England haven’t clicked as an attacking force in their two November Tests so far and I think a lot of that is down to the struggles of the centre pairing.
In the narrow defeat by New Zealand, Ollie Lawrence and Henry Slade did well defensively but were non-existent with ball in hand.
Then, against Australia, the two swapped positions with Slade moving to No 12 and Lawrence at outside centre. On paper, the move shouldn’t have made too big a difference. But what did happen was that England’s blitz defence was badly exposed. It allowed Australia to score a mammoth 42 points at Twickenham.
That should never happen to any England side. Lawrence was far more lively going forward in the Wallabies game, but the bottom line is that England still lost.
To have any chance against back-to-back world champions South Africa on Saturday, England need Slade and Lawrence to produce the sort of complete display we haven’t seen yet, not this month at…
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