Ben Youngs reveals the tactical tweak that might have seen England beat the Boks

Although Youngs was not included in the matchday squad against the Springboks, he recently revealed on The Rugby Pod how Steve Borthwick’s team was unable to implement the necessary tactical shift. Youngs is currently England’s most capped player and recently retired from Test rugby.

“So in the South Africa game, I really thought we’re going to do this, we’re exactly where we need to be,” the 127-cap England player remarked, “with ten minutes to go until RG Snyman scored.”

But when he scored, you might have thought, ‘Well, South Africa has all the momentum; we don’t need set pieces.’ From a tactical standpoint, we had been excellent up to that point in terms of going for contestable kicks. However, we had to adapt. We ought to have gone for the long haul and avoided competitions since entering one simply takes one knock-on-scramble. Let them mark it, boot it as long as you can; that’s okay, they can have a scrum pen in their own 22. However, the notice started to appear as soon as we started landing contestables halfway through, and we were unable to adjust. That was the bit where if we just made that little change,

In the dying moments of the game, Handre Pollard converted a penalty kick from halfway after a scrum penalty, which was exactly the opposite of what England would have desired. While chasing a short kick, Freddie Steward knocked someone, maybe resulting in a scrum. It was an incredible performance. The outcome might have been different if the kick had been given more time.

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