He delivered that lovely grubber kick against South Africa and has been key to Gloucester’s unbeaten start but somehow the fly-half still does not float Eddie Jones’ boatIncreasingly Danny Cipriani looks fated to be a quiz answer for years to come. Name the most gifted English sportsman of his generation who never played in a major tournament? Not since English football regularly chose to ignore Matt Le Tissier in the 1990s has there been a more baffling selectorial omission.Le Tissier won only eight caps while the more prosaic Carlton Palmer won 18. Cipriani has started only five Tests in the past decade and has never featured at a World Cup. Talent writes its own cheques (even in these contactless days)...
It has been forgettable year so far for England’s coach but he knows a strong autumn with key players back could paint a much brighter picture for the World CupThere have been better times to be an Australian rugby coach working in the UK. Leicester’s decision to sack Matt O’Connor after one game of the season is the latest dent to antipodean pride, leaving Eddie Jones as the last prominent wizard from Oz still in charge in England. Like so many boomerangs the rest are heading back whence they came.Every nationality to be fair tends to find coaching in the northern hemisphere trickier than expected. Partly it is the length of the season, partly the tribal nature of the rugby...
Paul Gustard’s departure little more than a year before the World Cup illustrates that all is not well at TwickenhamAt first glance the story sounds entirely straightforward: England defence coach takes new job at Harlequins. Paul Gustard is perfectly entitled to seek work wherever he wishes and moving to Quins allows him to be the boss rather than a mere assistant. Nothing to see here has been the message from the Rugby Football Union, Gustard’s present employers.Fans of Sherlock Holmes will already have spotted the nagging flaw in this supposedly mundane piece of employment news. In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s story Silver Blaze it is the dog’s curious failure to bark in the night-time that ultimately solves the mystery. Related:...
It will be hard for Brad Shields to go straight from Super Rugby into the England side in South Africa but Ben Earl, Jack Willis and Jonny Hill lack experience in this company, tooEngland’s tour squad for South Africa reads like one of those wedding‑day rhymes for superstitious brides: something old, something new, something borrowed, something out of the blue. There is more than enough in Eddie Jones’s trousseau for the three-Test series next month to raise eyebrows in both hemispheres.Three names particularly stand out in a 34-man squad shaped partly by injury and Jones’s desire to rest certain individuals. Danny Cipriani is finally back in the frame at the age of 30, granted one last chance to show he...
The head coach faces a dilemma over how many to rest and how many to blood with a revived South Africa lying in waitWhen Eddie Jones was asked the other day about England’s disappointing Six Nations campaign he admitted that, in retrospect, he might have handled things differently. “I think I should have refreshed the side,” he told Sky Sports, reflecting on the lowly fifth-place finish. “I should have probably brought some fresh blood in, sharpened things up.”It is every head coach’s recurring dilemma, particularly in a post-Lions season. Stick with the tried and tested, the players who in this case had barely lost for the two preceding years, or cast the net slightly wider? Sometimes there is little other...