Danny Care's 'foolish not to try that tactic' England prediction

Recently retired England scrum-half Danny Care has made a prediction about next Saturday’s tactical approach versus South Africa at Allianz Stadium that won’t please fans who want to see Steve Borthwick’s team continue to creatively play with the ball in hand.

Despite finessing their attack since March, England have lost six of the last eight Test matches and following on from last Saturday’s high-scoring 37-42 defeat to the Wallabies, Care has now predicted that Borthwick will revert to the kick-dominated game plan that came within a whisker of success at last year’s Rugby World Cup.

England were much criticised throughout 2023 – Borthwick’s first year in charge of the team – for having a very blunted attack that was overly dependent on kicking.

However, this narrow tactical approach very nearly saw them dethrone South Africa as they were 15-13 ahead in the World Cup semi-final until Handre Pollard landed the decisive, late penalty kick from halfway following a scrum infringement.

Restored to the top of the World Rugby rankings following Sunday’s win at Scotland, South Africa are now Twickenham-bound and they will believe they are capable of adding to Borthwick’s miserable run of results.

England scored five tries versus Australia but were still beaten by a clock-in-the-red concession and Care, the Harlequins veteran who retired from Test rugby at the end of the 2024 Guinness Six Nations, believes the game plan will now revert to what was seen 13 months ago in Paris when they last played the Springboks.

Writing in his column on TNT Sports, the network he is doing Autumn Nations Series punditry with, Care said: “If England aren't throwing offloads, throwing it from deep and staying in tight games but then losing them, people will say, 'Why don't we at least be a bit looser with our attack?'

“Realistically, if you look at Test match rugby – and I know Steve Borthwick and the coaches rely heavily on stats and trends in games – we got massive success in the World Cup with our kicking game which almost led us to a World Cup final.

“I say almost, we were beating South Africa for 78 minutes. I would expect this weekend that England will go to their kicking game again, because it caused them so many successes in France against South Africa that I think you would be foolish not to try that tactic again.

“So unfortunately, if you are an England fan this weekend, you are probably not going to see them throwing the ball around from everywhere, but I think the fans would take a win whichever way it comes at the moment, and I'm sure the players would as well.

“The double world champions coming to Twickenham – the boys will find something extra in them this week, they just will – they have to. With South Africa comes that fear factor, every time you play against them, you know if you are not on it, they are going to make you look very silly because they are massive, massive men.

“Their physicality is incredible, they have got this incredible scrum who are dominating the whole world, so they are going to try and win penalties there. If there is ever a game you have to be incredibly physical for and just properly pitch up for and leave everything out there, it's this one.

“Like we showed at the World Cup, these lads have got some tangible evidence that a year ago, it was a game that we definitely felt like we should have won. So I'm sure England will be using that as their motivation and their evidence that they caused this team problems before. The boys are definitely capable of doing it again, the big thing is actually going and doing it.”