It’s the sort of dilemma pitched to many a English rugby fan – start one, bench one, drop one – what would you do? A perfect problem for a coach when you’ve got an embarrassment of riches.
The outside world sees it as dropping him but internally it will be seen as utilising the best 23 over 80 minutes to beat a difficult opposition in. To have a player of George’s quality and experience to view the game from the sidelines, then come on and impact it when you most need it, is invaluable.
It looks like England on Sunday expect a looser kicking strategy to bring Marcus into his natural game of unstructured running rugby.So what can I tell you about Owen Farrell? He is one of the greats of English rugby, let’s get that straight for starters. He has 109 caps, and isn’t that amazing? Only four other Englishmen have passed the century mark, and three of them are in this squad: Ben Youngs, Courtney and Dan Cole.
Owen is a phenomenal singer, belting out a tune in the shower, and as a good apprentice he always had a fresh-ground coffee ready for me in the morning, but we didn’t finish the day discussing philosophy or films or the affairs of the world.Did Owen always show a desire to be captain of England? When you are given the chance to lead, maybe at your club first, or in his case in England age groups, you then want a crack at it with the national team if you can. To see if you can make things better.