Is\u00a0Ollie Chessum\u00a0inked in as\u00a0the next England<\/a> captain?<\/p>\n Ollie was absolutely superb. It was a complete performance. Lineout work, defensively, ball-carrying, but also his leadership abilities. I spoke to Jonny [Wilkinson] after the game about him and we both liked what we saw. He\u2019s flame haired and you can see his passion. He\u2019s not afraid to show how much he cares. One of the criticisms about England has been a lack of emotion and we all know Borthers isn\u2019t renowned for that, while Maro is a quiet, softly spoken character. I need to point out that I\u2019m not advocating taking the armband off Maro, but if you asked me who\u2019d be his successor and I\u2019d put money on it being Ollie. He\u2019s only 25, has captained Leicester<\/a> and he\u2019s into everything on the field. He also has a good relationship with referees and communicates well with the media. He\u2019s building a compelling case.<\/p>\n \u2026but did Chessum gift the game to France?<\/p>\n Scroll online and many fans were saying his decision not to run under the sticks cost England the two points that could have won them the game. I\u2019ve been in that situation myself and what you need to remember is live TV footage allows you to see the wide angle, so you can see everything on the pitch. Believe me, it\u2019s not like that when you\u2019re playing in the game. It\u2019s like George Ford<\/a> says, \u2018a coach can see more than us, but players have more of an innate feel for what\u2019s happening in game\u2019. As soon as Chessum intercepts, all he can see is what\u2019s in front of him \u2013 green field being hoovered up with his loping strides. He can\u2019t see any of the defenders, but he knows that French back three is full of pace, so my guess is he quickly looks over his left shoulder to see what defenders are turning while he\u2019s running an angle.<\/p>\n He\u00a0doesn\u2019t have\u00a0a rearview mirror\u00a0to know they\u2019ve\u00a0given up\u00a0because\u00a0they know they can\u2019t catch him. He\u2019s thinking, what\u2019s my best line to\u00a0make the tryline. I remember against Bath<\/a> intercepting\u00a0in a similar place\u00a0and it\u2019s a long way for us big boys. I knew I was being caught up but I was just glad I made it. I did the same against Argentina<\/a> and I was caught going over the line. Luckily,\u00a0I\u00a0was able to\u00a0ground it. In the relief of getting to the line, he raises\u00a0his hand\u00a0before\u00a0flopping\u00a0down but\u00a0he should have glanced over his right shoulder\u00a0to\u00a0circle round under the sticks, but that\u2019s his only mistake. He\u2019ll learn from that and if he\u2019s ever in that position again.<\/p>\n England\u2019s backrow make-up may need\u00a0switched-up<\/p>\n Chessum\u2019s performance brings into sharp focus England\u2019s recent backrow selection policy. Of late, Borthers has been picking what most of us would call three opensides back in our day, but the spirited performance against France<\/a> means England have ask serious questions about what they want their identity to be. We know what South Africa<\/a> stand for; power up front and panache out wide. We know what France stand for; massive forwards and electric backs. With England, there\u2019s still a bit of, \u2018what\u2019s their USP?\u2019 Paris may have made his mind up. Personally, I think we probably need to lean into England\u2019s traditional strengths of being very physical in the pack, allied to the speed he\u2019s trying to add out wide, with the likes of Feyi-Waboso and even Noah Caluori<\/a> by 2027. It means a No 6 who might need to resemble a towering Springbok like Pieter Steph du Toit or Gallic DNA with someone like the totemic Charles Ollivon<\/a>, rather than an All Black or a Wallaby. The pleasing thing is with (Alex) Coles and Chessum, England have two interchangeable players who could excel there. Of course, the hope is that George Martin<\/a> returns from injury and reaches his previous levels. Martin is what they call in the military, a breacher. The guy who blows the doors off the place. A second-row pairing of Maro and George in the second row and one of the others starting at 6 is tasty and snapping at their heels should be 6ft 8in Junior Kpoku<\/a> and Olemide Sodeke, to keep them honest. Let\u2019s see how they line up against South Africa in July!<\/p>\n England need their Jonny Wilkinson<\/p>\n I actually thought the player who made the biggest difference in the match was Thomas Ramos. Why? Because he nailed seven out of seven kicks. Perfection. Fin Smith had a brilliant all-round game, but his goal-kicking percentage was at 50 per cent, even if in mitigation a few of them were from the touchline, but so did Ramos. When Marcus entered the fray, he didn\u2019t miss a kick. I\u2019m not saying Fin is a bad goal kicker, far from it, he had the best kicking percentage in the 2025 Six Nations, but you want your goal kicker to create the perception that they hardly ever miss, which Ramos pretty much has and is widely seen as the best in the world. When he stepped up for that final kick, few fans doubted he\u2019d slot it. I don\u2019t like to hark back but that\u2019s what we had with Jonny Wilkinson<\/a> and the All Blacks<\/a> had with Dan Carter.<\/p>\n Having someone like that in your\u00a0arsenal affects your opposition\u2019s gameplan. Leigh Halfpenny\u00a0had the same aura as did Neil Jenkins\u00a0and\u00a0Ronan O\u2019Gara\u00a0in their pomp.\u00a0Even with all the tries being scored in this era and less penalty kicks being attempted, having a\u00a0kicker\u00a0with ice in his veins\u00a0is still hugely important.\u00a0Even though England outscored\u00a0France\u00a0seven-six\u00a0on tries, they left\u00a0seven\u00a0points out there\u00a0and in the end that was crucial. England need to develop their goal kickers so\u00a0other teams\u00a0fear them and alter how hard they compete within a kickable distance.<\/p>\n How to choose a Player of that Match?<\/p>\n One crumb of comfort while I was trying to make sense of the chaos of the last five minutes in Paris was that the Player of the Match award is decided by the host broadcaster. Therefore I didn\u2019t have the distraction of having to run through a cast list of deserving contenders. How it works for the designated judge, they will be asked for their contenders with 20 minutes to go and then if the game isn\u2019t really in the balance, the final decision will be announced in the last five minutes of play, but if the game is in the balance, the graphic will go up and the announcement made as late as possible, even after the final whistle. It\u2019s extremely rare we award it to someone on the losing side partly because the recipient often doesn\u2019t appear too enamoured about winning it in a losing cause, like Joe Launchbury<\/a> famously did against Wales.<\/p>\n Everyone sitting on their sofa, beer in hand,\u00a0has\u00a0their own ideas about who should be handed it, and that\u2019s fine but\u00a0we all look for different things. Is it the person who played the most complete 80 minutes, had the highest stats, scored the most or he who had the biggest impact on the result? You could argue Ollie had the most complete performance or that Ramos\u2019s goalkicking had the biggest impact on the result despite his 33% tackle completion stats, but there would have been a\u00a0right\u00a0hoo-ha they had\u00a0overlooked Louis Bielle-Biarrey\u2019s four tries.<\/p>\n The best Six Nations ever\u00a0was full of surprises<\/p>\n This tournament was a rollercoaster. A game full of sliding door moments. What if Pollock hadn\u2019t thrown that pass a minute before time? What if Cadan Murley<\/a> hadn\u2019t hacked the ball on. What if that Menoncello forward pass against Ireland<\/a> wasn\u2019t adjudged forward? If that was given, they\u2019d have been competing for a title on the final weekend. What if Wales<\/a> hadn\u2019t switched off to allow Finn Russell\u2019s quick thinking and Darcy Graham\u2019s opportunism \u2013 they would have consigned England to the bottom of the table. What if George Ford\u2019s drop goal against Scotland<\/a> had missed Matt Fagerson\u2019s hand and sailed through the uprights? All these moments which could have given a totally different complexion to the tournament.<\/p>\n For the first time ever,\u00a0genuinely\u00a0no one knew who was going to win a Six Nations game\u00a0and that\u2019s brilliant but a nightmare for us so called \u2018experts\u2019 who always get asked our predictions.\u00a0I mean, who would have thought that\u00a0team\u00a0that finished top would\u00a0concede 96 points in their last two games?\u00a0Absolutely crazy.\u00a0I\u2019m just counting down the days to 2027. It was that good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I have only just recovered from one of the best sporting occasions in living memory. In my career,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":481401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-481400","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\/481400","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=481400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Ollie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2266527150-1.jpg.webp.jpg\")
Ollie Chessum<\/a> didn\u2019t have a rearview mirror to help guide him under the sticks (Photo David Rogers\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n![\"Fin](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2266614168.jpg.webp.webp\")
Fin Smith has 19 months to turn himself into a place kicker other sides fear, like Jonny Wilkinson (Photo Dan Mullan \/Getty Images)<\/p>\n![\"Louis](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2266516255.jpg.webp.webp\")
The Player of the Match is an emotive decision which has a multitude of different factors (Photo by David Rogers\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n