England scrum key to beating Australia, says Stuart Barnes
Thursday 1 October 2015 16:29, UK
England must dominate Australia in the scrum if they are to win Saturday's pivotal World Cup Pool A clash at Twickenham, according to Sky Sports pundit Stuart Barnes.
The hosts' qualification hopes hang by a thread following last Saturday's dramatic 28-25 defeat to Wales and a win is crucial for Stuart Lancaster's men if they hope to advance to the quarter-finals.
Owen Farrell has held off the challenge of George Ford and again starts at fly-half, with Jonathan Joseph, Joe Launchbury and Ben Morgan the three players to come into the starting line-up.
Saracens stand-off Farrell was perfect from the kicking tee against Wales as he landed six from six and added a drop-goal and Barnes believes that gives him an edge over Australian counterpart Bernard Foley.
However, the Wallabies are likely to hold an advantage when it comes to the breakdown as Michael Cheika has the luxury of fielding two of the most destructive forces in world rugby in his back-row in Michael Hooper and David Pocock.
Barnes believes England's kicking superiority and Australia's breakdown dominance will largely cancel each other out and sees the game being decided by the visitors' ability to compete with an English scrum that was dominant for large periods against the Welsh.
"You look at goal-kicking. Australia have a number of decent kickers, they do not have any world-class kickers. England have a world-class kicker," said Barnes.
"You look at the breakdown. That is an area where England have been really weak in the tournament and Australia could be the best in the world.
"But I think if England can out-scrummage them, they can play the territory and play where they want to play.
"That is the big if. In the summer, Australia's scrum looked good but most of the southern hemisphere teams were quite passive. England will be aggressive.
"If Australia withstand the scrum, they will win. If they don't, I can see England nicking it. It is going to be thrilling either way."
Barnes was highly critical of Lancaster's decision to drop Ford for the game against Wales but has less of an issue with the team selected to face Australia and is optimistic England can get the win they need.
"I really don't think they had too many options with the team they have named," Barnes said.
"Personally I might have liked to have seen Ford and Farrell at 10 and 12 but once they named Farrell [at fly-half] with Ford on the bench, they were never going to flip-flop there.
"As for England's chances, even though they lost to Wales they must have a great chance.
"Wales had more emotion than England. They came to England and they tapped into Twickenham. It was outstanding.
"But this is last-chance saloon for England if Wales beat Fiji. The thought of England going out in the pool stages - they will be more emotionally charged than Australia."
