Stuart Lancaster has challenged his frustrated England players to impress at club level this weekend as the head coach ponders whether to “freshen up” his starting XV for next week’s Calcutta Cup fixture at Twickenham. Lancaster is set to recall the fit-again Mike Brown and will also be closely monitoring the Premiership form of Courtney Lawes, Brad Barritt, Tom Wood and Geoff Parling before finalising his side to face Scotland.
The squad’s debrief into Sunday’s loss in Dublin heightened their collective sense of disappointment. Lancaster rated his side’s levels of execution in the opening 50 minutes at around six out of 10 rather than the nine out of 10 required to beat the world’s top teams. “I said afterwards that some of the problems were of our own making and that’s definitely still my opinion,” said the head coach.
Lancaster firmly believes England can still win the championship, citing Ireland’s title-winning recovery from a similar mid-tournament defeat 12 months ago, but accepts their latest failure to remain in grand slam contention has made their last two games vital in terms of regaining momentum before this autumn’s World Cup at home.
“There’s plenty to play for in terms of understanding which players can and can’t deliver under pressure leading into the World Cup,” said Lancaster. “Once we get to that World Cup camp, we’ll have a lot more players available…they’ll come back into the equation and the World Cup will take its own course.”In other words those who under-perform now may struggle to regain their places.
Lancaster is unsure whether Luther Burrell’s calf injury will heal in time to resume training next week and Billy Twelvetrees, perhaps significantly, is among the 16 players staying in camp this week, but the head coach says it is not automatic that, full-back and possibly inside-centre aside, the same XV will be selected.
How Parling, Tom Youngs and Tom Croft perform for Leicester at Newcastle, for example, will particularly interest the management as will the efforts of Lawes and Wood for Northampton at Gloucester and Barritt, Alex Goode and Mako Vunipola for Saracens at Wasps.
“I am open-minded about making some changes because of the calibre of the people we have coming back,” said Lancaster. “It’ll be based on a variety of things, one of which is their individual performances this weekend. There are big players in there who have delivered for us in big games in the past.”
With England’s line-out having stuttered in the last couple of games Lawes is “definitely under consideration” while Wood is also particularly good in that area. Barritt was a key man in England’s hard-fought win over Australia in November but has not featured since.
Whoever plays, Lancaster will be seeking a positive reaction to the Dublin defeat which ended England’s hopes of a first grand slam since 2003. “Without doubt there are lessons to be learned and we won’t hide behind those. We have got to improve. But the World Cup is a different context. In 2011 Wales came fourth in the Six Nations and could have been in the World Cup final. Obviously it is important to set yourself a target – of trying to win a Grand Slam, a Six Nations or a World Cup.
“But you’re only going to do that if you get your performance right. I am driven by getting the performance right – then, ultimately, the targets will look after themselves.”
He refuses to accept that England’s selection was flawed in Dublin or that he should have introduced Danny Cipriani off the bench late on.
“I saw some comments about perhaps bringing him on at centre but I’ve never seen him play centre, ever. I also saw George Ford win us the Wales game in the last 10 or 15 minutes. I do trust Cipriani to come on and make a difference but I had already made several changes in a relatively short space of time and momentum was clearly going our way.
“It’s hugely disappointing to lose any game but New Zealand lost their last two warm-up games leading into the 2011 World Cup and won it.
“France lost in the pool stages and got to the final. It’s how you react to a defeat that matters.
“We didn’t play as well as we wanted against a top-class side but we won’t lose the sense of the direction we’re going and that we’re on the right track absolutely,” Lancaster said.