Six Nations: How Ben Youngs injury can prove good for England coach Eddie Jones
BEN YOUNGS’ terrible misfortune in suffering a serious knee injury in Rome on Sunday is, perversely, a stroke a good luck for Eddie Jones.
The England coach has stubbornly refused to broaden his scrum-half horizons far beyond Youngs and Danny Care during his two years in charge – his reticence was an uncharacteristic oversight – but events have conspired to make sure he turns his attention to this pressing subject.
Losing his first-choice scrum-half is a blow for the immediate future, but it forces Jones’s reluctant hand to identify the third No9 he will need for next year’s World Cup.
It is one of the few remaining pieces to fit into the jigsaw for Japan now that Sam Simmonds has cemented his place as the utility back row England will also require for the tournament.
The Exeter No8, with the pace of a tearaway No7, was outstanding in Rome and would have been a worthy man of the match – but he would not have been given the chance by Jones but for the absence of the injured Billy Vunipola and Nathan Hughes.
It is the same bad luck-cum-good fortune story in exactly the spot Jones needed questions answering that is about to be played out at scrum-half.
It is said that it is better to be born lucky rather than good – better still to be both – and the uncontrollable components of injury and suspension are doing Jones’s long-term planning for him.
Jones is a good rugby coach. It was instructive to watch him at work with the squad in Portugal during their pre-tournament preparation camp conducting one of their ‘chaos’ drills.
During it, the Australian kicked ball after ball into open space and challenged his players, in an exhausting game mock-up, to bring order with smart decisions and quick realignment when their lungs were bursting and minds racing. All the while Jones was beetling around, complementing players on good running lines or defence, as he instantly restarted the process again and again.
England’s strong finishes as games break up late on are no accident. They are built around this regularly drawn training template.
Practice – relevant practice – makes perfect and Jack Nowell’s late try against Italy was that session at Browns Sport and Leisure Club made real.
But Jones also appears to be a lucky rugby coach.
Of course, to an extent, a coach fashions his own luck. The run England have gone on under the Wizard of Oz with 23 wins in 24 Tests makes it easier for players like Simmonds to shine when they are called up. They join a well-oiled machine running on a high octane mix of confidence and coherence.
With Care promoted to starting No9, it is a backdrop which will help with Richard Wigglesworth’s assimilation as his shadow.
He has had a brief taste of England under Jones as a replacement in the non-cap game against the Barbarians last May, but though there are strong similarities in defensive systems, the national side attack differently to Saracens and he will need time to bed in. Youngs’ unfortunate injury will give him that time.
At 34, Wigglesworth is no spring chicken, and his reputation as a box-kick metronome is not an ideal fit for England either. But his ability to move with the times at his club and adapt as they have edged to a more expansive game has drawn Jones to him ahead of the two other candidates he considered, Wasps’ Dan Robson and Gloucester’s Ben Vellacott.
Neither are out of the picture – and Exeter’s Jack Maunder, who Jones took on tour to Argentina when Youngs took the summer off, could yet re-emerge – but the ball is firmly, and fortuitously, in Wigglesworth’s court.