Stuart Barnes' talking points: November Tests, match fees and England's openside

Stuart Barnes talks England, Wales and Ireland's November schedules, the issue of match fees and Eddie Jones' search for an openside among much more!

1. A little story caught my eye Monday morning: Manu Tuilagi and Mako Vunipola encouraging England's players to give five per cent of their match fee for the Samoan game to their opponents.

Let's not get bogged down in the financial detail but suffice to say England's players are extremely well remunerated, Samoa's are not. I'd go further and offer five per cent of the Twickenham match day profit too.

In the past I have heard English Union figures state that other nations' travails are not their problem. Well, they are. The fewer decent international opponents, the weaker the game. If you want to understand why union needs strong sides like Samoa and Tonga take a look at the ongoing rugby league World Cup and the depressing array of cricket scores. It downgrades the competition. League players switch codes to play in a World Cup with a higher profile.

On a similar theme, I hear Eddie Jones wants England to establish a single World Cup base in Japan, arguing it is good for English preparation. It's only right for Jones to do all he can to give his team every possible edge but if the tournament rules dictate 19 other teams must move about through the course of the contest then so too should England.

In the interest of a fair competition and a more competitive global game. Oh yes, back to where this point began...hats off to the thinking of Mako and Manu.

2. The game can go global but it has to be competitive. I don't want to bash our league cousins but Scotland - at time of writing - can apparently still qualify for the next stages having lost their opening games to Tonga and New Zealand by a combined total of 124-10.

Three Scots sent home for being drunk is hardly going to impact upon the competition. It is a challenge for not just league, but union to lift its own standards worldwide.

While I shall be sitting in the West Stand at Twickenham on Saturday I would love to see what reads like a potential World Cup final, but a football one, Germany versus Brazil. One day, who knows...but it won't happen if the rich simply sit back and wallow in their pots of profit.

3. In Gus Pichot, World Rugby has a prominent figure fighting for the underdog. The former Argentina scrum-half is probably going to be sitting somewhere near me on Saturday as Argentina look to arrest an awful run of results.

A victory at Twickenham would be an antidote to their under-powered performances up front and their naive running game all round. The romantics can dream but with men like Facundo Isa and many others currently unavailable this particular nightmare for England is unlikely to become any sort of reality.

4. There's been a thin mist of uncertainty surrounding the England selection philosophy for this November's set of internationals. Will the Lions play or not? And if so, in which games?

I would expect a strong team to be picked for Saturday, with Australia, clearly England's big game of the month next up. Samoa seems set for experimentation. Hope the young ones selected have a heart for the financially less fortunate Samoan team as well as a head for the Test arena...

5. Anything less than three out of three will be a setback for England. As Steve Hansen has been saying recently, you can learn a lot more in defeat than victory but this England team has to reboot its momentum.

They may have beaten Argentina away this summer but the last high profile game they played was against Ireland when they were well beaten.

6. The search for an openside is on. Tom Curry, Sam Underhill and Chris Robshaw have all been mentioned in dispatches, as has Exeter's Sam Simmonds.

I suspect the Exeter man has received too much support from the national media for that great contrarian, Jones. He didn't travel to Bristol for Monday's scrum session with Wales. Is this a sign he's out of contention for Argentina or working on some insidious detail of his game as a new found seven?

7. Ireland finished their last Six Nations with a convincing win against England but this masked a couple of average performances earlier in the tournament. Joe Schmidt needs to turn Ireland into a team of out-and-out winners.

If the South Africa that threw everything at New Zealand run out onto the pitch it is going to be one hell of a contest. But with South Africa, there has been so much inconsistency in form, selection and the inextricable link of the two that its best to just wait and see.

8. Waiting is something Wales are used to when it comes to the Southern Hemisphere. Gatland has a cracking record against the beautiful south with the Lions but his record as Wales coach is embarrassing.

The continued wait to beat the All Blacks has lasted over 60 years. Not beating his home country is one thing. But twelve straight defeats against a Wallabies team that are taking the art of peaking and troughing to new highs - and lows - that is quite another. It is pathetic.

Wales are going to play the two playmaker Lions/England way. Owen Williams is the likeliest inside-centre, coming up against one of the world's best footballing 12's in Kurtley Beale...unlucky 13 for Australia or more misery for Wales?

9. Australia scored 60 points against Japan but were disappointed with their clearout work at the breakdown.

In the (European) summer of 2016 when England beat them 3-0, James Haskell's display as a one-man wrecking ball did the damage. They'll be wanting to address any such similar deficiency ahead of the physical European challenge.

10. A few thoughts from the weekend. Does the Barbarians openside, Kwagga Smith, have an English grandparent...his name is Smith, not Smit, after all.

He was sensational in every aspect of the game against New Zealand for all eighty minutes...hell, just checked, he is a South African sevens star...if I watched the truncated version of the game I would have known better.

La Rochelle beat league leaders Lyon, AWAY! They are winning, playing both pretty and ugly. Two more tries for Nemani Nadolo as Montpellier beat Clermont.

I haven't seen the scores yet but I'll lay a wager neither were as good as the one Niko Matawalu created for Nick Grigg in the Glasgow win against Leinster. He's capable of causing panic in defensive ranks and within his own coaching staff.

He is the rugby dictionary definition of the world 'unpredictable'. Here's to some unpredictability at the weekend...