with a study by the best-selling social science writer Malcolm Gladwell, in which David is counter-intuitively portrayed as the favourite rather than the rank outsider.

“In reality, there are mismatches all over the pitch in a rugby match,” the coach continued. “You might have a 6ft 2in forward jumping against a 6ft 8in opponent at the line-out. In the same way, you get big players running at small players. Do we expect some traffic to head in George’s direction? All I can say is that it’s up to Ireland to work out how they want to attack.

“What I don’t really believe in is hiding players, in getting them out of the way. The Australians try to move their 10s on opposition ball, especially when Quade Cooper is in the position, but I think that creates an unwanted stigma.

“Also, you end up putting people in places on the field where they feel uncomfortable. That can work against you when play suddenly switches back in that direction.”

Another reality may be that this talk was beside the point. If England are sure of anything ahead of today’s game, it is that Ireland will take the aerial route, with both Sexton and the scrum-half Conor Murray putting boot to ball with a regularity bordering on the monotonous.

As Jones remarked earlier this week: “They’re the ones who have won two Six Nations in succession, so it obviously works for them. Who am I to criticise?” Needless to say, his tone of voice was critical in the extreme.

Almost exactly a year ago in Dublin, the tactic worked a treat: the Irish half-backs hung the ball high on the England wings, fed hungrily on the spillages and took a significant step towards retaining their title by winning more comfortably than the 19-9 scoreline indicated. Those red-rose followers who witnessed the mayhem at first hand will note two things: firstly, that the England wide men that day, Anthony Watson and Jack Nowell, are still together, albeit operating on different sides of the field; and secondly, that Mike Brown will be at full-back this evening, having missed the 2015 game through… you guessed it, concussion.

Brown’s presence offers reassurance. He may not be within touching distance of his rival No 15, Alex Goode, as a creative footballer or a game-changing ideas man, but he has one hell of a lot to offer in terms of attitude. If the Harlequin picks the first two or three balls clean out of the air from under the noses of Rob Kearney, Keith Earls and any other Irish chaser in the vicinity, the psychological advantage will surely be England’s.

If, on the other hand, the visitors find themselves capitalising on a sudden outbreak of butter-fingered buffoonery, they are capable of generating the kind of rabble-rousing intensity that better England sides than this one have found devilishly difficult to handle.

Ireland are a long way from the class act so many people thought they were a year ago, but the thought of playing on this side of the water will not worry them a jot. They won at Twickenham in 2004 and 2006, and again in 2010. They do not start as favourites this time, but if they are still in it at the last knockings…