England coaches Lee Blackett and Richard Wigglesworth have revealed how they’re bringing their new recruits up to speed, and what the team’s plans are for the Nations Championship.

Currently in camp ahead of the upcoming tournament, the duo appeared on The Good, The Bad & The Rugby.

Attack coach Blackett highlighted a key issue facing the squad ahead of their match against Australia on November 8, saying: “You’ve got these guys coming from currently nine different clubs, and they’re all running different types of shape on edges, structure, and they’re all running different lines, and you’ve got to try and bring them on the same page.

“We’ve got a couple of guys coming in that haven’t been in before; you can see they’re all doing slightly different things.”

Explaining that Henry Slade and other experienced players have settled back into the environment comfortably, he addressed the need to ensure that all players are part of one cohesive unit.

“That’s the pressure we put on ourselves as coaches, not wasting a second in this environment,” he continued. “So that definitely is the number one thing: making sure we’re all on the same page.”

How to turn a developing squad into a winning one

With their first match just over a week away, how can the coaches turn this team of individuals from multiple different clubs into one team?

“Every time we do skills, there’s something behind it,” Blackett explained. “It’s not just doing skills; it’s doing skills, but decision-making, but also looking at our movement within it.

“Any time we’re doing any little practice, there are multiple things that we’re looking at. The number one thing is, let’s say it’s decision-making, we’re looking at decision-making, but we’re also looking at lines and our communication.”

The idea is to get each player actively thinking about their role and the movements of those around them. Blackett also detailed the importance of reviewing the training as a team using video clips to ensure they’re “really on the same page”.

“We have positional groups”, he said. “So the centres go with me, the half-backs are with Wig, and the back three with Wig and Kev. So [we’re] trying to build cohesion within those subgroups.”

“Fordy’s a dream to work with”

With a division of labour, leaders will inevitably stand up and take charge, and one player that has always stood out is George Ford.

“Fordy’s a dream to work with as a 10,” enthused Blackett. “He just gets hold of the coach’s message. He just promotes, and he’s such a role model.

“I’m seeing Fin Smith driving things. I’m seeing a lot of these players grabbing it and really driving us forward. So I think, especially since I’ve been here at this moment in time, I’m seeing players and coaches on the same page driving messages.

“I’m just seeing things all the time, just little improvements in us.”

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Building that cohesion is, of course, vital to any winning side, but for Wigglesworth, he needs the side to mentally focus on, and believe in, success.

“That level of competition, that drive that we’ve got is not just ‘I want to be in the room, and I want to compete to play for England’, it’s the next level, when people are grabbing it,” he explained.

“It’s that ‘I am doing everything I can so that we win, and that we play as well as we can to give ourselves the best chance of winning and getting better’.”

The point was that they’re changing the mindset from players who are excited just to wear the England shirt to becoming focused on the prospect of winning in the shirt.

England’s Nations Championship campaign will continue next month, when they will face Australia, Japan and New Zealand in consecutive weekends, starting from November 8.