Former England rugby captain Dylan Hartley believes that Steve Borthwick’s side are suffering from an ‘identity crisis’, as the press on through their 2024 Six Nations campaign. England are looking to recover from their defeat to Scotland from a fortnight ago, but have a challenge of the highest order in Saturday’s battle against Ireland.
Hartley captained England to Six Nations glory in 2016, and does not see Borthwick having an ’empowering’ impact upon his players. Hartley has been chatting to Gambling Zone, ahead of England’s incoming challenge of taking on Ireland this afternoon.
“When you think about this England team, there is a big question around identity – there doesn’t seem to be one thing that you can hang your hat on and say “yes” that’s what this team is good at. When I look at England, I see a team that are trying to evolve their attacking game along with trying to have a world-class set piece, and a ’new level’ of defence, and at the moment, the defence is leaky and is exposing them.
“If you look at what the All Blacks do, it’s such a low-risk defence. They’re just up and out. They might concede five or ten yards, but then someone like Sam Cane or Ardie Savea can kind of seduce you into thinking that you’re making inroads, and they turn you over. There is an identity issue that England need to address.
“I’d like to see what parts of the game they can hang their hat on when the going gets tough. At Twickenham, if it starts pissing down with rain and they can expose Andrew Porter’s shoulder, it would be lovely to fall back on to a set piece and a watertight hard-nosed defence.”
Casting his mind back to his time in the England fold, Hartley expressed how his former head coach Eddie Jones had achieved the trait of instilling belief and empowering his players. The former Northampton hooker explained how Jones achieved this feat, which the Australian has since taken on to his current role with Japan.
“When Eddie Jones came into the team, he empowered the players. He focussed on two things: having the best set piece in the world and a world class defence built on attitude and pressure. He said that when he coached Australia, they deep down feared the England set piece. He feared our scrum. He feared our maul. He wanted us to be the best in the world at set piece and we practiced a lot.
“We talked the talk daily then ultimately started walking the walk. These are your fundamentals, your bread and butter. Without set piece, you struggle to win games. I think when refs and opposition know that you have that, it’s almost like your trump card. If there’s a scenario in the game where the balls knocked on, and you know you’re going to scrum, no worries. You can win the ball back. When we did knock the ball on, everyone in the team believed that we would win the ball back from the resulting scrum because we loved scrums.
“That was our mindset. Its powerful. The second thing we focussed on was defensive attitude and pressure. Those were the two things we hung our hat on. He said to us: “We’re good rugby players. We have a good attacking shape, but the two things I want us to best in the world at are defence and set piece.
“By delivering that message to the players daily, he had an empowering effect on our mentality. If a coach goes into a team and says that they can do everything without having that proof in the pudding, I don’t think that’s very empowering.”
Looking at today’s opponents, Hartley honed in on his aligned positional player in Ireland’s Dan Sheehan. The Leinster hooker has had a meteoric rise to the front row of Andy Farrell’s side, and is a comfortable set-piece runner, that frequently comes up with the try following a well orchestrated rolling maul. Speaking on how Sheehan has impressed him, Hartley added;
“I saw comments about Dan Sheehan. He isn’t re-writing how the game is played – people like Dane Coles and Schalk Brits have played like that for years. He’s just playing in this well-oiled beast where he is a big cog in the green machine. He is getting those moments where he gets to demonstrate his quality.
“If you look at a player like Sergio Parisse, trying to be the cog in that Italian side for so many years, if you put him in an All Blacks side in that era, imagine what he would have done. When everyone is doing their job to such a high standard, players like Sheehan flourish and emerge as world-class players and that is pretty cool to see.”
Then looking at today’s England team, the former captain is delighted to see Danny Care rack up his 100th appearence. The Harlequin has been named amongst the replacements for today’s England squad, and is eyeing up the opportunity to become only the sixth male player to make a century of England caps. Speaking on his delight for Danny Care, Hartley said;
“Age catches up with everyone and your performance falls off a cliff. Danny isn’t there yet, he certainly has a lot to offer. If you think of Alex Mitchell coming through, Ben Spencer being in and around it, he’s invaluable to those guys because he’s been there and done it. Reaching a hundred caps is a really impressive milestone. Not many players have done it. When you consider that his international career was over at one stage, it’s even more remarkable. When England have been successful, he’s been around it. He is a fantastic player.
“Age catches up with everyone and your performance falls off a cliff. Danny isn’t there yet, he certainly has a lot to offer. If you think of Alex Mitchell coming through, Ben Spencer being in and around it, he’s invaluable to those guys because he’s been there and done it. Reaching a hundred caps is a really impressive milestone. Not many players have done it. When you consider that his international career was over at one stage, it’s even more remarkable. When England have been successful, he’s been around it. He is a fantastic player.”