Ollie Phillips: My Autumn Nations Series end-of-term report for home nations
With just one fixture remaining of this year’s Autumn Nations Series it is fair to say that the four home nations have had varied results.
While strong performances on the continent from France, and even Italy at times, show growth across the Channel it appears that back home the four teams – whose players are meant to be auditioning for spots on the British and Irish Lions tour next summer – have been disappointing.
So how have they rated? I’ve pulled out my school report ranking system to deliver the verdict.
ENGLAND – C
It is difficult to mark England for this autumn. On one hand they have been poor in letting winnable games get away from them, but on the other hand they’ve allowed Marcus Smith to begin pulling the strings and they’ve improved aspects of their game.
But having lost two coaches and backed a blitz defence that has not always worked, Steve Borthwick was forced to field a strong side against Japan just to ensure his team won at least one match this month.
It meant that some players who should have been given a shot were lingering around for England A while the national team were blowing game after game.
They’ve been fine – close at times – but they’re a long way off the finished article.
WALES – E
You may think that Wales’s autumn has been a complete and utter failure, and in some aspects it has.
They were humiliated at home to Fiji, who won in Cardiff for the first time in their history, and they extended their winless run to 12 games. Furthermore there were thousands of empty seats at each fixture and they scored fewer than half as many points as they conceded.
But the process has proven Warren Gatland right in his frank assessment of where Wales are at the moment and that, with it, has unveiled a number of issues for them to sort out.
And there’s no denying that the experiences faced by the likes of Archie Griffin, who was given a rough scrummaging lesson by club colleague Thomas du Toit last weekend, will only improve those players in the long term.
So an F may be the obvious mark here, but there are clear work-ons for Wales now – and everybody finally recognises that.
SCOTLAND – B
Scotland have had the best autumn of the home nations. They were astonishingly good against Australia last week and smartly set up matches against Portugal and Fiji, the latter outside of the Test window, to offset the inevitable loss against South Africa.
It has allowed the coaching team to try out combinations and give a raft of uncapped, or minimally capped, players a chance to show what they could do.
But that South Africa game will be a huge disappointment for Scotland. They had opportunities but yet again couldn’t score a try against the Boks.
There’s room for improvement but they’re establishing themselves as a team with depth beyond the opening XV, something they’ve been criticised for failing to do in the past.
IRELAND – C
Ireland have a game to go, against Australia, so we cannot judge them completely just yet.
But in Andy Farrell’s last tournament before he takes up the Lions gig for a year, Ireland have regressed.
They were poor in blooding new players ahead of the Six Nations and they struggled in both their loss to New Zealand and their win over Argentina.
Ireland look to be the team most in transition, despite what is going on with Wales, because their old guard are gone and the new wave – especially at No10 – aren’t filling the void.
For them, at least, three wins from four – assuming a positive result over Australia on Saturday – makes for better reading than some of the other nations.
Former England Sevens captain Ollie Phillips is the founder of Optimist Performance. Follow Ollie @OlliePhillips11