England floundered in the pool of death because...

England failed mostly because their defence was unable to stop Australia from making the advantage line almost every time they ran the ball.

In contrast, England stood very deep when they attacked and were hammered behind the gain line by solid Aussie tackles. So often did England fail to make the advantage line that on one memorable ‘attack’ they lost 50 yards and ended up in their own their 22.

Until their brief patch of success in the second half, when they wisely chose to pick and go – crashing it up through the inner channels – England’s attacks typically lost them more yards than they gained. The wider they went, the further back they had to pedal.

For Australia, almost every short, stabbing run got them over the advantage line – usually by just a yard or two. But that remorseless rolling progress kept England firmly under the pump. Australia however were able to repel English attacks with ease and even gained useful territory while they did it.

It isn’t that hard to make the advantage line. Japan did it all night long against the hard-hitting Samoans and two weeks ago against the renowned South Africans. Georgia did it against New Zealand who are no slouches at tackling. But even against the moderately hard-tackling Welsh, England just couldn’t crash through consistently.

Nor against the Irish before the Cup. Or the Welsh. Or the French. Are you seeing a pattern here? The English haven’t got enough line breakers. And they stand too deep to begin with.

They lost dominance at the scrum
In the third quarter, when the game started to lose structure and opportunities to bust out occurred in broken play, England did not have the instinctive understanding of what was on offer and they didn’t have the ball-handling skills to capitalise on opportunities.

This was the only time when Australia were under pressure and England’s attack was woeful. You can’t imagine New Zealand, Australia or South Africa passing up opportunities like this. Or Fiji, Samoa, Tonga or Japan. Or France, especially France.

When they lost a wing to injury, they moved almost the entire backline out of their preferred positions to accommodate another flyhalf. In contrast, when New Zealand lost a wing in their game the day before, they left everyone in their accustomed positions and ran a Victor Vito onto the wing. As a result, their backline defence and attack was mostly undisturbed. England’s backline however was chaotic at the end, and proof was clearly given when two baffled backs stupidly defended against an Aussie attack by simultaneously tackling the wrong player and hitting the actual ball-carrier high. Both were yellow card offences and it will be surprising if Sam Burgess is not cited during the week for his neck tackle.

But you tend to get confused about what to do defensively when you are playing out of position, alongside another person who is out of position. Given that Owen Farrell was not in his usual place and that Burgess doesn’t have a regular place in a rugby union team (he plays blindside flanker for his club, Bath), this shambles can be filed under ‘very bloody predictable’.

Before the game
England can blame their coaching staff for a great many mistakes. They did not select an ‘A’ side and stick to it, instead constantly testing and changing combinations – always searching for perfection. By doing so, they prevented any kind of instinctive understanding from forming among units – particularly in the backs.

New Zealand did this with their insane rotation policy in 2007, and learnt that the way to win a tournament is to select an A side and play it in all critical games until it starts to break down due to injury. Only then do you start the B selections.

Japan has proven that you don’t need to find the very best players and select them – just select some reasonably competent players, put them in their preferred positions, and leave them there long enough for some instinctive teamwork to develop.

A great team cannot be created from people who have hardly played together. If that was possible, the Barbarians would be world champs. The merits of George Ford versus Farrell and Burgess versus Anyone are about as important as the carrying capacity of a pinhead for angels. What matters is that 15 players play together for a dozen or so matches prior to a World Cup. B selections can slot into a team that has a core of players who know what they are trying to do and can even spare a moment to support the substitutions when they trot onto the field.

It hurts a team to have people play out of position any more than is forced upon them by injury. To voluntarily play Ford in the centre was mad, and points to a lack of decisiveness.

Coaches grossly underestimated the importance of the breakdown. If they truly believed it was the most important change to the way the game is played since the last World Cup, then they would have picked some fetchers. But they failed to understand that all the rule changes and instructions to referees for the last few years have been aimed at promoting speedy recycling of the ball after the tackle.

To say that you don’t need speedy recyclers in your team is to place yourself firmly on the wrong side of history. The same side as Polish cavalry horses in 1939. The game has changed. This is not wilful blindness – it’s stupidity.

Coaches grossly overestimated the importance of the scrum, and failed to imagine how a strong scrum could be nullified. Camera technology makes it ever more likely that scrums will be policed thoroughly for the first time in 100 years, and persistent, obvious offending will be found out. Props with poor technique will be subject to the same sort of scrutiny and sanctions as a ‘chucker’ in cricket.

Coaches also failed to realise that simply hooking the damn ball quickly is an effective defence against a more powerful scrum. England allowed the ball to roll right through the scrum and pop out on one occasion, entirely unmolested. Wow! Again thanks to Japan, it is possible to see how any well drilled team can scramble adequate ball out of their own underpowered scrum. The whole point of scrumming for psychological gain over the other forwards vanishes if scrums are so short and unproductive for the powerful team.

Worryingly, that’s only one way to defeat a scrum. New Zealand have always had the ability to run fat forwards around the field and to avoid taking part in any more than a token number of scrums. No team has yet done that in this World Cup but the tactics needed to nullify scrum advantages are as old as the hills.

The next phase of rugby rule changes will likely address the scrum. Heads up #1 – future policing will also include looking at put-ins that aren’t straight. Heads up #2 – look for props to be able to put an arm down in future. Heads up #3 – hooking the ball will again become fashionable.

Coaches also did not correct a simple misunderstanding in the mind of English captain Chris Robshaw. After the Wales game, he should have been reminded, perhaps by being beaten on the swede with a heavy embossing stick that you don’t turn down points in a Test!

But he was not told of his mistake and consequently, in the 51st minute of the game against Australia, he once again allowed a penalty kick for England to be directed to the touch line instead of the goal posts. And then he called the throw to himself again. And then the Aussies neutralised the English drive with ease. And then England scored no points at all.

This was utterly unforgivable. Somewhere in Robshaw’s head there is a line of code missing.

But there’s a whole page of code missing from Stuart Lancaster’s head, because he chose to play a pre-teen league convert (i.e. less than 10 international caps) in a serious game for grown-ups. It took a couple of years for the far more talented Sonny Bill Williams to learn how to play rugby union at a lower level than ‘critical last-chance World Cup decider with the hopes of a nation riding on it’.

Burgess is a fine footy player but he needs adult supervision for a while yet. There’s never been a hoary old rule about this sort of situation for coaches to follow, for the same reason there’s never been a rule about riding horses on ice rinks.

England players can blame themselves for this obvious fault. They can’t catch and pass at international level. Not as good as Georgia anyway. Or Argentina. Or Canada. Or the USA. And obviously not as well as the fabulously sticky fingered Japanese. So, really not very well at all then.

On the bright side
1. They’re still making World Cups. There’s always 2019, when England can have a hack at Japan. And they will be going to Japan since they managed to place higher than Fiji, and thus have qualified for the next tournament. Well done.

2. We saw it coming. No one who knows a damn thing about the English campaign of 2014-15 can seriously have expected them to get out of the pool (I certainly didn’t, and said so before the Cup began), so no one will be very surprised or disappointed.

3. Lastly, Graham Henry and Steve Hansen made most of these mistakes and more in 2007, and they learnt from them and bounced back to win the World Cup in 2011. So there’s hope for Lancaster – he might only need to be thoroughly hung, but not drawn and quartered as well.

No, don’t thank me England supporters – just buy me a beer.