The England rugby team had been on the upswing, dominating the World Cup in Japan en route to conquering New Zealand in the semi-finals, until they became the supporting cast to a much bigger story.
bettinglounge saw England being defeated by South Africa in the World Cup Final as one of the biggest sporting moments of the year worldwide and possibly the most important for South Africa as a country. The team came very, very close, and there should be a lot of optimism for the upcoming tournaments given the strength of the team.
However, since the World Cup Final, the England backroom has seen a lot of turnover. Head coach Eddie Jones is clearly looking to retool and enhance his coaching team to try to give England the extra push needed to become the best in the world.
Announced at the end of November, the first major departure from the England backroom staff was Scott Wisemantel. Eddie Jones’ right-hand man had been key to the resurgence of the team over the last year-and-a-half. Wisemantel decided to return to his native Australia instead of continuing with England as the attack coach, becoming the attack coach for the Australian national team.
Welcome to the team!
— Wallabies (@wallabies) December 12, 2019
Scott Wisemantel joins the Qantas #Wallabies as assistant to Dave Rennie on a four-year deal.
READ: https://t.co/wsSDMMYO01 #TeamRugby #GoldBlooded pic.twitter.com/wU87yYNweI
Wisemantel isn’t the only coach heading for the departures gates, with scrum coach Neal Hatley leaving and forwards coach Steve Borthwick heavily rumoured to be heading to Leicester Tigers. With so much disruption to a very functional coaching team, one might expect people to step back on the perception of the team being such a force in rugby.
As shown by NetBet online betting, however, England are still very much in the driving seat for the upcoming 2020 Six Nations, which commences at the start of February. England are heavily favoured at 4/5 over Ireland, at 7/2, and Wales, at 9/2, who were unceremoniously picked apart by New Zealand for third place at the World Cup.
England aren’t expected to become a Grand Slam winner, though, with odds standing at 1/1 for no team to win with a Grand Slam. Regardless of this, it’s clear that the experts still see the team and Jones as being too strong for their opponents in the Six Nations. Expected coaching appointments may be a reason behind this thinking.
Naturally, there are many coaches around world rugby who would love a place in the England coaching set-up, but the organisation appears to be leaning towards more a ‘promote from within’ approach. It is expected that Scott Wisemantel’s place at attack coach will be filled by Simon Amor, the very highly-rated coach of the England Sevens team.
Not to besmirch the work of Neal Hatley as England’s scrum coach, but in what would be a tremendous coup for the team, Matt Proudfoot is in line to take the vacancy. Proudfoot is the coach for South Africa whose scrums laid waste to all in their path at the World Cup – especially England.
While Steve Borthwick is expected to join the Leicester Tigers in what seems like one of the worst-kept secrets in rugby right now, there is still the thinking that he’ll stay on with England for the Six Nations. However, as the Six Nations commences on 1 February and finishes on 14 March, with the Premiership Rugby season finishing the week prior, it has also been said that he’d join the flailing Tigers as soon as Jones finds a replacement.
The England coaching staff is seeing some major turnover, but in some regards, the backroom looks to be getting stronger. We’ll have to wait until February to see how it pans out.
