Rugby World Cup 2019: George Ford the sacrificial lamb in what could prove Eddie Jones’s Sam Burgess moment

Fly-half has been dropped from the starting line-up four years after experiencing exactly the same

Eddie Jones has taken a huge gamble in changing a tried and tested team to move Owen Farrell back to fly-half – but it is a roll of the dice that could well prove to be his Sam Burgess moment.

In 2015 Stuart Lancaster threw four years of preparations out of the window to select rugby league convert Burgess in the hope that he was the key to resolving England’s well-documented problems in midfield, only for the move to destabilise the squad and bring an imbalance that would result in their early pool-stage elimination.

Though Henry Slade is no Sam Burgess, he has not started a match this season, with the Premiership final on 1 June his last full appearance due to a knee ligament injury suffered in August. It is a risk to throw him into the deep end in a Rugby World Cup quarter-final, particularly against an Australia side that saves their best performances for this stage.

Slade’s promotion comes at George Ford’s expense, with the fly-half desperately unlucky to drop to the bench after three impressive showings so far in Japan. Jones will dress it up as a squad effort and that the Leicester No 10 has not been dropped, but the matter of fact is that it completely changes how England will play.

The decision may have been planned all along, with the three selections against Tonga, United States and Argentina possible decoys to hinder Australia’s preparations for this match, but it could also be a last-gasp effort to get Farrell back firing on all cylinders. It is no secret that Farrell has not been at his best this tournament while playing at inside centre, and the move to fly-half may be the key to reigniting the spark within him.

Jones has gone back to the midfield combination that resulted in the impressive victory over Ireland at the start of the Six Nations, but also the one that failed to fire against Wales three weeks later, meaning there is no certainty to finding the right selection in his back line. Ford and Farrell looked to have rekindled the best of their twin-playmaker partnership when England thrashed the Irish in August, but Jones appears to have decided that they are not clicking quite how he wants. Scott Wisemantel’s admission that Farrell described his own performance against Argentina as “clunky” confirmed as much.

The sad irony is that just like 2015, Ford has found himself as England’s sacrificial lamb. The fly-half was jettisoned from the starting XV for the infamous defeat against Wales, where Lancaster allowed his doubts get the better of him by ditching his preferred midfield partnership in an attempt to shackle Jamie Roberts. It didn’t work then, and there’s a danger it won’t work now. England appear to be deploying a gameplan to disrupt the Wallabies rather than the one that will impose their own style on them – something that they have done in the last six victories over Australia. If it doesn’t work, it will be Jones’s head on the block.