There’s some corner of a foreign field that — for Kevin Sinfield — is forever rugby league. How else to explain his appraisal of the exciting England wing, Immanuel Feyi-Waboso, in The Times this week.
Sinfield sounded like he had been seconded to coach the Barbarians, a team for whom minimal strategy is the rule. He said: “When you’ve got a player like Manny with so many lethal attributes, I don’t think anyone wants to see him kick the ball. You want to see him run and beat people. If the ball needs kicking, find our No10s please.”
Sinfield used the plural term for fly halves, having been at the forefront of the move to turn Marcus Smith into a 15 with the vision of a 10. It is all very positive but it is a wildly exaggerated piece of thinking.
Feyi-Waboso, right, pictured with Chandler Cunningham-South, will start on the wing for England against Fiji
DAN MULLAN/GETTY IMAGES
When the England coach says he doesn’t think anyone wants to see him kick the ball, there are a lot of opponents hoping he’ll run back everything. To have no kicking skill is a weakness that leaves a wing horribly exposed. In Wednesday’s edition of The Times, the Exeter Chiefs player was being compared with the league convert, who became a union legend, Jason Robinson.
He developed into a magnificent wing and/or full back. But it wasn’t because he threw his kicking boots to the wind. Quite the opposite. I’ll never forget one of his early games for the Sale Sharks at Gloucester. Gloucester constantly kicked the ball behind the league legend. Robinson would shuffle back, pick up possession, beat one, then two players and bang, almost every time he was clobbered by the third wave of tacklers.
In league he was free to keep running until he was pinned down. In union, to be that isolated is to be turned over or penalised. Wrong-footing the first man looked great but it played into the territorial strategy of the opposing side. When Clive Woodward selected him for the England squad, it seemed premature but, behind the scenes, Robinson was working on the very weakness Sinfield would have suggested he ignore.
Sinfield said he has never seen a more explosive player than Feyi-Waboso this week
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On the 2001 British & Irish Lions tour, one of my lasting memories was watching Robinson practise his punting, kick after kick after kick. He didn’t belt it far but every time boot made contact with ball, he would make decent distance. Watch the 2001 tour back and you won’t find him being trapped by the Wallabies kicking. He knew the time and the place, when to run and when to kick. Sometimes the two Smiths, who will be on the field against Fiji, won’t be positioned for a long infield pass. Sometimes there is no option but to get rid of the ball.
But if the wing has no kicking game, the temptation to try to dazzle and dance your way out of the tackle can be irresistible. Especially if your counterattacking is good enough to be compared with the staccato stepping of Robinson. Natural talent isn’t always enough against the best kick/chase teams.
Honing strengths is fine but dealing with the weaknesses is what turns the good into the great. Consider the Scotland team selected to face New Zealand a few hours before England face Fiji. There isn’t a more potent individual combination of speed and strength than the prolific Test tryscorer, Duhan van der Merwe. Yet Gregor Townsend has left him out of the Scotland match day squad as they bid for a first victory against the All Blacks.
Robinson scores for England against Australia in a 1995 rugby league clash — eight years on he had adapted his game so skilfully that he became a World Cup winner
CLIVE BRUNSKILL/GETTY IMAGES
As recently as this summer, he toured with the British & Irish Lions. He was the top tryscorer with five in as many games but what Andy Farrell — and fans with both eyes open — saw was a wing without confidence either beneath the ball, or attempting to clear it.
The panicky dashes from his own goalline weren’t signs of confidence in his own running skills (with which he is blessed) but a reflection of his inability to do anything else. This was how it started with Robinson but he worked on the weaker aspects of his game until it ranged from solid to scintillating. The comparisons between Feyi-Waboso and Robinson are flattering to Feyi-Waboso. Yet the fact that Sinfield sees similarities between them suggests the England wing has spectacular potential.
To achieve greatness, he will have to eradicate his deficiencies as well as fine-tune his assets. He should be working as hard on his kicking as on any other aspect of his game. The same applies to Henry Arundell, the Bath wing who returns to the match-day 23 for the first time since England’s narrow victory against Argentina in the 2023 World Cup bronze-medal play-off.
Arundell has improved under the high ball since moving to Bath from Racing 92
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The then London Irish back-three man stood in less than splendid isolation between the touchline and the five-metre line, little boy lost. England, with a limited game plan, might as well have fielded 14 players while he was on the pitch, for all Arundell’s scorching pace. In his one previous World Cup game against Chile in the pool stage, he coasted over for five tries, barely leaving the touchline.
On Saturday he should be judged — when he comes off the bench — not on how many tries he scores but on how often he can inject his change of pace in areas where he is not expected to pop up. England didn’t handle his talent well in the World Cup but this is a more ambitious set-up.
As for Feyi-Waboso, I hope Fiji and Caleb Muntz put some clever kicks behind the wing to test his kicking. If they don’t do it, be sure Beauden Barrett and the All Blacks will. There’s no six-tackle rule in union. If the foundations are in any way weak, they will be found out.
What made Robinson one of England’s greats? His ability to do the mundane well. Whatever Sinfield thinks, I want to see the most explosive of English backs refuse the challenge of beating every chaser, every time. Let’s see him — when the chasers are hunting him down — belt a few balls 30 metres into Row D of the West Stand. Never a bad tactic against Fiji.
England v Fiji
Autumn international, Twickenham
Saturday, 5.40pm
TV TNT Sports 1/Discovery+