If the Six Nations is an elongated Lions trial for the players then with Andy Farrell being in no rush to finalise his management selection the same applies to the coaching staff.
As a former Lions defence coach himself, Farrell will have been paying particular attention to this area in round one of the championship as he ponders who to entrust with the back-door latch against the Wallabies.
Any performance against Wales at the moment has to carry an asterisk because of the pitiful state of Warren Gatland’s side but a big, fat zero in the debit column for France in the opening game will have drawn the attention of the Lions head coach.
There had only been six previous occasions of a side being nilled in the Six Nations era. Shaun Edwards must have felt a glow of satisfaction afterwards from what doubled as a raised hand in Farrell’s direction.
Edwards had said he would swim to Australia to be on the Lions tour. If he is to turn Farrell’s head he needs his French side to make an unarguable case for him over these five games.
“I know he’d love to go. I know there’s still a fishbone stuck in his throat that Warren Gatland didn’t take him on a Lions tour,” said former France defence coach Dave Ellis.
“The way Wales are defending it won’t be anyone from there. I don’t think he will be taking anybody from England. Scotland? Perhaps. Steve Tandy did the job in South Africa last time but Andy Farrell has got the option of Simon Easterby who he has worked well with in Ireland and Easterby has been a Lions player himself.
When I didn’t get the opportunity in 2005 I went to work for New Zealand. I wonder, if the same thing happens to Shaun, if he’ll work for the opposition.
“If they were going to play South Africa or the All Blacks it would be a call [to Edwards] that would be worth making. You’d want all the best people on board. But, no disrespect to Australia, Andy might want to keep it in-house and just stick with people he has worked with recently.
“When I didn’t get the opportunity in 2005 I went to work for New Zealand. I wonder, if the same thing happens to Shaun again, if he’ll go and do what I did with the opposition.”
In 2005 Sir Clive Woodward took two defence coaches to New Zealand on that ill-fated tour but there still wasn’t room for Ellis whose French side had just finished runners-up to Wales in the championship. Phil Larder and Mike Ford went instead.
Overlooked in favour of two Lancastrians, the Yorkshireman took up an offer from Sir Graham Henry to join the All Blacks coaching staff for the series. New Zealand won 3-0, conceding just three tries in three Tests.
It is a harder task to make a Lions tour from across the Channel. They are a Home Unions creation and there will be voices in Farrell’s ear advising him to shop at home.
Edwards was Sir Ian McGeechan’s defensive lieutenant on the 2009 tour, but his close confidant Gatland chose not to take him on any of the subsequent three voyages, despite their remarkable success in Wales.
No Six Nations coach has won more titles than Edwards’ five but tour places are not handed out for lifetime service. Edwards is 58 now but Ellis is in regular contact and feels he is at the peak of his powers – helped by concentrating solely on the national side.
“I think the good thing with Shaun now is that France is all he does so he has time,” said Ellis.
“I told him: ‘don’t go working with clubs, just concentrate on France and take your time out so you can freshen up.’
“I did it for 12 years with clubs and country and doing that drains you completely. It’s never a good thing.”
The club/country juggle is precisely what England defence coach Joe El-Abd is attempting to pull off in seeing out the season at Oyonnax. England have leaked 21 tries in his five games in the role. He has still to prove his appointment out of left field by his close friend Steve Borthwick was the right one.
The blitz defence has had its day. You’ve seen in the first three games of the Six Nations a lot of teams chipping over the top and that breaks everything up completely.
El-Abd has set his stall out to change his predecessor Felix Jones’s all-out blitz – the system Edwards is credited with inventing. The jury may remain out on El-Abd but Ellis thinks he is on the right track with his style makeover.
“The blitz defence has had its day. You’ve seen in the first three games of the Six Nations a lot of teams chipping over the top and that breaks everything up completely.
“I think England actually defended well early on in Dublin. I liked the two Curry boys together, they worked really hard, and Ireland didn’t have any options apart from kicking. They wanted to go two or three phases the same way but England wouldn’t let them.
“I’d like to know whether England just expected Ireland to do the same thing in the second half. Good sides are capable of altering things.”
The switch-up which England could not live with left them exposed as unreactive to a changing picture.
“Ireland went to what they call an 11 pattern (one phase one way and then one phase back) or a 21 pattern (two phases one way and then one phase back) in the second half,” he said.
“It looked like England just had their minds focused on what had been happening in the first half so they overfolded – they sent too many players round the corner – and when the Irish came back they cut them apart.
“Tadhg Beirne’s try was an example. Ireland go one phase one way from the lineout, Jamison Gibson-Park brings it back and because England have sent too many players around the corner, he just fixes the defender and Ireland pour through. Chandler Cunningham-South screws everything up by not looking at who he should be defending against so Gibson-Park gives it to James Lowe who is straight through the gap and then gives it to Beirne who scores.”
Ellis’ contention is France are further ahead and more structurally solid in their defence than England and Edwards – who awards a bottle of Dom Perignon to the side’s best defender after every game – has moved it on this season.
If England think they might be able to exploit the absence of the injured Gael Fickou, France’s backline defensive captain, in the 13 channel they may need to think again.
“Pierre-Louis Barassi I know really well because I coached him at Lyon when he was a youngster in the espoirs [academy],” said Ellis.
“He was a bit of a headless chicken then but he has evolved in the Toulouse system working with Romain Ntamack and Thomas Ramos. For me he’s the perfect 13 France have needed.”
England away will certainly be more of a test for the blue rearguard than Wales at home. Steve Borthwick’s side scored three tries in Dublin, albeit two of them coming late on with the game gone. This is where the championship proper starts for France.
But if the bulky blue line proves as watertight at the Allianz Stadium, there may be life yet in Edwards’ Lions dream.
