Ben Youngs calling attack ‘clunky’ exposes England’s problem

It is a damning indictment of England’s inability to find their attacking stride throughout this Six Nations that one of the players who emerges in credit never took to the field. For, in a strange way, this has been a good tournament for Owen Farrell. Certainly Manu Tuilagi’s importance to England has been magnified by his absence, their reliance on him laid bare, but Farrell’s return to the fold is likely at the first available opportunity given the problems Eddie Jones’s side have encountered.

It was a similar story against France. Ellis Genge’s running from deep and Freddie Steward’s aerial prowess were strong points but from early on in the contest it was apparent England were swimming against the tide. Steward managed to finish off a period of pressure for England’s eighth try of the tournament – or third in matches not including Italy – and one of those, against Wales, should arguably not have counted.

Had England’s attack clicked into gear, produced anything like the kind of rhythm to match the rhetoric coming from Jones and his assistants, the avenues back into the side for Farrell would have seemed fewer. Ben Youngs’s choice of word to describe how the attack has gone in practice – “clunky” – can often be an apt way of describing Farrell’s performances when he is out of form but you sense Jones will waste little time in turning to the Saracen on the tour of Australia this summer.

He is not everyone’s cup of tea and whether he is given back the captaincy is a debate for another day but Jones would expect his return to bring clarity because there were several occasions on Saturday night when England players were almost caricatures of cluelessness. Certainly, French pressure and the intensity of the atmosphere