It is exactly 25 years since the most fraught pre-match buildup in the history of English international rugby union. In this same week in November 2000 a pay row led to the entire national side walking out on strike, prompting Clive Woodward to threaten that an alternative team of lower-league amateurs would be chosen if his players did not return to training by 11am the following morning.<\/p>\n
After a tense standoff they duly did so, a grudging truce was agreed\u00a0and the weekend game against Argentina went ahead with England winning 19-0. Three years later all but two of that matchday squad (the exceptions were David Flatman and Matt Perry) were lifting the Rugby World\u00a0Cup in Australia. The moral of the \u201cstrike\u201d story? The darkest hour can be the springboard to a spectacular golden dawn.<\/p>\n
So why does all this feel relevant again now? Particularly given England\u2019s players are paid much better these days, they are winning regularly and Argentina\u2019s on-field stock also continues to rise. This year alone the Pumas have beaten the British & Irish Lions and New Zealand, not to mention Scotland at Murrayfield last weekend<\/a>. For good measure they also defeated England at Twickenham<\/a> as recently\u00a0as three years ago.<\/p>\n Yet for those of us lucky enough to be in the vicinity then and now, the events of autumn 2000 still have a certain relevance with the draw for the 2027 tournament looming on 3 December. If England really do aspire to hoist another Webb Ellis Cup into the Australian night sky after a 24-year hiatus, there remains plenty of additional work for Steve Borthwick\u2019s side to do. And well-organised and increasingly tactically savvy though they are, history insists international rugby success is not a smooth upward graph.<\/p>\n Which is why this weekend should be less about England basking in the glow of All Black glory<\/a> than taking a deliberate fresh guard. There is even a decent argument that this last game of the Autumn Nations Series, following their timely New Zealand success, should not be seen as the fag end of a calendar year but the launch of a pivotal new chapter.<\/p>\n That was effectively what transpired in the winter of 2000, when England took their attacking game to another level under the keen-eyed backline tutelage of Brian Ashton. In the first four rounds of the 2001 Six Nations they scored 28 tries, an average of seven per game. Graham Henry, Wales\u2019s coach at the time, said England\u2019s 44-15 win at the Millennium Stadium was the best performance he\u2019d seen by a European side.<\/p>\n Perhaps not insignificantly Jason\u00a0Robinson had also just arrived from rugby league to lend Woodward\u2019s England an extra dimension. And given no England side has won a World Cup since, it is against that lofty bar that their modern-day successors, for now, still need to assess themselves.<\/p>\n Of course Borthwick\u2019s England have made good progress \u2013 14 tries\u00a0in their three autumn games to\u00a0date with just seven conceded \u2013 but it remains debatable how many\u00a0of the current squad, beyond\u00a0Maro Itoje and possibly Immanuel Feyi-Waboso or Tommy Freeman, would theoretically gatecrash that legendary 2003 side. You could also measure them against the formidable South African team facing Ireland on Saturday and reach a\u00a0similar conclusion.<\/p>\n That is not to say England cannot improve that ratio substantially between now and the 2027 World Cup, merely that their current all-round package is not yet the equal of a full-strength Springbok combination. This makes this Argentina game instructive: if England can comfortably deal with a side who have taken down the Lions and the All Blacks and lost by just two points to the Boks in London only seven weeks ago, it will be another important box ticked.<\/p>\n George Ford\u2019s kicking game was crucial against New Zealand. Photograph: David Rogers\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Borthwick\u2019s side can already claim to be the only one to have conceded fewer then 24 points in a Test against the Pumas this year. Moreover they have done so twice, having won 35-12<\/a> and 22-17<\/a> without their Lions contingent in their two summer Tests in Argentina, their first series with Lee Blackett and Byron McGuigan in charge of the attack and defence respectively.<\/p>\n Blackett, in particular, is visibly galvanising England\u2019s attitude with ball in hand. They are thinking more clearly, too, as underlined by Fraser Dingwall\u2019s try against the All Blacks from a cunningly disguised set-play off a lineout. The weekend weather forecast may again affect the home side\u2019s gameplan but it is their attacking intent more generally that has been so refreshing.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n The latest rugby union news and analysis, plus all the week’s action reviewed<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Their scrum is also making notable strides and George Ford\u2019s kicking game and feel for a Test match\u2019s tempo \u2013 those sweet drop-goals! \u2013 have also helped significantly. Not enough has been made, either, of one or two supposed fringe players who are quietly making themselves undroppable. Fin Baxter looks increasingly at home, Luke Cowan-Dickie is back close to his irresistible best while Alex Coles, a standout for Northampton in some big games last season, has stood up in the absence of the injured Ollie Chessum.<\/p>\n The challenge now for all and sundry is to raise their level again. Guy Pepper, just 22, looks more than equipped to do so and it will be interesting to see if the respective booming left boots of Henry Slade and Elliot Daly complement England\u2019s strategic approach as much as you suspect they might.<\/p>\n In a perfect world, too, England would be looking to be even more ruthless in the \u201cred zone\u201d, improve their lineout stats and seek\u00a0to offload more frequently out of the tackle. Accomplish all that and no one will be keen to play them, particularly now they also have their own \u201cBomb Squad\u201d lurking on the bench.<\/p>\n Whether or not Borthwick is deliberately copying Rassie Erasmus\u2019s blueprint is a moot point but he is clearly not\u00a0averse to cherry-picking aspects of the Springbok gameplan that suit\u00a0the players at his disposal. And\u00a0if 10 consecutive Test wins since early February is only the start, the next couple of years really\u00a0will be fascinating.<\/p>\n Borthwick\u2019s squad certainly do not lack fit, fully committed energy givers, all capable of making a repeated nuisance of themselves. The Argentina coach, Felipe Contepomi, who coincidentally played in that 2000 fixture, will be asking the visiting players for one last monumental effort at the end of a long year but, increasingly, conquering Twickenham is easier said than done. Expect England to complete an autumnal clean sweep at the Pumas\u2019 expense, albeit by a slimmer margin than a quarter of a century ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is exactly 25 years since the most fraught pre-match buildup in the history of English international rugby…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-277274","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}