Another Six Nations campaign and, for England, another Grand Slam hope extinguished after just one round. With a trip to Paris in the final round, their title hopes are slim, too.
It is now six campaigns without a Slam for Eddie Jones’s team and they have lost their opening game in the past three. Even as a self-confessed lover of the Championship, Jones will not mind a jot if England end up winning the World Cup next year. That, of course, is the holy grail for fans, but Championship success is appealing, too.
Saturday’s defeat at Murrayfield was not, as Jones and his players were at pains to tell the world, devoid of positives. England were dominant for long periods, but they failed to make it count.
A final-quarter meltdown cost them the match and exposed Jones’s new-look leadership team and some of his own decision-making. At the coalface and in the coach’s box, clear thinking was required, but absent.
England’s ‘leadership team’ is curious. Look down the list of names in Jones’s 23 and pick obvious leaders. The man who got the top job, Tom Curry, while young, is certainly one. So, too, Maro Itoje, Jamie George and George Ford. Perhaps Ben Youngs and his 113 caps, as well.
But, with the World Cup in mind, Curry had Ellis Genge, Luke Cowan-Dickie and Henry Slade as his vice-captains, rather than the most senior men. Cowan-Dickie had his moment of madness when defensively exposed, and the rest were not much better.
Curry opted for the corner when a long shot at goal could have taken the scores level, while the backs were unable to get beyond the first phase when attacking with the clock in the red. There was little clarity of thought in the cauldron.
Jones’s own game management also faltered. The coach was left to rue two substitutions. One, Ford for Marcus Smith, was under-thought. The other, George being held back so late that Joe Marler had to take a lineout, was over-thought.
Ford was Jones’s designated “finisher” so, when the final quarter arrived, he brought him on. At that stage, England led by seven, with all of their 17 points coming from Smith, who had not been perfect but had still been very good.
They were clearly not out of the woods and Smith, settled in the game, was their best hope of more points. Ford should have been held back until those points were secured. Tabai Matson, Smith’s Harlequins coach, dismissed the move as “premeditated”.
With George, England tried to be too clever by half. Believing that Scotland’s desire to throw the ball about made the dynamism of a full back row more important than the solidity of a full front row, he chose to hold his hooker back until a scrum arrived; even with a lineout throw, five metres from England’s line, with the scores level.
It was a catastrophic error. Marler did not throw five metres, giving Scotland a scrum. From there, they won a penalty, nudging into a lead they never relinquished.
Again, it was odd that a member of the leadership team did not slow things down and ask, “what are we doing here?”. Jones is not the regretful type, but this was a misstep.
Speaking post-match, George toed the party line, but he must have been watching in disbelief from the touchline where, ironically, he had spent the previous 10 minutes practising his throwing.
“It is very difficult for Joe coming into that situation, five metres from his own line,” he said. “I don’t think he would have ever done that in an international game before. A lot of hookers make it look very easy, but it is a pretty hard skill.”
Courtney Lawes and Manu Tuilagi might be back for Wales at the end of the month.
While a title win looks unlikely from here, the good news is that the next two matches should be the most straightforward of the series, and England’s injury crisis should alleviate in the coming weeks.
On Sunday, they face Italy, to whom they still have not lost. That game will come too soon for Courtney Lawes and Manu Tuilagi, but they might be back for Wales at home at the end of this month.
In Tuilagi’s absence, Jones should reflect that his backline is too slight and samey.
A centre like Mark Atkinson or a wing of Ollie Hassell-Collins’s clout would offer a different threat to the footballers around him. Alex Dombrandt’s power is required in the pack, too.
As so often, some frazzled thinking has left England playing catch-up.
