If you are brave enough to cast your mind back to round one of the 2019 Six Nations, when an Eddie Jones-coached English team smacked Ireland at the Aviva, you may get a few shivers trembling along your spinal column.
It was a dark day for Irish rugby as an overconfident Ireland, with Robbie Henshaw ridiculously selected at fullback, were belted by an English team whose defensive system and physical confrontation at the tackle bashed Joe Schmidt’s team into submission.
The scale of the defeat was so psychologically damaging that for the rest of 2019, including the World Cup in Japan, Ireland never recovered.
The lesson to be learned is that no Irish team can take England lightly under any circumstances.
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And in recent times Ireland have been guilty of overconfidence to the point of arrogance. The prime example was last November when, in the week leading up to the New Zealand Test, the talk of the Irish nation was that ‘New Zealand have lost their aura’.
At full-time with the scoreboard showing the Kiwis had won, amazingly Ireland discovered that New Zealand had in fact not lost their aura. It was just that Ireland were so blinded by ego that they could no longer see it.
Regrettably, there is now arrogance across other parts of Irish rugby. The ridiculous notion that the national coaching staff have a bias towards Leinster players in terms of team selection smacks of hubris from other provinces.
In his first match as head coach, to even contemplate that Simon Easterby has any agenda other than winning is ignorant. As if Paul O’Connell, one of Munster and Ireland’s greatest ever players, would support such a betrayal.
The reason players do not get selected can be summed up in the words of a schoolteacher coach with whom I worked many decades ago.
When confronted by an agitated parent, who arrogantly demanded three reasons why his son was not selected for his school U-13 ‘A’ team, the old coach, who was a 30-year veteran teacher and did not suffer any fool on the planet lightly, replied with a smile: “One. He is not good enough. Two. He is not good enough. Three. He is not good enough”.
Not very diplomatic but honest nonetheless.
Those with the temerity to suggest that the Irish national team selection process is biased towards any province need to drop their arrogance and learn from the old schoolboy coach. Players are not selected because they are not performing to a standard that is higher than the player who currently holds the jersey.
While much of the talk in Ireland has centred around whether or not the national team will adopt Jacques Nienaber’s Leinster defensive system, the reality is that how England defend will hold the key to victory or defeat.
In selecting a 6-2 bench Steve Borthwick has made his tactics clear. England will scrum for penalties, maul from lineouts and kick penalty goals. South Africa have won two World Cups based on this regressive and primitive formula, but there’s an additional key factor involved. The Springboks' defence is ferocious.
Defence wins championships and across 2024 England’s defensive system and their individual tackling were far below elite international standards. In the 2024 Six Nations, England scored 118 points but conceded 123. Compare that to Ireland who scored 144 points and conceded only 60.
Last November against South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, England conceded nine tries and scored only six.
Since England’s crushing loss to South Africa at the 2019 RWC final there have been more English defensive coaches than English prime ministers and that’s saying something. Several of England’s defensive coaching appointments have been astonishing. These include two coaches from Australian Rugby League who had never coached a single game of rugby before being put in charge of the English national team’s defence.
Every one of these defensive coaches has tried to implement systems by trying to bash the square peg of a premeditated system into England’s defensive round hole. All failed to design a bespoke system that would maximise the talents and mindset of the current English players.
What may have been effective in rugby league or South Africa has not been effective for England.
In an ironic twist, England could learn a valuable lesson from Ireland’s coach during the disaster that was 2019. The current Australia coach, Joe Schmidt, came to Dublin last November and disrupted Ireland’s attack by implementing the most basic of defensive systems. Schmidt stripped any complexity out of the Australian defence, returning it to a simple form that was widely used 20 years ago.
The emphasis was on each defender to stay connected with their team-mates on their left and right as they advanced. Then, when the opposition had moved the ball out wide, the defenders would remain connected and push the attack towards the sideline.
The simplicity of this system cleared away any doubt from the minds of the struggling Australians and gave them confidence. This clarity of mission empowered the players to focus on aggression in the tackle. All of which disrupted Ireland’s much vaunted attack.
England must learn the military maxim that a simple plan implemented with total commitment is far better than a complex plan implemented with mediocrity.
If England are to prevail they must counter Ireland’s detailed analytical attacking plans from set plays, especially the world class ability to exploit the gap between the last defending forward and the first back at the tail of the lineout.
With the backline defenders set 10 metres behind the lineout, Ireland have designed some exceptional plays that attack this naturally occurring defensive “dog leg”. Last November Ireland scored several excellent tries exploiting this specific area.
If England have learned from Joe Schmidt’s defensive master class then they can push Ireland to the very limit. If Ireland have absorbed the lessons regarding respecting opponents that was delivered in spades by the Kiwis, then we will watch two evenly-matched teams who could produce an absolute belter on the opening weekend of the Six Nations.
