Six Nations 2010: England back row to blame for laboured mess against Scotland

By Mark Reason 715AM GMT fourteen March 2010

Criticism England forwards aren"t laying height for backs to perform Photo GETTY IMAGES

Scotlands behind row of Johnnie Beattie, Kelly Brown and John Barclay, the aptly declared torpedo Bs, showed England how to play. They run off each others shoulders and have illusory low physique positions. Its all for one and one for all.

In contrariety Englands behind row provides so small participation at the relapse that you have to pretence that they are personification to orders. Nick Easter, James Haskell and Joe Worsley all stood afar from the hit area and let the front five get on with the unwashed work.

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If they are following instructions from above, and what alternative reason can there be, afterwards this England government group needs to go. Martin Johnson might have been a smashing second-row brazen but there is no justification that he is any sort of arch executive. The list of good players who have been intensely bad coaches is a prolonged one.

Englands sad incapacity to measure tries starts with the failings of the behind row. Worsley, entrance behind from damage and personification out of position, was often off the pace. Easter and Haskell both constructed apt touches, but they should have been the jam, not the main meal.

Easter won a integrate of utilitarian restarts and Haskell done a excellent run that he accomplished with a crafty offload, but where was all the unwashed work that indispensable doing? Where was all the cleaning out that Richard Hill used to do so well?

There was a revelation impulse when Brown, Scotlands No 6, got himself removed and ran pound in to the shuddering frames of Easter and Haskell. The England span should have pulverised the Scot, but they went as well high on him and Brown was means to have the round available.

At the begin of his England reign Clive Woodward pronounced "Back row is the majority critical area of the diversion now. It dictates how you play." It positively dictates how this England group plays. The Johnno behind row is full of dispersion men, not building a whole workers.

The most appropriate dual sides in the Six Nations Championship, France and Ireland, have mutual back-row trios. Until Fulgence Ouedraogo was injured, they were round players to a man - you could have a box for any of them personification top-level rugby in midfield.

The same could be pronounced of all the teams that have won the World Cup. Whether it was Michael Jones of New Zealand in 1987 or Schalk Burger and Juan Smith twenty years later, the winning sides had fast and crafty back-row men who kept their group moving.

This England behind row has functioned usually in the opening compare opposite a Wales behind row that was dual thirds overweight and one third over the hill. Ever given afterwards they have been comprehensively outplayed by all, together with even the Italians reduction Sergio Parisse.

If England are ever to get out of this basin they need a behind row that can yield a little quantitative easing. They need a genuine open side flanker and they need Tom Crofts gait back. When Woodward was criticised for jumping up and down when his group scored a try, he pronounced "Its only that the people Ive taken over from never smiled."

Anyone design Martin Johnson to burst in Paris?