At the beginning of this week, all us coaches of countries in the Nations Championship gathered at a hotel in Windsor to discuss the shape of the game. 

We were split into panels with the referees to chat through officiating matters and how we want the games to be controlled and managed. 

Steve Borthwick and South Africa supremo Rassie Erasmus were given the maul as their specialist subject, so they took a couple of stools out in front of us and got into the topic. I'll come back to that but you couldn’t find two more different blokes. I don’t think they’re the next Ant and Dec!

Usually the teams ranked No 1 and No 2 in the world are the loudest when we all get together and this week was no exception. Rassie and New Zealand boss Dave Rennie had a fair bit to say and everyone files in behind that and I said my bit as Japan coach.

I honestly think World Rugby missed a trick by not bringing cameras to show all the coaches in the same room discussing the laws of the game. It would have made great TV.

These meetings are interesting because everyone goes in with different agendas. I always remember one before the 2003 World Cup. Clive Woodward was coaching England and I was coaching Australia. 

We used to play a few decoy runners at the time and Clive accused us of obstruction. He turned up with this massive presentation, all shining and sparkling, and we got into a pretty robust debate. In the end, the referees backed us to do it legally. You could say the Australians won that battle – but England won the World Cup!

This week, Borthwick went in with an agenda around the maul. It’s gone through quite a considerable law interpretation change, making it harder to stop the drive of powerful attacking teams.

England are heavily in favour of that. They want to keep the status quo, while teams like Japan, who aren’t as strong, want to see a bit of a change.

Reading between the lines, that’s one area England will be focusing on this autumn. It’s created a lot of tries in the PREM. The tries have come thick and fast in English club rugby but that won’t translate to the international game. 

Northampton against Bath finished 71-48 last month. Given there are around 35 minutes of ball-in-play time, that’s almost four points every minute. That’s not good to watch.

I don’t think we’ll be seeing 120-point Test matches. Look at English Test cricket. ‘Bazball’ was not successful. The best teams in the world have that balance between their attack and defence. At the moment, the advantage is with the attacking team and we’re seeing a lot of tries. 

Around the goal-line, referees have only really been officiating the defending team. We’ve seen a lot of supporting players going off their feet in attack to secure the ball and I think that will be tidied up in these Tests. The PREM teams have been scoring bucket-loads of tries but Test rugby is different. It’s more intense and the defences are better.  

In most sports around the world, defences have become more aggressive. If you think about football's Premier League, the best teams are much more aggressive, pressing the ball. Rugby is no different. South Africa have made an art form out of it.

After five defeats in seven, England will be looking to sharpen up their attack. They look like they need to develop a better way of playing off kick return.

With Ellis Genge, Maro Itoje, George Martin, Tom Curry and Jamie George, they have the nucleus of a very good pack. It’s the backline where they’ve got major issues. There’s no one in the centres saying: 'Right, pick me!' There’s no Manu Tuilagi who you simply cannot ignore. 

If you look at South Africa, they've got two superb centres. If there’s any sort of fracture in the opposition's defence line, Damian de Allende can find it. He's got great feet, he's strong and he just suits the South African system. 

Who can do that for England? Seb Atkinson looks like a handy player but can he make that jump to world class? That’s what he needs to show now.

Henry Slade's proven himself over a long period of time to be a good Test player. When he was younger, he certainly had great running skills. We haven't seen much of that recently. Maybe he’s lost that pace or maybe he’s just not getting the opportunities to use it.

You need someone at 13 who can convert opportunities into points. I’ve seen Will Joseph play a little bit for Gloucester. When I was England boss, we took him on tour to Australia and gave him his first cap back in 2022. 

He’s always looked like a player who can really make it at Test level. He's big, strong and fast. He probably hasn't matured as fast as you’d like but he looks like he can make it.   

Outside of Fin Smith and Tommy Freeman, it’s quite hard to pick England’s backline. Alex Mitchell looked like he would be the Test No 9 for a long time but he’s consistently injured. Manny Feyi-Waboso is dynamite but he’s injury prone, too. 

Full-back is a conundrum. Do they go for a sturdy No 15 like Freddie Steward or a second playmaker like George Furbank? Furbank is another who is injured all the time. That’s a problem for English rugby. Their players play too much. They don’t get enough rest and recovery and that’s hurting them.

The RFU have given Borthwick full support for the World Cup now. And rightly so. They have got to give him all the support to get the players right. They need to find out who is going to be in the tent and who is going to be outside of it because the clock is ticking.

Four years ago, when I was coaching England, we hadn't developed the attack to where we needed it to be at this point of the cycle. We were a very good kicking team. 

At times we were a good attacking team, particularly when we had Manu. When we didn’t have Manu, we had to find other ways of trying to get forward and most of that revolved around kicking. The grand plan was to develop a better attacking game for the World Cup but the RFU got rid of me and we never got there.

England are a high kicking team at the moment. If Smith weren't fit to play, I suspect they would have picked George Ford at No 10. They don't like to play a lot out of their own half. They seem to be very strict about the number of rucks they play. They want to keep the number of jackal opportunities for the opposition to a minimum.

These games are important but teams will be thinking, 'Right, what do I need to do for the World Cup?' Maybe that is part of Borthwick’s thinking but the fans don’t like to hear that.

England versus Australia at Twickenham in November is usually a tight game. England’s preparation has been minimal, while Australia are coming in on the back of the Bledisloe Cup. Their new coach, Les Kiss, has given them a bit of a lift and guys like massive prop Taniela Tupou are on form. At his best, Tupou is a force of nature, but England should have an advantage at set-piece. 

Australia are struggling at 10 with Carter Gordon injured. Declan Meredith and Ben Donaldson are good players but they lack that real creativity of a Test No 10. Australia could struggle to score enough points, so I’m backing England to sneak home.

WHY ENGLAND IGNORED EDWARDS 

There’s been a lot of talk about Shaun Edwards joining the Argentina coaching team. He’s a hugely successful English defence coach but he’s never had the chance to coach his country in men’s rugby. 

I had a meeting with Shaun in 2020 but he was already in the process of being offered the French job. We were keen on bringing him in but the timing wasn’t right. 

Particularly in international coaching, everyone says you should get this person or that person. But sometimes your window of need doesn’t match up to contract situations. 

Borthwick is now in his second rotation of coaching staff so he probably wants to cement those guys in for the World Cup. Generally speaking, it's pretty hard to bring a bloke in 12 months before the sport's biggest tournament.

DUO DOWN UNDER WOULD BE FINE RECRUITS

We recently had Justin Holbrook, the Newcastle Knights rugby league coach, come and spend some time in camp with Japan. It was great to pick the brains of someone from Australia’s thriving NRL competition. 

They’ve got a good English winger called Dominic Young. He’s from Huddersfield originally and he’d be an incredible union player. He’s big, good in the air, fast, aggressive. Along with Herbie Farnworth, I think he would be a top-class recruit for English rugby union.

AT LAST, ABSURD KNOCK-ON RULE IS CHANGED   

Intentional knock-ons were a big talking point at our coaching meeting. We’ve been through a period where if you stuck out your hand or tried to catch the ball and you didn't catch it, it was almost automatically a yellow card. 

Everything was deemed intentional. It was quite absurd. Now I think we've got to the realisation that you can stick out one hand to try to catch the ball. 

Some of the best interceptors, like Cheslin Kolbe, come in late, stick out their hand and try to knock the ball up. South Africa defend high so they go for intercepts more. Kolbe is a genius at it. 

A good player can just anticipate the flight of the ball. It comes down to the ability to see what the passer is doing, where they’re looking to pass the ball, and then find the right time for the intercept. 

South Africa winger Bryan Habana was superb at it, too. You need exceptional speed, meaning you can accelerate on to the ball and time your run. There was a really good agreement for this autumn that unless the motion is hitting the ball down, then it's not an intentional knock-on.

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