Plenty of problems around the pivot

Some World Cup coaches have been unlucky with their out-halves - others have just got their timing wrong. Seldom has so many nations gone to bat with so many question marks over their tens

BIG MISS: France's talismanic fly-half Romain Ntamack will miss the World Cup

Carter Gordon’s long night in Paris was less than seven minutes old last weekend when Jonathan Danty took a pass from Antoine Dupont off a French lineout. The gargantuan centre was five metres out when he took possession and already in fifth gear. You don’t need to have seen what followed to know how that ended.

Gordon wasn’t the first ten to be panzered by the La Rochelle giant and he won’t be the last. The more pressing concern for Eddie Jones was a fitful effort with the boot as Gordon landed just one of five attempts on goal and left ten points behind him. The vast majority of those were spurned in a first half when the contest was still alive and kicking.

“All we can do is work with the young kid,” Jones said after the 41-17 loss.

Gordon was earning just his fourth cap and he isn’t even the regular kicker for the Melbourne Rebels. His inexperience was evident weeks before, on his first start against the All Blacks at the famed MCG, when he struggled with something as basic as his restarts. Talented though he is, this is all a big ask on the doorstep of a World Cup.

Go back to November and Australia lost by a single point at the same Saint-Denis venue under Dave Rennie. Bernard Foley was the starting ten that night but he and other experienced options – Quade Cooper, James O’Connor and Reece Hodge – have all been left outside the 33-man tent ahead of the tournament.

Jones, by his own admission, has voluntarily “destabilised” a team that ran Ireland and France so close last autumn since taking charge but they aren’t alone in turning up this next month with a host of uncomfortable questions and fingers crossed around the critical out-half question.

Ireland, of course, are among them.

Four years on from bringing an unfit Joey Carbery and a callow Jack Carty to Japan, they pitch up with a rusty 38-year old Johnny Sexton and, in Ross Byrne and Jack Crowley, two talented but inexperienced operators when it comes to pulling such elite strings. And as for some others?

Andy Farrell’s side has played nine of the world’s other top teams in the period back to the summer of 2022. Up to six of those will have a different man in the No 10 jersey when they start the tournament when compared to the teamsheet that faced the now reigning Six Nations champions.

Beauden Barrett was out-half for all three Tests in New Zealand in 2022, Damian Willemse had a mare for the Springboks in Dublin months later, Teti Tela was Fiji’s starter and Foley held the reigns for Australia. Romain Ntamack is now sidelined with injury and Owen Farrell is suspended for England’s opening two pool games.

The All Blacks have since reverted to Richie Mo’unga at ten and Barrett at 15 and the Boks have put their faith in Mannie Libbok. Caleb Muntz looks to be Fiji’s main man, Mathieu Jalibert was sublime against the Wallabies and George Ford has come in from the cold for an England team that has any number of structural faults to fix.

Only Wales, Scotland and Italy are likely to continue with the playmaker that took to the field against Ireland last season while Argentina – the one ‘big’ side Farrell’s squad hasn’t faced lately – come in with a fair degree of continuity in the form of Santiago Carreras. It’s an extraordinary turnover in such a key area so deep into a four-year cycle.

If defence is supposed to be the first and most straightforward order of business for any coaching staff then the handful of specialist positions, and the process of identifying and buttressing those players with as much game time as possible, should be similarly high in the list of priorities.

Some coaches have been unlucky, others have just got their timing wrong.

Gordon aside, there is Libbok who has yet to earn ten caps and a number of understudies in other squads who look the wrong shade of green. Ben Donaldson is Australia’s Plan B. More of a utility back, he has played twice. Ben Healy has three Scotland caps, Sam Costellow has featured half as much for Wales and even Crowley is on just half-a-dozen.

The difficulties facing the Pacific Island sides go at least some way to explaining why Muntz can boast just the four runs but the selection of the 23-year old and Tela, allied to the omission of the experienced Ben Volavola, still raised eyebrows when Fiji coach Simon Raiwalui named his squad in mid-August.

“We were selecting on the balance of how we want to play,” he explained.

Their win in Twickenham suggests that’s working. Such strategic considerations beg more questions than answers elsewhere with Jones’ effort to reinstall traditional Aussie values of running rugby and ‘mongrel’ D producing five straight losses and England playing a one-dimensional game with Ford, Owen Farrell, and Marcus Smith all swapping in and out.

The game has tilted away from the ultra-dominant out-half in recent times. Dual playmakers are far more in vogue now and the spread of responsibilities across back lines will be evident in the presence these coming weeks of so many tens who can play elsewhere and full-backs who can play ten.

Which isn’t to say that their roles will not be central to the plots to come.

It’s 12 years since Stephen Donald was called away from a fishing trip to help New Zealand win the World Cup and French coach Fabien Galthie spoke for all those out-halves who could yet find themselves scrambling to find their feet at the 2023 edition when asked about Jalibert and Antoine Hastoy and their promotions in the wake of Ntamack’s absence.

“It is their destiny,” he said. “They must believe in themselves. Now is the time to go.”