Former England boss Eddie Jones has praised Henry Pollock as one of the game’s “wild horses” but questioned whether the back rower can start and last 80 minutes against the Springboks.
Jones, now head coach of Japan, gave his verdict on The Good, The Bad & The Rugby podcast ahead of his side’s meeting with England at Twickenham on Saturday.
Pollock scored two tries on the wing against Australia last weekend after coming off the bench when Immanuel Feyi-Waboso went off injured.
‘The wild horses’
Asked whether he would have liked to coach the Northampton forward, Jones made clear he likes what he sees.
“Yeah. Well, I think you always want the players that want to run, mate. The wild horses,” he said.
“You don’t want the horses you have to whip, you know? They’re the hard ones. You want players that want to go, and he wants to go.
“Like his big challenge though, as a light back rower: can he make it at Test rugby? You know, he can do all these little cameo roles and he can do it well, but can he start in the game against South Africa and play 80 minutes, contest the breakdown, you know, do his job in that area? That’s the challenge for him as a player.”
Jones had already rated hybrid players as “underrated” earlier in the show, arguing that wings now need more pace than anyone else on the field while out-working the rest of the team.
“The work rate of the wingers now is just so important,” he added. “Always has been, but now it’s even more important, mate.”
‘A specialist position’
Jonny May, who played on the wing for England under Jones, enjoyed Pollock’s cameo but does not see him starting there.
“Just to comment on Pollock’s performance, like it was great. Like I said, I love seeing it – the nutmeg, the glitzy bits, the two tries,” May said.
“I don’t anticipate him starting just because the wing is a specialist position nowadays, like the way you’ve got to get high in defence and cover your back and backfield coverage – like that isn’t something he knows.
“To be fair, the more I think about it, there’s no chance he will start on the wing, ’cause he’s not a specialist winger. But it showed that if he needs to, he can come on and do a job.
“And what an experience, ’cause he might need to do that in a World Cup semi-final. So it’s a great opportunity that he had to learn and he can develop, and that can be a real string to his bow.”
May added that any opponent facing Pollock on the wing should test him without the ball.
“Make him defend, mate. Make him defend a couple of people on a shoulder ball, on a ball across the front, look at that backfield space,” he said.
England face Japan at Twickenham on Saturday before hosting New Zealand, a fixture Jones called “England’s big, big test”.
Comments
No one has weighed in yet.
Be the first - what did you make of it?