England are going flat in attack under Eddie Jones

They say that a champion can be pushed to the edge of the cliff, but it is quite another task to tip them over. This is the stage that England have reached on their current 16-match unbeaten run.

Both France and Wales have had all the tools they need to give them the drop, and ultimately only the mental steel built by a constant stream of victories has kept England upright.

Eddie Jones will be worried about the second half of the Six Nations. He won’t be worried about Italy in two weeks’ time of course, but the curve of the challenge rises steeply all the way after that, with Scotland to follow at Twickenham, and the meeting with Ireland providing a suitable climax to the tournament on March 18 in Dublin.

In particular, he will be concerned about the ineffectiveness of the England attack in the recent absence of his three top ball-carriers – the Vunipola brothers and James Haskell.

Without the megatons of power on the carry supplied by Billy and Mako, England have struggled to make Jones’ attacking patterns work. As indicated in my article a few weeks back, England don’t have the size and power in the backs to do much damage if they cannot get their forwards working productively off the prompts of Ben Youngs first.

Opponents are also far more familiar with Jones’ methods than they were at the same stage of proceedings last year. The Welsh defence controlled almost the entirety of the second half – at least up until their loose exit, leading to England’s decisive try in the 75th minute.

All this has levelled the playing field in the Six Nations, and England will continue to come back to the pack until they find to a way off the plateau and up to the next stair on the ladder of improvement. It may seem faintly ludicrous to pull the face of concern while England are still on such a magnificent winning run, but I have no doubt that Eddie Jones can already see the shadow of an upset hanging over his side within this tournament.

Wales attacked quite well with ball in hand in the first half, and they made a set-piece score from England’s need to protect George Ford defensively in the 10 channel.

At 37:30, two England backs defenders (scrum-half Youngs and right wing Jack Nowell – out of shot) are caught on the wrong side of the play as the Welsh #11 Liam Williams has moved around to the open side to create an extra man in midfield.

As I pointed out in the previous article, England’s instinct in these situations is to protect Ford, and 12 Owen Farrell and 7 Jack Clifford are all concentrated in the same four or five square metres of space around him as Rhys Webb makes the scoring pass to Williams at 37:31. 13 Jonathan Joseph is left in a thankless situation ‘with feet of stone’, transfixed by the double threat of Jon Davies outside and Williams inside him as the wingman slices through the defensive line.

But the most fascinating challenge of the afternoon occurred on the other side of the ball, between the England offence and the Wales defence. The first half contained ample hints of how sharp England’s attack can look when its fundamentals are working:

Threat off 9 and 10
The basis of England’s threat on attack is the ability of both scrum-half Ben Youngs and outside-half George Ford to engage the defence right on the advantage line. Youngs has been a thorn in the side of Shaun Edwards (the Wales defence coach) ever since the 2015 Six Nations, and is always looking to fix the eyes of the first and second defenders on the edge of the breakdown (7:36 and 17:30). Ford intensifies the pressure on the D by taking the ball right up to the line in two hands (7:24, 16:04 and 16:10, 16:15).

This tends to fix the defenders in front of him, so that when the (longer) pass is made they find it harder to adjust and run to a new target. At 74:11, Ford fixes Jamie Roberts (with the beard) on the line, meaning that Roberts is slightly but crucially later on the ‘fold’ when Ben Te’o cuts back inside at 74:15.

Ford’s aggressive positioning also means that a runner coming on to a shorter pass is also halfway across the ad-line when he receives it (Nathan Hughes at 7:10 and 16:04, Joe Launchbury at 16:10, Maro Itoje at 16:18).

Quick delivery and recovery
Under Eddie Jones’ new training regime, England pay particular attention to producing quick ball at the breakdown and fast recovery into attacking positions. In the opening sequence, Nathan Hughes makes the first carry at 7:13 and is on his feet and ready for the third phase run twelve seconds later. Courtney Lawes carries on second phase at 7:18 and is primed for carry/support again at 7:31/7:41.

After a slow first phase off Hughes, all the ruck deliveries are in the ‘winning window’ of 0-2 seconds until the back-line overlap appears at 7:41. Tempo, tempo, tempo.

Success of one-out ball-carriers
The success of one-out runners within the patterns off 9 is critical to the smooth functioning of Eddie Jones’ offence. In both of the sequences, the key ball-carriers Hughes, Lawes and Joe Launchbury are all either winning collisions or positioning their bodies to make a quick placement of the ball if they don’t.

This is not an attack which looks to shift the ball wide primarily, and the work of the forwards off 9 or 10 must succeed in order for the attack to function as a whole.

The Te’o factor
The joker in the pack for Jones is the presence of Ben Te’o. In the prolonged absence of Manu Tuilagi, he is the one midfield back in the England squad with the size and power to force into a selection rethink, and that may happen as soon as the next game against Italy (73:47 and 74:14).

With the Ford/Farrell combination so central to English planning, it may be the #13 jersey that Te’o claims.

Now let’s take a look at how the England attack steadily deteriorated in the second half against Wales:

The hard press on Ford’s options
Wales began to read Ford’s attacking rhythm better and better as the second half wore on. They took the away the option of the outside man by pressing up hard as Ford approached the line (Jon Davies at 40:46, 43:23 Scott Williams at 44:13).

When Ford set a little deeper to compensate – or there was a pure back-line attack – England were not as effective (52:44, 63:02, 68:38).

Targeting the runner with the ball-rip
One of Wales’ biggest defensive ‘wins’ was associated with their ability to target the English runners with a ball-rip from the defender still on his feet during the tackle – Dan Biggar at 4:24 and 43:24, Scott Williams at 63:05 (where James Haskell should have been penalised for playing the ball on the ground) and 68:43.

The combination of the outside press and the ball-rip in contact brought England’s attacking momentum near the ruck to a grinding halt, while on other occasions England’s power carriers were either blown up and rejected (Maro Itoje at 44:24) or failed to produce a quick placement (Jamie George at 62:55).

Summary
It may sound strange to say that England are in some trouble after winning 16 matches on the trot, but their development has temporarily stalled. Both France and Wales have come much closer to winning their games this term than in the corresponding fixtures last year.

A part of this second season plateau can be explained by the key injuries to the Vunipola brothers and James Haskell, but more of it is linked to greater opposition familiarity with England’s methods on both attack and defence.

I suspect Eddie Jones already knows that something needs to change. He said after the game on Saturday, “I want to do something a bit different against Italy. I want to play differently against them; experiment a bit in how we play…and maybe the team might be different.”

Haskell and one-half of the brotherly ball-carrying trust (Mako) will likely be back, and it would be no surprise to see Te’o start outside Ford and Farrell.

In the mean-time, England’s remaining three opponents will see more grounds for encouragement rather than dejection after the first two rounds of the Six Nations, as all the teams draw breath and reassess before the next round of matches on 25 February.