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Every Six Nations fixture is a grand occasion but some games are bigger than others. Ireland and England both know how crucial today’s Dublin eliminator will be in terms of establishing early championship momentum. Listening to the upbeat pre-match tone of the visitors’ new captain, Maro Itoje – “I think we have a team that’s ready to write our own stories” – this also feels like a pivotal moment for Steve Borthwick’s whole England project.
A lot has already been said and written since last March’s corresponding match when Marcus Smith drilled a last-gasp drop-goal through the sticks amid ecstatic Twickenham scenes reminiscent of Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally. England have subsequently played eight Test matches and lost six, beating only Japan twice. The majority of those losses have been tight but close doesn’t win any cigars at the elite level.
This leaves the Borthwick chariot at a precarious tipping point. Overturn the defending champions and the past becomes irrelevant. Lose badly and public perceptions may start to harden again. If it is followed by home defeats against France and Scotland, the under-fire Rugby Football Union hierarchy will have more special general meetings in the diary than the national team has victories.
Plenty of other awkward questions would also resurface. Is a 10-team Premiership without the jeopardy of automatic relegation the best preparation for intense Test matches? What price those new “hybrid” contracts supposed to help England’s players arrive at the startline in better nick? Has a mid-season change of captaincy made any discernible difference?
So, no pressure. Nothing on the line at all, particularly in a Lions year against an Irish team long on experience and big-game smarts. Itoje has more caps (88) than England’s eight replacements combined (81). Ireland’s bench, by contrast, boasts only 59 fewer caps (509) than England’s entire starting XV (568). Cian Healy has been around almost as long as the Book of Kells and, since 2013, Ireland have lost only two of their past 29 home Six Nations fixtures.
This time, admittedly, the hosts do have an interim coach in the shape of Simon Easterby, with Andy Farrell having taken a step back to prepare for this summer’s British & Irish Lions tour. In practice that should not change a huge amount, given the seasoned nature of the squad and its Leinster-dominated makeup. A third successive outright title win would set a record for any side in Five or Six Nations history.
That said, England might just be better suited to tackling Ireland than, say, France because the patterns the Irish tend to use are more familiar and orthodox. Pressure them at the breakdown and attack with energy and home frustration, in theory, could grow. The crackdown on “escort” runners who block chasing opponents, the necessity of forwards to work harder to get back onside when the ball is hoofed upfield, more protection for scrum-halves around the base … it should all encourage more unstructured play and less safety-first attrition.
So can England take thrilling advantage and create a whole new identity for themselves? It brings to mind something England’s then-head coach Eddie Jones said after his side’s sobering 25-13 Calcutta Cup defeat by Scotland at Murrayfield in 2018. Jones, who will be occupying an ITV pundit’s chair in this championship, was adamant English players were kidding themselves if they thought they could prosper by whizzing the ball around like the All Blacks. “We can’t win that way,” he said to us one snowy lunchtime in Oxford’s Randolph Hotel.
“One thing I know is we can’t win playing pattern football. We don’t have the athletic ability to do it. I have them for 13 weeks a year. I can’t suddenly make them more athletic. All I can do is try to maximise the players we have. We’ve got good players but we don’t have the ability to be athletically better than other teams.”
His deputy at the time was none other than Borthwick. As the game becomes ever faster, woe betide teams who cannot keep up and England’s selection reflects that. The head coach could have chosen any number of different back-row combinations but has plumped for the Curry twins, Tom and Ben, with Ben Earl in between them.
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Not since the Currys were both handed the role of Joseph at their school’s nativity play – Ben performed the first half, Tom the second – have the pair shared such a key role and the first twin brothers to start a Test together for England will be central to their country’s fortunes. If they can get Ireland seeing double from the outset and England’s lineout is not too compromised by the relative lack of height in the back row, things could get interesting.
Because behind them are two incisive half-backs who will need no second invitation to probe for space, along with a rapid, positive-minded new cap on the left wing in Cadan Murley who has a telepathic understanding with his Harlequins teammate Marcus Smith. With some heavy artillery on the bench in Chandler Cunningham-South and Tom Willis plus another fly-half, Fin Smith, it could enable a second-half reshuffle with Marcus Smith switching to full-back and Freddie Steward to the wing. A potentially cunning plan? Unlike Leinster, the hosts will not have Jordie Barrett and RG Snyman available to bail them out if they start sluggishly.
As England showed in 2019, when they performed as impressively as at any point in their Six Nations journey under Jones, funny things can happen on the opening weekend of a Six Nations campaign. Ireland do not have the injured Tadhg Furlong and Joe McCarthy, nor their retired conductor Johnny Sexton. They also stuttered badly against the All Blacks in November and Itoje will be urging his players not to be overly reverential: “You definitely have to give them respect. But I like to think, whenever you play any team, you don’t put them on a pedestal. They’re a good team but we believe in our team, we believe in what we can do. It’s just our job to go and do it.”
Add it all together and an away win is not totally inconceivable. A thunderous battle of wills followed by celebratory late night renditions of the Fields of Athenry, nevertheless, remains fractionally more likely. The visitors will not lack for desire nor energy but Itoje’s England will need to be singing from the same hymn sheet to exchange last year’s clouded hills for the green and pleasant land of Six Nations glory.
