{"id":284220,"date":"2026-02-06T17:16:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T17:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/284220\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T17:16:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T17:16:11","slug":"six-nations-2026-can-englands-evolving-attack-bring-them-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/284220\/","title":{"rendered":"Six Nations 2026: Can England’s evolving attack bring them title?"},"content":{"rendered":"

There have been annual gains since the Edinburgh defeat two years ago.<\/p>\n

Under the guidance of Richard Wigglesworth, England’s attack scored 25 tries in last year’s Six Nations, the most the team have managed in a single campaign in almost a quarter of a century.<\/p>\n

As well as the 10-try rout of Wales, they ran in four against eventual champions France and seven at home to Italy.<\/p>\n

Lee Blackett – the mastermind of a Bath backline that scored an unrivalled 102 tries on their way to winning last year’s Premiership – inherited that upward trajectory. <\/p>\n

Seconded for the tour of Argentina last summer with a brief to “remould” England’s attack,<\/a> a 2-0 series win followed, despite the absence of 15 senior players to the British and Irish Lions tour of Australia.<\/p>\n

Blackett was then appointed attack coach permanently in September.<\/p>\n

A clean sweep of the autumn followed, including the exhilarating win against New Zealand.<\/a><\/p>\n

In the early days of Borthwick’s reign, attacking platforms were often wasted by an inaccurate, even hopeful kick. England were statistically the worst of all Tier 1 sides at turning clear opportunities into tries, converting just 28% of their chances.<\/p>\n

However, in 2025, only South Africa and France were more effective at scoring from a line-break, with England’s completion rate rising to 43%.<\/p>\n

“(Blackett) is really good at giving players confidence to take risks,” said Ashton. “You need a coach who’s encouraging you to score tries.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There have been annual gains since the Edinburgh defeat two years ago. Under the guidance of Richard Wigglesworth,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-284220","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}