Six Nations 2015: George Ford's flair gives England much-needed magic dust

COMMENT: Others would have remained consumed by his failures. Ford simply put the demons away

George Ford scores a try during England’s 55-35 win over Franc (GETTY IMAGES)

Here comes the week when we engage in a pretence that the predictable England football team beating Lithuania is a reason to be optimistic about the future and when we probably hear that there will be no casualties after the cricket team’s catastrophic spring, so it is a moment to reflect on the sheer, brilliant, unscripted sangfroid of what Stuart Lancaster’s players delivered on Saturday.

The glass can always be half empty in sport and of course a fourth successive second place in the Six Nations provides grounds for pessimism. Not to mention the cold, hard fact that the All Blacks display a ruthlessness amid the kind of mathematics that Lancaster’s players found themselves with at around 6.30pm on Saturday, needing a converted try in the last five minutes. For Lancaster, the memory is still fresh of watching Malakai Fekitoa breaking the last line of resistance and Colin Slade holding his nerve to convert for that most late and implausible of Kiwi triumphs against Australia last October, because the All Blacks are always – always – the England coach’s reference point. “Accuracy under pressure, that’s what defines the All Blacks, he observed late on Saturday night.

But while there were plenty of the quite necessary doubts about what Lancaster defined as an inclination to “overplay at times” and what you and I might define as a “failure to remember to defend”, what we discovered in a moment the likes of which the World Cup will be very hard pushed to deliver defied all the management-speak and pursuit of marginal gain. It was that England possess a 22-year-old with the quality of grace under the most searing pressure.

It was not just that George Ford’s head was clearest and his kicking most measured and precise in those febrile closing moments against the French, but that he had put from mind all that had gone before – because the first half and some of the second had not been his finest, if truth be told. Others would have remained consumed by thoughts of his charged down kicks and failures to find touch, as the temperature rose. Ford simply put the demons away. He always just starts again.

Chris Robshaw reflected of Ford, Anthony Watson and Jonathan Joseph in the aftermath that “some of the lads have to go through it. They have to feel what it’s like to be under pressure,” though the more precise truth is that Lancaster needed to feel what it was like for them under pressure. Yes, Lancaster told Ford before his baptism against Samoa last autumn that “you are the leader; just go and lead”. Yes, he watched him upended by a centre’s monumental tackle in that game and not blink. But a coach’s nagging uncertainty about how a player will respond to a cauldron like Saturday’s is a story as old the hills.

Sir Matt Busby felt about the desperately introspective boy called George Best and listed him as “reserve”, to preserve him from stage fright, when he scrawled out the team-sheet in ballpoint for Manchester United’s team sheet against West Bromwich Albion, 52 years ago. Best made his full debut – and played so invincibly that Busby later wondered aloud whether what he had observed had been a dream.

No-one knows what a player has in store until moments like these, though the remarkable aspect of the Six Nations tournament which has so enhanced the reputations of Ford and 23-year-old Joseph is that their part was so unscripted. It took the injuries to Manu Tuilagi and Brad Barritt to give Joseph his chance and another to Owen Farrell to ensure that his ousting by Ford last autumn was more than a temporary measure. The presence of these two young individuals has imbued England with an attacking brand of English rugby as un-English as Saturday’s scoreline.

The question now for Lancaster is how to revert a little more to type, reinforcing the former defensive essence which Farrell epitomises, without taking away what the coach described late on Saturday as a “mindset to play”. This less than elementary decision will hinge, among other factors, on whether Lancaster’s prediction that Ford’s goal-kicking will improve proves accurate. Farrell gives greater security in that department, as well as greater solidity. English rugby union history tells us that goal kicking is the priority when you want to win a World Cup. And defence? One of Lancaster’s first reflections on Saturday was that his side had conceded more tries in this Six Nations than the previous edition.

But there was also a look in his eye when he reflected on what he had seen in Ford because he knows that the player’s capacity for the unexpected can take England to new places next autumn which Farrell will not.

Ireland captain Paul O' Connell lifts the trophy (GETTY IMAGES)

“We’ve got to make sure whether we are winning or losing that every player counts because you never know what’s going to help you or not,” Ford reflected, wearing a stitch to a cut beneath his eye and whose quiet Lancashire strains would have better fitted a man who’d just spent the afternoon in front of the television. “But this is something we will be proud of and take forward and be confident from, even though there’s areas of the game we need to fix up.”

He is magic dust for a nation that sorely needs it.

(Natwest)

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