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It may sound odd to some in the wake of England’s momentous win over Ireland, their best performance for five years, but Marcus Smith has to start against France.
I don’t agree with some of the harsh criticism of George Ford’s display on Saturday, he was brilliant ball in hand for the first 25 minutes and his kicking game was off but he did ok, it’s just that Smith stepped it up a level when he came on and was always supposed to be the starter.
Ford was reportedly told he was going to be the third-choice fly-half ahead of the opening game of this Six Nations against Italy but when Marcus got injured he was promoted to the starting role because of his experience and a reluctance to throw Fin Smith in at the deep end.
Joel Kpoku on life in the very physical French Top 14
The Sale Sharks man, who turns 31 on Saturday, has generally been a steady hand on the tiller, although he has gone missing at times as he has had a tendency to do over the years, but his replacement was electric in attack as well as kicking the winning drop goal.
England disrupted Ireland at the breakdown but also presumably set the tone for how they want to play themselves moving forwards with a marked increase in tempo, going from the slowest average ruck speed in the tournament to having 62 percent of their rucks under three seconds.
Off the back of that, they played a lot more heads-up rugby, passed a lot more and kicked significantly less. Smith is a far better game manager than people often give him credit for but utilising that quick ball and finding space is exactly his game.
Steve Borthwick is now picking youngsters like Ollie Lawrence, Tommy Freeman and Immanuel Feyi-Waboso in the backline and the Harlequins man, who has only just turned 25 himself, is definitely the man to get the best out of them.
He has racked up 31 caps already but done so with the shadow of Owen Farrell, and Ford to a lesser extent, looming over him. Now is the time for him to be properly given the keys and entrusted to drive this England team forward.
Some people wrongly pigeonhole him as a flash, luxury No10 but his defence is a lot more solid than he’s given credit for, he’s an 86 percent goal-kicker at international level and I honestly believe his game management is up there with the best in the world.
If England’s forwards can continue to be as effective as they were against what a lot of experts were describing as the best team in the world – not a tag I agreed with given South Africa won the World Cup just a few months ago – then Smith is best-placed to take advantage.
Of course, one swallow doesn’t make a summer and Borthwick’s men now have to prove they can do it time and again, as Ireland have done in recent years, but they’ve shown they have the ability now.
The age profile of the team is good, the youngsters are arguably having the biggest impact and there will clearly be a few more bumps in the road as they continue to grow but they have set the bar and there should be an expectation that they keep hitting those levels.
There was a bit of added fuel last weekend, as the players admitted, because they felt they were written off by the media, the emotion surrounding captain Jamie George and the fact that it was Danny Care’s 100th cap, and they channelled that excellently.
That can’t be used every week but even the sight of Borthwick having a heated word or two with Andy Farrell showed something that we maybe haven’t seen too overtly from England in recent times.
There’s no doubt England’s head coach is passionate about the team and the job he’s doing but he isn’t renowned for showing his emotion or making great speeches and I think the players will have enjoyed seeing that bit of passion and fight from him.
The fight, energy and quality the players showed, together with the overall occasion, finally got the crowd involved as well and the noise and atmosphere at Twickenham was honestly the best I think I’ve ever heard it so maybe they should take Rag’n’Bone Man with them to Lyon this week.
France pose a different problem to Ireland and England should focus on their own game and developing that identity but there’s no doubt they’re going to need to try and get parity at the set piece against a massive pack.
If they get into an arm wrestle against the French, they’ll lose so they need to get the better of the breakdown again and move the ball quickly. They don’t need to tweak too much tactically and the change of fly-half is the only non-injury-enforced personnel alteration I can see happening in the starting XV.
I think everyone is gutted to see Feyi-Waboso ruled out through concussion after the damage he did on his first Test start and I’d like to see another fresh face given a chance in his absence.
It’s highly unlikely it’ll happen obviously given he isn’t currently in the squad but Cadan Murley is a natural-born finisher, scored a hat-trick for England A against Portugal reserves recently and has been doing the business for Harlequins for some time now so he’d be the next cab off the rank for me.
It’s a real shame to see Chandler Cunningham-South out injured too after the impact he’s made off the bench during this tournament and I can see Borthwick maybe going for another second row/back row hybrid in reserve in Alex Coles or going back to Ethan Roots.
I would be opting for someone who can make a similar impact to Cunningham-South though and that is surely Tom Pearson, who has been ripping it up for Northampton Saints and London Irish before that and is much more dangerous in attack.
Ireland are almost certainly going to lift the trophy for a second straight year but regardless of whether England have a chance of winning the title when they kick off on Saturday night, they should be looking to the future and building on their best performance since the 2019 World Cup semi-final.
Marcus Smith would have been leading this new England from Round 1 had it not been for a calf injury, he showed his talent off the bench at the weekend and has all the tools to unleash a young, exciting attack so the No10 jersey has to be his against France.
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