Rigid England need to take more risks to have a hope of World Cup glory

LESS RIGID, MORE RISKS PLEASE ENGLAND

Stuart Lancaster has not had much of a buffeting in the media since he became the England head coach, partly because of the World Cup campaign of 2011 and what happened afterwards and partly because he has carried himself with dignity and humility. And, generally, the national side has been going in a forward direction, even if the last Six Nations title was four years ago.

Saturday’s defeat to New Zealand generated probably the most hostile response since Lancaster took over, even though England were without 11 injured players and Courtney Lawes lasted only 22 minutes. It was not so much the loss itself – England are one of only two teams to have beaten the All Blacks since before the start of the last World Cup – but the manner of it: a failure to adapt to changing conditions and the lack of a player to take the game by the scruff and restore the momentum of the first half.

The former England scrum-half Kyran Bracken led the criticism of the England management when he said on the radio station TalkSport this week: “There are a number of question marks about Lancaster’s reign. Whilst our pack are able to compete with the best in the world like New Zealand, our backs are all over the place, and consistency of selection is a problem. He has been given a lot of slack over the last year of two. He hasn’t won a title, he hasn’t won a series and now the World Cup is not far away and it is the same old excuses, which I think people are getting tired of.

“We have got a World Cup in England and anything but reaching the final will be a failure. They have put a lot of faith in Lancaster and consistently after every game for the last two to three years all we hear are the same old soundbites. We are facing South Africa [on Saturday] and it is about time we started fronting up and winning these important games. All I’ve heard recently is it is all about the emblem on the shirt and having pride in the shirt. Enough is enough. I want to see results.”

England’s structured game against New Zealand contrasted with Ireland’s pragmatic approach against South Africa which yielded a handsome victory. While England’s fly-half Owen Farrell disappeared from view as the rain fell on Twickenham, Ireland’s Jonny Sexton dictated play at the Aviva Stadium where his opposite number, the young Handré Pollard, struggled in unfamiliar conditions and wasted a surfeit of possession.

Ireland will not be overdosing on the black stuff: the last time they defeated the Springboks so resoundingly was also one year before a World Cup, back in 2006, and they flopped in France 12 months later, returning home at the end of the group stage while South Africa went on to win the tournament, but in Joe Schmidt they have a coach in the full sense of the word: his teams are hard to pin down because their game is nuanced with players educated rather than programmed.

Researchers at the University of Bath have this month published a paper, based on an in-depth study at an Aviva Premiership club, that questions whether the technologies used to monitor the performances of players in the elite game are having a negative effect.

Players, the researchers argue, are becoming risk averse in order to follow strict coaching instructions, a drift that threatens fundamentally to undermine aspects of the game, harming team morale and making matches less interesting. The technologies included GPS, laptops, camcorders on the side of pitches, heart-rate monitors, iPads and instant digital feedback. A typical day of a player at the club surveyed involved information on sleeping patterns and mood, performance indicators and training and playing reports linked to hours of video footage that zoomed in on mistakes and deficiencies.

Dr Shaun Williams, the lead author of the report, Elite Coaching and the Technocratic Engineer: Thanking the Boys at Microsoft, said: “The institutional mechanisms at play were reflective of a machine mentality and appeared to circumvent more organic learning processes. These date-driven coaching techniques are not reflective of the unpredictability of rugby union. It is vital that those who oversee performance in elite sport consider the consequence on players of such surveillance.

“Players come in on a Monday and are told how they measured up in a game in terms of key performance indicators, such as how many tackles they made and how many rucks they hit. The danger is that players in response stick to a script, make sure their statistics are good and, in the process, become risk averse. The system objectifies individuals, but it does not measure unpredictability and, if the result is automatons who do what they are told, you end up with players who do not think when you need them to.”

In-depth interviews were carried out with players that revealed a dampening of their enthusiasm for the game. “The technologies have now started to intrude upon the private lives of the players, an approach to management that makes it very difficult for the athletes to escape the institutional pressures of elite professional rugby,” said the paper’s co-author Dr Andrew Manley. “A greater sense of control is now enacted by the coaches.”

The argument is that instead of learning being a two-way process, players have become functionaries and potential has been suppressed. England omitted from their squad their two most individual fly-halves, Freddie Burns and Danny Cipriani, while James Hook was recalled by Wales this week as cover for the injured Dan Biggar.

Hook was the first fly-half chosen by Warren Gatland in 2008 and it was his jinking in and out of tackles and finding space where none appeared to exist that set Wales on their way to victory in their opening Six Nations match at Twickenham and on to the grand slam. Yet he became seen as unreliable because he was guided more by instinct than the playbook, something that would have been considered a strength not very long ago.

As Wales yet again reflect on a narrow defeat to Australia, and as England ponder how they squandered another winning position against New Zealand, they look at their environments and ask whether there is a conformity that makes them susceptible when they take on the very best, especially when a game is in the balance and initiative, rather than obeisance, is required.

Both Wales and England are well prepared and organised but they are at their weakest, unlike Ireland under Schmidt, when a game becomes less about coaching and gameplans and more about reacting, about offering a lead and not being afraid to deviate from a formula to deliver victory.

“Players should not be risk averse,” said Williams, a teaching fellow at the university’s department for health who coaches its rugby side and hails from the Rhondda, “but more are going that way. Safety-first seems the preference of elite coaches, who are paid to win, but it is a glass half-empty approach. Rugby, and sport, is about more.”

• This is an extract taken from the Breakdown, the Guardian’s weekly rugby union email. Sign up here.