Opinion: England’s five midfield options who could fill the large Manu Tuilagi hole

Since his international debut for England in 2011, centre Manu Tuilagi has been England’s most effective rugby player. When he’s fit of course.

In that decade and a bit since his bow, England have played 135 Test matches and Tuilagi has managed to feature in just 47 of those, starting a remarkable 40 times only.

Without Tuilagi, England’s backs have failed to gather go-forward. They lack impact, pace, power and direction, four key ingredients of any Test backline. The chat has been simple – find another Tuilagi, reduce England’s reliance on him, whistle up another 115kg centre to do a similar job.

But here’s the thing; England do not produce players like Tuilagi. It’s simply not in our genetics. The combination of bulk, fast twitch fibres, skill and power come around once in a decade in the northern hemisphere, where young athletes just don’t mature in physique and in performance quite like the abundance of naturally skilled runners from many parts of the southern hemisphere, and in particular, the South Sea Islands, who provide many of the juggernaut backs we see in Test rugby.

Before Tuilagi, England had Jeremy Guscott – OK, he was a world class outside centre, one of the greats, but he was all about pace over power, despite his defensive brilliance. Will Carling, Will Greenwood, Mike Tindall, Mike Catt, Paul Dodge and Clive Woodward were all wonderful players but they were either skilled enablers for others or defensive rocks. So, to simply say to English rugby, clone me another Tuilagi is rather disingenuous. There’s not been one before him and there’s not one on the horizon now.

The key is to learn to play in other ways. To use running mobile forwards such as Ellis Genge, Tom Curry and Alex Dombrandt to hit up the