This England team is out to change the record, albeit that task looks even harder after France\u2019s evisceration of Ireland<\/a> on Thursday night. England have enjoyed a renaissance over the past 12 months, and they head into the Six Nations on the back of 11 consecutive victories, from nail-biters against France and Scotland to more comfortable autumn wins against Australia and New Zealand. <\/p>\n Ford was central to England\u2019s grand-slam winning campaign in 2016, when they needed to complete the clean sweep in Paris<\/p>\n FREDERIC STEVENS\/GETTY<\/p>\n Internal expectations have shifted to the point at which Steve Borthwick<\/a>, the head coach, is challenging England to reach Paris on the final weekend with a chance of winning a grand slam. It was at the Stade de France that England sealed the deal in 2016. Ford is not interested in the symbolism. He knows the road is never straightforward. <\/p>\n The Six Nations is unique. Like a collection of short stories, each game is its own entity, with its own history of friendship and enmity, all wrapped up in the grandest of annual championships. To navigate five such games without slipping up is intensely difficult, arguably more so now that there is only one fallow week. <\/p>\n \u201cIt does feel a long time ago, 2016,\u201d Ford says, his knee bleeding from a nick suffered in training. \u201cResults never lie in our game. We haven\u2019t deserved to go through the Six Nations unbeaten since then. When people ask you what\u2019s the biggest rivalry in the Six Nations, it just seems to be every team we come up against. <\/p>\n \u201cThe best way to win it \u2014 and I can clearly remember this in 2016 \u2014 is just to take each job as it comes. We\u2019ve got Wales at home first. Let\u2019s do that, and then we\u2019ll focus on whatever is next. If you do that, you stay grounded and you can give yourself a shot.\u201d <\/p>\n Ford was relatively fresh on the scene at the 2015 World Cup, but has now racked up 105 Test caps for England<\/p>\n TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER MARC ASPLAND<\/p>\n Ford may be wearing the same white No10 jersey, but the demands of his job as England\u2019s fly half are markedly different now from what they were in 2016. He has always been a curious student, examining rugby league and football to be at the vanguard of tactical developments in rugby union. It is a never-ending quest to gain a strategical edge. <\/p>\n Ford came through as a triple-threat playmaker and at Bath he was in charge of a dynamic, running attack. But he slowly felt himself being \u201cshoehorned\u201d into a game-manager role, with his running threat locked away. For England in the 2020s, he saw the ball as \u201ca ticking time bomb\u201d because of how the breakdown was refereed, and in the 2021-22 title-winning Leicester Tigers team, his job was to implement a game plan. That meant standing deep and kicking.<\/p>\n \u201cYou want to do your job for the team, but it was taking away from my running game,\u201d he says. \u201cI thought: I know I need to be better than this. In the game now, you\u2019ve got to have a great passing game. You\u2019ve got to have the ability to put people in space, but you\u2019ve got to go and take space yourself as well. You\u2019ve got to play close to the fire, you\u2019ve got to have the ability to run, pass and kick.\u201d<\/p>\n Ford has displayed a fourth dimension to his game this season. As defenders fly up to shut down his space and passing lanes, Ford has used their pressure against them. He will hover in position and invite defenders on to him, waiting for the fire to lick around his heels. As they hunt him down, a window of opportunity will open elsewhere and Ford has already planned how to take advantage, with an attacking kick or an incisive pass. It requires patience and vision, which is where football comes in.<\/p>\n Ford has learnt to invite pressure and use it to his advantage<\/p>\n TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER MARC ASPLAND<\/p>\n When Ford goes to matches at Old Trafford, his eyes will follow Bruno Fernandes, the Manchester United midfielder, around the pitch, watching how he is constantly scanning, thinking ahead to work out his next pass or his next movement. Ford has been fascinated by Adam Wharton\u2019s around-the-corner passing for Crystal Palace. He has spoken to the Arsenal coaches about Declan Rice and Martin Odegaard. A Chelsea fan, Ford has spoken with Frank Lampard, who would scan the field, on average, 0.62 times every second; more than 3,000 times a match. <\/p>\n As a fly half, Ford has always thought about phases ahead, but the pressure to do so has become more acute over the past ten years. \u201cYou watch the game back in 2016 and you watch it now, and it\u2019s completely different,\u201d he says. \u201cThe speed of it, the time, the space, the skill. Back-rowers now seem to look like backs. Backs seem to look like forwards. It\u2019s just changed so much. <\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s probably been two or three times over the past ten years when you have felt the game changing. You look back then, ten years ago, the odd team had a line-speed defence. Now it seems like everybody\u2019s filling the front line, line speed, and trying to slow you down. <\/p>\n Ford during England\u2019s win over Wales at Twickenham in 2000<\/p>\n GETTY<\/p>\n \u201cWhat teams in defence have become really good at is, if they\u2019re in a bit of trouble defensively, they can solve it by coming up and spooking you. I\u2019ve been thinking about that lately. I know a lot of it is spoken about in football, but the way you scan and scheme and look and pick people\u2019s body language up.<\/p>\n \u201cMost teams, when they analyse their opponents, they\u2019ll say, \u2018Let\u2019s go and put the No10 under pressure, let\u2019s go and take his options away from him.\u2019 You\u2019ve got to be even better to keep being effective.<\/p>\n \u201cDeception\u2019s a big thing. You don\u2019t want to become predictable. You don\u2019t want to give away too early what you\u2019re potentially going to do. It\u2019s about timing, like you said. It\u2019s about knowing where you need to run, but how can you show something different first? <\/p>\n \u201cThe time\u2019s getting shorter but you\u2019ve got to have more patience to pick the right option. A lot of it is feel, where you just know that someone\u2019s going to come at you, so you need to kill your foot speed a little bit. You don\u2019t need to go at them. <\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve got the best chance of doing it if you have a good idea of what you\u2019re going to do before you even get the ball in your hands. That\u2019s why I love watching sports so much. The best midfielders in the world never seem to lose the ball. They come out with these decisive passes. It\u2019s like they\u2019re three seconds ahead. <\/p>\n \u201cWhere\u2019s the opportunity? Let\u2019s go and find the opportunity. That is enormously transferable to rugby. Wharton is ahead of the game but he has players on the same page. You need people in and around you understanding what we want, what we need. Having inside options, having outside options, having people to kick to.<\/p>\n \u201cYou see it with your eyes, you feel it through momentum and speed of ball. You put all that into the pot and you hopefully make the right decision. I love that part of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n Ford has a kindred spirit in Lee Blackett, who is heading into his third campaign as England\u2019s attack coach and is renowned for his attention to detail. <\/p>\n \u201cWe are very fortunate here to have some brilliant coaches, who are always endeavouring to be one step ahead of the game,\u201d Ford says. \u201cDon\u2019t become a team that just sets up all the time and becomes predictable. Play off whatever the situation is in front of you. As soon as you\u2019ve got speed and momentum, let\u2019s go, let\u2019s not lose it.\u201d<\/p>\n Borthwick will be expecting Ford to manipulate unstructured moments with kicks in behind the opposition\u2019s defence<\/p>\n TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER MARC ASPLAND<\/p>\n The game now is increasingly about transition attack, whether winning a turnover on the floor, taking a quick lineout or regaining possession from a contestable kick. France dropped their leading tryscorer, Damian Penaud, to select a high-ball specialist against Ireland, and it worked. From claiming a succession of tap-backs, France stung Ireland with their ruthless precision in transition.<\/p>\n England will take to the skies frequently against Wales in search of unstructured moments. Ford is expecting a shift towards more kicks coming from the fly half than scrum half. The data shows that there is a higher probability of winning back the ball if it is launched towards space, rather than down a heavily congested channel.<\/p>\n In turn, England have been goading Wales to kick to them. Borthwick is daring them for two reasons: he is confident that Tom Roebuck and Freddie Steward can win those aerial contests, and that Henry Arundell and Tommy Freeman have the gas to strike on the counterattack. Should Wales refuse to take the bait and attempt to play the phases, England have a back row of Guy Pepper, Ben Earl and Sam Underhill, primed to dominate them in defence. <\/p>\n This time last year Ford was playing a support role for England, behind Fin Smith and Marcus Smith, but enjoyed a cameo appearance in a record win against Wales in the final round of the championship. Having secured the No10 jersey on the summer tour, it is against Wales that Ford will launch his 12th Six Nations campaign (having been injured in 2023), playing the best rugby of his career and armed with a determination for England to fulfil their potential.<\/p>\n \u201cBloody hell. Twelve? You make me feel old,\u201d he says. \u201cThe campaigns you remember are the ones you were successful in. So you do remember 2016. It\u2019s just natural. We\u2019d like a few more of them.\u201d<\/p>\n England v Wales<\/p>\n Twickenham The Ruck Podcast: LiveDon\u2019t miss tough tacklers Courtney Lawes and Serge Betsen on March 9 as they compare notes on France v England and the biggest moments of this year\u2019s Six Nations at Twickenham Stoop. Book tickets here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"George Ford casts his mind back a decade to the whirlwind arrival of Eddie Jones into English rugby…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411769,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-411768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411768","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=411768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"George](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/\/a4907bd6-aacf-4f39-a2ab-1d2e9c000965.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"George](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/\/381e6b8f-b43e-4591-8581-624cd6c28612.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"George](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/\/10b31e0d-417f-4e69-b7fd-88b2db7e5b73.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"England](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/\/c4e467f1-e0c1-4e04-a96e-1f3f8e1bf4d3.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"England](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/\/ee7d7f23-ee56-4a98-a695-7c7a7f597717.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Saturday, 4.40pm
TV ITV<\/p>\n