Rugby players and coaches, by their own admission, seldom look further forward than the next match. But Martin Johnson’s selection against Argentina contains an element of trial by fire before the meeting with New Zealand on November 21, the final match of England’s autumn Investec series.
Of the four changes he has made for Saturday’s game at Twickenham, one in the front row was forced by injury to David Wilson. The other, the preference at hooker of Dylan Hartley over Steve Thompson, suggests either that Thompson did not cut the mustard in the defeat against Australia last weekend or that Hartley is given a start so that a valid judgement can be made on both players prior to facing the All Blacks. Whether it is the right choice for beating Argentina is a moot point.
The strongest element of the Pumas team is their tight five which is where Thompson, with 49 caps behind him, has far greater experience than Hartley. Against Australia, Thompson worked hard and threw accurately and if he did not carry the ball as much as the coaches might have wished, the same could be said of every other member of the forward pack. If, of course, Johnson and his colleagues want a mobile display this Saturday to run the aging Argentinian tight forwards off their feet, they might be justified in preferring Hartley were it not for the fact that it was Thompson’s ball-carrying they praised before the game against Australia.
Swings and roundabouts perhaps, but with two props with plenty of Guinness Premiership experience but limited international experience on either side of the scrum, again Thompson’s presence might have been more valuable. The amendment to the back row of the scrum, where James Haskell replaces Jordan Crane at No 8, is no great surprise but should it not have happened last week anyway? Haskell has been in dynamic form for Stade Francais but, more often than not, at blind-side flanker; Crane has been his dependable self for Leicester but without producing the off-load game where England were found so badly wanting four days ago.
If Crane was the preferred option then, he can feel hard done by that a second opportunity has passed him by. Haskell, of course, was hailed as the potential successor at No 8 to Lawrence Dallaglio when he emerged on the England scene two years ago but he moved back and forth across the London Wasps back row and seldom had the chance to settle; his Parisian employers, having one of the world’s best No 8s in Sergio Parisse, employ Haskell elsewhere to good effect and he appears to have regained his huge appetite for the game after losing his aggressive edge last season.
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But control at the back of the scrum is fundamental and Haskell has to achieve that in concert with a new scrum half. This will be Paul Hodgson’s first start after four appearances as a replacement and, on form this season with London Irish, it is well deserved; it suggests that Danny Care may have retreated too far into his shell, reining in his natural instincts to have a go which he was inclined to do too much, at the expense of early ball for his back line.
But changing that No 8/scrum half axis so swiftly smacks of misjudgement. What, one wonders, would the terrier-like Hodgson have made of Will Genia, Australia’s scrum half nominated as man of the match last Saturday? Would he have bossed his forwards more effectively than Care as the ball took a stagnant age to emerge from the breakdown? Make no mistake, Argentina will be as enthusiastic about slowing ball down so that their powerful forwards can try and make inroads in a close-quarters game. There is an apparent uncertainty here that does not bode well for when New Zealand.
England team to play Argentina:
U Monye (Harlequins); M Cueto (Sale Sharks), D Hipkiss (Leicester), S Geraghty (Northampton), M Banahan (Bath); J Wilkinson (Toulon), P Hodgson (London Irish); T Payne (Wasps), D Hartley (Northampton), D Bell (Bath), L Deacon (Leicester), S Borthwick (Saracens, capt), T Croft (Leicester), L Moody (Leicester), J Haskell (Stade Francais).
Replacements: S Thompson (Brive), P Doran-Jones (Gloucester), C Lawes (Northampton), J Worsley (Wasps), D Care (Harlequins), A Goode (Brive), A Erinle (Biarritz).