The Scrum
the times | Saturday November 14 2020 1GG 3
playing together and I have been
thrilled to watch how they have
developed as a pairing, even if I don’t
fully understand why Curry wears
No 6 and Underhill No 7 when they
play together.
For me, Curry is doing the No 7 role
and Underhill the No 6 job. Maybe it
is because Curry does the lineout
work, as that was the reason why
I wore six when playing alongside
Tipuric. All I know is that if I were
Curry I would want to be wearing
seven on my back.
It will be fascinating to see how
Willis does today and one day, could
we even see a back row of Willis,
Curry and Underhill playing
together? I certainly wouldn’t be
against that, because I don’t think it
lacks anything in particular and you
can never have too many jackallers
in a team.
It is why many of the best sides
have other forwards who are
especially adept over the ball —
as I’ve mentioned, at Wales we
used to have Jenkins, who was like
another seven.
My only small reservation would
be that I always liked to have a
proper, experienced No 8 in the big
games. That ability to control the ball
at the base of a crucial scrummage
on your tryline should never be
underestimated, but it would certainly
be fun to see that trio playing
together at some stage, even if it was
only initially for 20 minutes at the
end of a match.
If you asked me now to name
England’s strongest back-row
selection, I would not have a clue.
There are so many top-quality players
to choose from. Jones can pick horses
for courses and that is such a good
position to be in.No, Jones will do it his way
SAM WARBURTON
England have incredible
strength in the back row –
five of them could be Lions
England’s back-row resources are
incredible. Eddie Jones is so lucky in
that he can mix and match his
selections according to the opposition
now, simply because he has so many
players with different strengths to
choose from.
For today’s match against Georgia
I can see why the head coach has
named Billy Vunipola and Maro Itoje
at No 8 and blind-side flanker
respectively, because their opponents
will focus a lot on the scrum and
maul and you need those heavy-duty
players to combat that, but you still
need a genuine open-side flanker
and that is why it is so exciting that
Wasps’ Jack Willis is set to make
his debut.
For a long time I thought England
lacked a real poacher at the
breakdown. I thought that Matt
Kvesic could be the answer in that
respect, but for whatever reason
that did not happen and England
picked quite a few “six-and-
a-halves” instead.
Now with Tom Curry having
established himself and Willis ready
to start snapping at his heels, England
have two genuine poachers, two
players who are so good at jackalling
over the ball at the breakdown. And
Sam Underhill is not too bad either,
even if his greatest strength is
probably his ferocious tackling.
England have five back-rowers —
and that is not including Itoje, who
will clearly walk in as a lock — in
Curry, Underhill, Vunipola, Willis and
Ben Earl who have the talent to be on
the British & Irish Lions tour to South
Africa next summer. That is some
serious strength in depth. When I was
playing, Ireland and Wales had some
impressive depth in the back row but
England may be taking that to a
different level at the moment.
There are other players, such as
Ted Hill, Lewis Ludlam and Sam
Simmonds, who are in contention
too, just to emphasise how many
outstanding athletes Jones has to
pick from.
I always look for genuine athletic
potential when assessing back-rowers
— it was what first impressed me
about Underhill when he started
smashing us about at a Wales training
session while at Ospreys before the
2015 World Cup — and I remember
seeing that immediately when I saw
Earl come off the bench in a game
for Saracens a couple of years ago.
I said to Ugo Monye, who was
commentating with me, “Who is this
bloke?” and immediately checked his
age. He’s only 22 now and is a
wonderful player. He could easily be
a bolter for the Lions tour.
But Curry and Willis are the two
most instinctive jackallers I have seenin England for a long time. They just
get it. It is something that is within
you from a young age and is really
hard to coach. You naturally see the
ball that is prime for stealing at a
breakdown and you have the speed
of thought and ability to go for it.
I have often heard coaches say that
you should not jackal from the open
side of the field because that can
affect the defensive line if you fail,
but that should not apply to your
top natural open-sides who can read
a defensive scenario better than
other players.
When I was playing for Wales our
defence coach at the time, Shaun
Edwards, used to give me, the flanker
Justin Tipuric and the prop Gethin
Jenkins licence to do this.
That ability to jackal is now more
important than ever with the new
refereeing interpretations. In the past
a tackled player would be coached to
make a small movement when hitting
the ground so that it would make it
difficult for the opposition jackaller to
find his target, but now referees do
not allow any movement at all and it
has resulted in the number of
turnovers effected by open-sides
rising rapidly.
In attack you simply cannot allow
more than an arm’s length between
the ball-carrier and the support
runner because if you do, the jackaller
can pounce.
This was evident once the matches
resumed after the first lockdown. In
fact having seen only a couple of
matches I texted one of the Welsh
Rugby Union analysts and wrote:
“The jackal is back.”
And England are clearly very aware
of that. It was a couple of years ago in
this column that I first mentioned the
possibility of Curry and UnderhillHOW CAN YOU
WATCH IT?
Amazon Prime will show
12 of the 15 fixtures. The
Ireland home games will
be on Channel 4.
WHAT’S NEW IN
THE COVERAGE?
The coverage at
Twickenham wil include
footage and audio from
eight cameras in the
goalposts. Amazon will
offer optional artificial
crowd noise due to fans
being unable to attend
matches. Twickenham
will display about 300
club shirts in the lower
tier of the North Stand
to recognise the
importance of clubs and
counties across England.
The rest of the lower
tier will be covered by
banners for Rugby
Against Racism and
Black Lives Matter, and
messages for the NHS.
Players have
nominated songs to be
played during breaks in
play aimed at reflecting
“the diversity of our
sport and society”,
according to the RFU.
The songs chosen by
England players are:
6 The Greatest Show
(The Greatest Showman)
6 Head and Heart
(MNEK and Joel Corry)
6 Sandstorm (Darude)6 Rolling in the Deep
(Adele)
6 Ain’t No Mountain
High Enough (Marvin
Gaye and Tammi Terrell)
6 Ace of Spades
(Motörhead)
6 My House (Flo Rida)
6 Angels
(Robbie Williams)
6 Feel So Close
(Calvin Harris)
6 Sex on Fire
(Kings Of Leon)
6 Juliet and Romeo
(Martin Solveig and
Roy Woods)
6 Song 2 (Blur)
6 Runnin’ (Lose It All)
(Naughty Boy)
6 Yeah Yeah
(Willy Moon)England
v Georgia
Kick-off 3pm, today
TV Amazon Prime
Radio BBC 5 LiveCurry, centre, has excelled with a range of team-mates across England’s back rowDAVID ROGERS/RFU/GETTY IMAGESTIMES PHOTOGRAPHER MARC ASPLAND