Richard Cockerill: England must not try to copy All Blacks

England’s strengths lie in a more attritional approach than an ‘all-court game’

"There are lots who misbehave. Manu needed some help" - Richard Cockerill, Leicester (Getty)

The vast majority of English union aficionados may have spent the last few days trying to work out how to copy the New Zealanders – or at least, how to emulate their astonishing success rate at international level – but the men running the show in the Premiership are refusing to entertain the idea of a widening gulf between southern hemisphere rugby and the stuff played in the north.

Richard Cockerill, the rugby director at Leicester, was fastest out of the blocks at yesterday’s European Champions Cup launch in London, arguing that the “promised land of how others do things” might not be all it is cracked up to be. “I don’t want us to play like New Zealand, because we can’t,” said the former England hooker. “I think we have to play the game our way – play to our strengths – and up here in the northern hemisphere, especially in England, we have a very attritional approach. We’re bloody-minded about what we do.

“We’ve shown we can play differently from the southern teams, that we can compete with them and beat them. Back in 2003, Clive Woodward’s team beat Australia and New Zealand away and then won the World Cup. That side didn’t play a fancy all-court game. They did what English teams do really well.

“And in the first Test against the All Blacks in Auckland last year, when England had to field a mix of a team, they got stuck into them at the set-piece, went hard at the breakdown, forced them to struggle for every bit of possession and made them look ordinary. I don’t see why we always chase the Holy Grail of being like someone else. Let’s concentrate on putting our own house in order and reclaiming our identity.”

The Sam Burgess saga is rumbling on with Bruce Craig, the Bath chairman and financier-in-chief, indicating that the miscast and unsettled rugby league import would stay with the club unless a serious amount of cash appeared on the negotiating table.