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'Brilliant foundation': Marcus Smith excited by Farrell partnership after series win
By PA
Marcus Smith admits that sharpening the attack is the priority for the autumn as England celebrate a hard-fought series victory over Australia.
Eddie Jones’ tourists claimed the second and third Tests to emulate the tour of 2016 by toppling the Wallabies in their own back yard, but they rarely only sporadically with the ball in hand.
England are attempting to reshape their attack as part of a reboot that began a year ago, playing through phases and limiting their reliance on kicking.
It has yet to produce the fireworks hoped for and with the World Cup just 14 months away, Smith believes it is time to start launching the threequarters.
“This series has been a brilliant foundation and then on the back of that is our attacking game,” the Harlequins fly-half said.
“With the players we have got we can score loads of tries. We have just scratched the surface of that and we are excited.
“Whoever gets the opportunity in the autumn is definitely going to take that forward and we have good momentum now.”
Wing Tommy Freeman and full-back Freddie Steward produced some of England’s best moments in the third Test at Sydney Cricket Ground with the 21-year-olds using their size and strength to pierce the Wallabies defence.
“When you have got brilliant runners in outside channels you have just got to feed them and they made themselves available in the back line,” Smith said.
“If you lob them the ball they nearly make a half-break, so they make you look all right!
“We scratched the surface in the third Test and we will review that, learn from it and we need to be better because it is a big year coming up.”
At the heart of the new tactical blueprint is Smith’s partnership with Owen Farrell. Both play at fly-half for their clubs but Farrell has moved to inside centre to accommodate Smith for England.
“We are still relatively new, we have only played four games together, which is very, very early,” Smith said.
“We have been challenging each other. He has been challenging me over the last few weeks to be myself and back myself and I have challenged him to be himself as well.
“When Owen is himself, he’s a brilliant player, he drives the team really well, communicates really well and he his energy is infectious across the team. I have loved playing with him.”
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Latest Comments
Nah, that just needs some more variation. Chip kicks, grubber stabs, all those. Will Jordan showed a pretty good reason why the rush was bad for his link up with BB.
If you have an overlap on a rush defense, they naturally cover out and out and leave a huge gap near the ruck.
It also helps if both teams play the same rules. ARs set the offside line 1m past where the last mans feet were😅
Go to commentsYeah nar, should work for sure. I was just asking why would you do it that way?
It could be achieved by outsourcing all your IP and players to New Zealand, Japan, and America, with a big Super competition between those countries raking it in with all of Australia's best talent to help them at a club level. When there is enough of a following and players coming through internally, and from other international countries (starting out like Australia/without a pro scene), for these high profile clubs to compete without a heavy australian base, then RA could use all the money they'd saved over the decades to turn things around at home and fund 4 super sides of their own that would be good enough to compete.
That sounds like a great model to reset the game in Aus. Take a couple of decades to invest in youth and community networks before trying to become professional again. I just suggest most aussies would be a bit more optimistic they can make it work without the two decades without any pro club rugby bit.
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