From The Times :
All Blacks will shine light on Elliot Daly’s defensive flaws
Owen Slot, Chief Rugby Correspondent, Tokyo
When England played Argentina in Tokyo three weekends ago, it seemed that we were at Elliot Daly’s coronation. If you had to pinpoint a day when he finally established himself for good as the England full back, that was it. Both traditional and social media rose to his acclaim.
When England played Australia two weeks later, Daly failed to get a hand on Marika Koroibete as the Wallaby wing scored the try that hauled his side to within one point of England, and with wicked speed, a large chorus on social media started singing a different tune.
No England player has been the subject of such mixed opinion. For the first two years of his career — after coming into the side in 2016 and quickly establishing himself on the wing, which helped him to earn three caps there for the British & Irish Lions — Daly could do no wrong. He was so widely acclaimed that many of us argued that he should be rapidly revamped as the England full back. Eventually Eddie Jones agreed and Daly moved to full back on the tour to South Africa last June, but then he started dropping those high balls and we weren’t so sure.
Now, here we are, four days from England’s biggest game in four years, a semi-final against New Zealand, and Jones has to decide whether the experiment has really ever worked. Actually, that makes it sound as though there is any kind of selection debate. I don’t think there is. At this point, there shouldn’t be.
But is he a risk to England? Without doubt. Is there really any chance that the All Blacks have forgotten how he dropped the ball when they played against him in last year’s autumn international?
From the moment Jones decided to invest in Daly, he went all-in. Daly’s first game at No 15 was the first Test in Johannesburg; since then there have been 18 England Tests and Daly has started at full back in 17 of them.
This is a guy so talented that Jones used to joke about him publicly, about how he could probably score a half-century “without blinking”, take a diving catch at first slip, then drive a golf ball 300 yards straight. “He’s one of those kids, isn’t he?” Jones said. “We’ve all been to school with them.”
It may be that switching to full back has been the hardest thing he has done. It was in November last year that this became apparent. South Africa started it, raining down bombs on him and relishing his failure to defuse them. New Zealand came the following week; they sent Ben Smith head to head with him — yes, Ben Smith, one of the best full backs of his era — and up they went for the high ball. Smith was the outright winner.
I have a line in my notes from the Argentina game 16 days ago. Daly and Emiliano Boffelli, the silky Puma full back went up for a high ball and I noted: “At last! That is the most conclusive 50-50 high ball Daly has ever won.”
Has he now mastered the art? No. As Steve Borthwick has explained, this is “a team skill”. What the England assistant coach meant was that after November, England sharpened up their legal obstruction game. The main reason no team since the All Blacks last year have exposed Daly under the high ball is because of the array of English blockers or “pillars” who stand in front of him and thus slow the kick-chase down.
Does this mean that the All Blacks will not try to expose a weakness they found before? Of course not.
The Koroibete try is another issue. First, though, rewind to the Wales game at Twickenham in August: the 22nd minute, Gareth Davies, the No 9, breaks solo from behind the scrum from 45 metres out, Daly is the last line of defence and shows him the outside. Davies goes out to in and leaves him for dead. It is too easy. Daly barely touches him. Try.
Daly’s task against Koroibete was harder, partly because it was Koroibete — bigger, faster, more powerful, infinitely harder to hold on to — and partly because it was a two-on-one. Daly was the last line of defence and Koroibete had Michael Hooper on his shoulder.
However, again, Daly is turned. Again, he goes neither forward nor back and is caught in a kind of no man’s land. A player such as Matt Burke, the former Wallaby No 15, would have sprinted forward to cut down the danger. The only way that Australia were going to mess up that try was if Daly had at least made him pass or step but Koroibete was forced to do neither; again, Daly barely gets a finger on him.
With cruel timing, the Wallabies had shone a light on Daly’s defensive fallibility. The Kiwis know this. Jones knows it too.
Asked, after the quarter-final, if he had any advice for Daly on these one-to-ones, Jones said: “He’s a good player. He will work that out.” Maybe he will but probably not by Saturday. Like his high-ball defence, England will have to live with Daly’s one-on-one defence too.
They have to because of what Daly now contributes in attack. There are occasional holes in defence and they can be horribly costly. The evidence of how he has changed the England attack is overwhelming.
It is not the way he runs the ball back or his kicking game — which are both strong. It is his skill as England’s third playmaker. It is his fast hands, his link work, the position he takes up between the penultimate passer and the wing.
It was against Ireland in the Six Nations that he really seemed to work out the positioning and timing of his arrival in the attack. That has improved with practice ever since and was at its most effective against Argentina, when he was top-ranked for ball-carries. And the thing about Daly is that they are smart carries because he can do so much.
Before Daly wore the No 15 jersey, England struggled to execute in attack in the opposition 22. Now they almost always look dangerous. Take this away and you denude England’s attack.
There is a perfectly good reason why you cannot just expect Anthony Watson, say, or Jack Nowell, to step into this space and do what Daly does — because they are not born-and-bred outside centres. The irony of Daly’s rise at full back is that he looks his most dynamic and England look their most dangerous when he ghosts up into the position in which he really belongs: outside centre.
England won’t change their No 15. Not now that their attack is looking so smooth. If they are going to beat the All Blacks, they need to score tries; move Daly and they score fewer.
Jones has cut himself a deal. He believes he will gain more in attack than he loses in defence. At this point, it is the right deal.
Topic: Daly in the spotlight (Read 5662 times)
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