Paul Lewis: England shackled by running & passing

While much of New Zealand was still having a bit of a snipe at the All Black performance in the first test against Ireland, there was another test match going on which made it clear that England, defending World Cup champions, will not likely win another in the foreseeable future.

England are a rugby problem you wouldn't want to have. They won the World Cup in 2003 on the back of the best forward pack in the world and Jonny Wilkinson's kicking. It wasn't pretty but it worked. Since then, they have tried to play a more expansive game, before rushing back to the warm, familiar bosom of forward-dominated bash and boredom.

Except for the England team against the Wallabies last weekend. Coach Andy Robinson left at home some top players who needed a break and chose an adventurously break-the-mould team. In the pack, he selected three openside flankers - captain Pat Sanderson (who played at No 8), Lewis Moody (No 7) and Magnus Lund - experimenting in another area England (and most Northern Hemisphere sides) struggle with: the race for the loose ball and flankers adept at turning over ball.

The match revealed, however, that only Moody can yet be regarded as a hunter-gatherer anywhere near the league of Richie McCaw, George Smith, Chris Masoe and Phil Waugh.

In the backs, he chose Mike Catt - which made lots of Southern Hemispherites fall about laughing as Catt is approximately the same age as Fred Allen and all some can remember is him being turned into roadkill by Jonah Lomu as the big fella beat England by himself at the World Cup 11 years ago. Robinson also went for talented young centre Mathew Tait, fleet-footed wingers Tom Varndell and Tom Voyce and fullback Iain Balshaw. This was a backline made for running and the team selection a wholesale shift from the England of recent times.

It's at this point that I'd like to introduce tragic Sunday Times writer Stephen Jones. Last weekend, he clanked his dentures about how - nine years ago - he began warning the Southern Hemisphere about their "powder puff" (yes, he's still using the term) approach to the Super 12 and how not heeding his warning cost the All Blacks two World Cups.

That's not quite how we remember it but, let it go, Stephen. It was a long time ago and even if the Australians haven't heeded your warning yet (genuflect, genuflect... oh, great Welsh master of rugby; you're so talented and the rest of the universe so worthless...) they still managed to beat England 34-3 with a "powder puff" scrum and have obviously not yet found a decent loosehead prop.

England's problems are embodied in the clinging-to-the-past, brain-dead conservatism of Jones and his ilk. Catt showed why he had been selected - he played pretty well and is obviously the best distributor of a rugby ball in England. But it is incredible that the world's largest rugby nation, with more players than anyone else, keep selecting Catt because they can't produce anyone else as a feeder and finder of space.

This experiment with expression demonstrated that England cannot play the running game. They do not have the basics, the fundamental skills. They simply can't do it. Varndell - who is undeniably quick - threw a grotesque pass to butcher a scoring chance; a transfer of which a New Zealand schoolboy would have been ashamed.

Sanderson, who otherwise looked a handy player, ignored a support player next to him to throw a 30m pass which might still be orbiting the earth if it hadn't hit the man selling ice-creams in row 37 of the stand.

The English backs defended well and, although a bit unlucky on occasion, were unable to muster anything resembling penetration, which could give rise to all sorts of Viagra jokes which I will resist. All that pace but no punch.

Australian and NZ rugby players grow up honing their ball skills. At every break in school, you can see them playing impromptu games of touch. I can remember a game on a vacant lot on the way home from school. There was a gale blowing and occasionally 50c-sized hailstones but we hammered on, hooked on the game and ruining our shoes and uniforms, until someone's mum appeared, dragging her son home by the ear to attend to supposedly more important things. Oh, yes, that's right, it was me...

This playing-for-the-sheer-fun-of-it element is obviously missing from English rugby. Something is wrong at school-club-representative level. Their players - even young stars like Tait - just do not seem to have the basic ball skills, vision and ability to put a man into space.

Curiously, they always seem able to produce scrummagers. But it isn't really scrums that win games. Even when Jones lamented the "powder puff" scrums of the Southern Hemisphere, it was obvious: scrums are more quickly fixed. The inability to pass, catch and put a man into a gap, well, that takes generations - and England are only just starting. Tries win matches, not scrums, important though they are.

Jones, rather than trying to score cheap points off us lot, should be lending his journalistic weight to discovering reasons why England don't produce runners and passers and campaigning to fix it. The French have runners and passers. The Irish have Brian O'Driscoll and Gordon D'Arcy's pass to set up O'Driscoll's try last week was arguably the pass of the night. Wales have a few clever backs.

But not England. Unless they learn how to score tries they won't win a World Cup again for a long time.