Henry Pollock has broken the rugby community

Looking around social media, this guy, who has just started his first test match, is the face of 9/10 rugby posts. Not Gibson-Park, Dupont, Jellybear, Finn Russell, any other Englishman, a brave Welshman or spirited spaghetti sucker - no one who did anything worth shouting about in terms of the actual rugby that was played. Well, McCloskey's chasing down Marcus with a smile on his face actually sneaked in a time or two today. But outside of that, it's Pollock, Pollock, Pollock.

Not particularly sophisticated thinkers, the rugby folks, one would be lead to deduce from all that. Easily distracted and occupied into obsession by one peroxided head of hair.

It could also be that it is mostly the South African bunch, as a lot of these social rugby accounts are run by South Africans. Wouldn't surprise me.

People like two things. To hate someone and to love someone.

Can't remember which pod I saw it on, but there was a good comment. They said that when Pollock plays, the English side is loose and trying to do everything at a frantic pace. If that is true, and if the inclusion of one player changes the entire look of a team that much, then one has to wonder how solid the gameplan is. Pollock is insanely talented. If the coach can't make that talent work for him, but instead allows it to detract from the team, then that is entirely on the coach and nobody else. I struggle to believe that Pollock would refuse to play to whatever plan Borthwick has laid out and just do as he pleases.

I have zero issue with Pollock. I actually like the fact that he upsets the applecart and gets under people's skin. We need more characters in the sport, and if they are very talented, then all the better.

I knew it…Pakie has a poster of the peroxide blonde bombshell ‘Bollocks’ on his wall:)

I knew it…Pakie has a poster of the peroxide blonde bombshell ‘Bollocks’ on his wall:)

This is not the time for jealousy, meneer! Find a print shop and stop envying my interior decorating.

Ja Plummie I don't have an issue either (as MP can tell you). He looks like he might be a bit of a twat (Pollock, not MP), but he brings some personality to the game. And at least he's not a twat in the mold of, say, a James Ryan that looks to injure other players with cheap shots.

But FFS, 100+ players played in the 6N this weekend, some quite superbly, yet all you see is Pollock. Let's not turn the game into a soap opera.

“Let’s not turn the game into a soap opera.” Exactly, Pakie...now go ahead and take the poster down… it’s definitely not a good look for you:)

As I’ve said before, Pollock is a very talented player, yes, and there’s nothing wrong with a healthy attitude.

He’s just a bit too big for his boots, I would say...a “windgat snotty brat.”

In comparison to Sacha, who in my opinion is far more talented, Pollock could learn a thing or two from Sacha about being a bit more humble.

Im all for character... but this Pollock doos is just a disrespectful cnut.

I hate the way he throws poes to the referees and pulls squakish faces while singing his dumb anthem.

Such a tosser.

Maybe it's just your innate dislike for the English, Chop.

What is your ancestry?

The powers that be have set him up for a fall, I think, by making him the face of the team.

He’s a very decent player and a decent human being so I hope things don’t go badly for him with all of the media hype.

Is there a current Saffa player as disliked as Pollock is...even disliked half as much?

If you think about it, we're actually quite a boring.

Becks, he's more than talented enough to make a huge success...

Let’s hope so, Draad.

He’s still only 21, so I’d like him around for a good few years yet !

Agreed DB, he has all the talent needed to be successful… an attitude check will help him reach it quicker.

And most importantly, as Plum mentioned, the coach must enhance his talent by giving him the necessary platform (game plan, structures, etc.) to do his thing.

The coach is an idiot, Mpower !

"The coach is an idiot"

Looks like that is the one thing we can all agree on.

Bore-Thick has so much talent at his disposal yet England look ordinary at best. It's not just the selections, it's the very limited game plan and the lack of ambition.

When a team is down by two tries or more and they try to reduce that deficit in increments of three then I give up on them, especially when some of those attempts are drop kicks.

Devalue the drop kick to 1 or 2 points I say. My least favourite way to score . . . but 2 points would still give the drop kick some relevance in a sudden death situation. Think Joel Stransky and Jonny Wilkinson, both would have still won those games even if the drop kick was worth 2 points or even a single point.

Anyway, that's just a long-term beef of mine, nothing to do with England . . . but I have to say, Ford's attempted drop that ended up in a try for Scotland was the moment I gave up on a Bore-Thick-coached England rugby team.

Hope the likes of exciting young talents like Henry Pollock, Henry Arundell and Fin Smith prove me wrong but I don't see England fulfilling their potential under this coach.

Us Springbok supporters are very lucky to have a coach with a proven track record that we can trust . . . well, 99% of us can trust him anyway.

The limited game plan is a nightmare. The problem is, unless that changes, it doesn’t matter what talented personnel we put out there, we’re still doomed to fail.

becs, the Springboks have a thing we call "gees" (Guttural G and rhymes with "fierce"). The Welsh call it "hwyl" and the Kiwis call it "mana".

What do the English call it, other than "spirit"?

That's what the English need to find.

They do. They also need some grunt !

"Grunt" is a good word. 'Belief" is another.

Oh they had misguided belief, heading into the tournament ! They thought that they’d be in competition with France for the title. Genge also admitted they believed the hype after beating Wales !!

Virtually the same much-maligned team won ten in a row ,...

"Bore-Thick has so much talent at his disposal yet England look ordinary at best. It's not just the selections, it's the very limited game plan and the lack of ambition."

EggChasers made some great points on exactly this.

He mentioned how the boring, kick oriented gameplan, worked so well for England and got them to a 12 game win streak.

Yet in the lead up to the Irish game, Borthwick said that England were coming to "fire shots". And it turns out that they kicked far less than Ireland did. And they also kicked less than Scotland did the week before.

So there is a case for the idea that it's the attempt to move away from the limited game plan that has seen them swallow these two big losses.

I believe it's common knowledge that the team that kicks the most wins. That's what the stats say. Of course, it's not just about the kick but when and how you kick, and how well you chase and back up your chasers.

The Boks have also had a very limited game plan for a very long time. But we have, on average, the strongest set piece in the game. So if you knock on, we get a penalty. If you maul we're generally able to halt you.

England do have a talented team and big ball carriers, but the Boks have a pack that is, man for man, the envy of world rugby.

So we can mostly get away with having a limited game plan. And we've also had our setbacks when we came to "fire shots"...think Ellis Park versus the Ozzies last year.

I do understand that there is currently a perception that the Boks are being more expansive. But there are numerous games last season where we went entire 40 minutes without the ball going wide once. Look at the Irish game. We were on their line for almost 20 minutes, they had half their side sent off...and we still didn't go wide. Sure, I didn't mind it because it ripped the Irish confidence to shreds and of course the context matters. But the ball never did go wide from any of those scrums. That could be considered a very limited game plan.

The difference between Rassie and Borthwick is that Rassie appears to be a far better man manager and, just as importantly, Rassie gets the best players in and they buy in to what he wants to do. As authoritarian as some think Rassie might be, there have been enough behind the scenes reveals and podcasts for us to conclude that he operates via consensus even if he does have the ultimate say. Jones, Brown, Human, Stick...they all play a part and the team understands that directives don't come from one man. And that must surely help the players buy into what he wants to do more easily.

"What do the English call it, other than "spirit"?

OMG....grit! How did that word not pop into your mind?

Becs, I'm starting to think you're not really English.

I would use “ mettle “, as an English woman…..

I would have gone with "sttiff upper lip old chap."

That too :)

new

Having Stuart McCloskey-style grunt and a deft, intelligent kicker outside the England fly half will make defences think twice and allow him extra time to breathe

Stuart Barnes

Thursday February 26 2026, 6.00pm GMT, The Times

It is fair to state that Stuart McCloskey, the patient 33-year-old Ulsterman, has not been one of Andy Farrell’s favoured centres. Robbie Henshaw, Bundee Aki and Garry Ringrose have long dominated the Ireland midfield. Yet while Jamison Gibson-Park was a deserved man of the match at Twickenham, in Irish rugby folklore the 42-21 win will be remembered as the hard-running McCloskey’s match.

The clean break that sliced through England’s confused midfield, leading to Robert Baloucoune’s try, the hunting down of Marcus Smith to save a try — these are set to become indelible memories. In the short term, McCloskey did a great deal of damage to Steve Borthwick’s team, but if England learn the agonising lessons from last Saturday they could yet be sending a metaphorical thank-you note to the long-striding Irish centre.

McCloskey made up a huge amount of ground as Smith scampered for the tryline, and nailed him into touch to maintain Ireland’s chokehold on the game

SHUTTERSTOCK EDITORIAL

As a slightly more famous Irishman wrote: “The centre cannot hold.” Or rather, it did not. Ollie Lawrence, whose knee injury has flared up once more, barely forced McCloskey to break stride as he arrowed towards the England tryline. As for Fraser Dingwall, he stepped infield when he needed to hold his width as Tommy O’Brien crossed in the first half. Things fell apart.

George Ford faced the flak. There’s no point pretending it was his finest day, what with those headline missed kicks to the corner. But whereas his opposite number, Jack Crowley, was able to intelligently mix the Irish attack throughout the match, Ford’s options were limited.

The kicking-game plan articulated before the Scotland fiasco at Murrayfield must be relegated to the role of one of several game plans, mixed in with hard-carrying forwards and, most importantly, backs with a bit of brute force, smart enough to see the space and exploit it.

It has been said since the match that Ireland successfully closed out the England fly half’s passing channels. If they did, it was partly a defensive success borne of bad selection by England. Just because England got away with it against the All Blacks doesn’t mean a one-off becomes the way to play.

Ford struggled in the defeats against Scotland and Ireland, with both his kicking and passing games far from their usual levels

MB MEDIA/GETTY IMAGES

Dingwall lacks the power at international level to punch holes in the gainline. For all the talk of “pods” in attack, a well-timed pass to someone like McCloskey generates all-important front-foot ball. Ford has neither the bulk nor the pace to carry the line himself. But he has the skill to pass as well as he kicks.

That is if he has the right option outside him. An English McCloskey. The odds are that Borthwick will bow to the general public pressure and select Fin Smith at No10. It is so convenient. Smith, Dingwall at No12 and Tommy Freeman back at No13. The Northampton Saints midfield — albeit one without the influential Scotsman Rory Hutchinson picking his challenging lines and producing late offloads — is an easy solution to the midfield problem.

But club and country rugby comes with different pressures, more intensity. And Sam Vesty coaches Saints differently to how Lee Blackett coaches England. For all their brilliance and charm, the temptation to opt for the delightful subtleties of the Saints should be resisted.

Atkinson, 23, has yet to feature for England in this championship, but possesses the sufficient heft to allow Ford to breathe

DAN MULLAN/THE RFU COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES

England’s management should look not to Northampton but Argentina for the answers. In the summer tour to South America, Gloucester’s Seb Atkinson gave Ford that big shoulder to play with. An injury ruled Atkinson out of the autumn internationals when he was set to try to make the centre position his own. Watching Bath beat Gloucester in the Gallagher Prem after the international series, he was outstanding as a physical presence in attack and defence.

He is the only English No12 who can do a McCloskey. He would be my only option at 12 except for the fact that Max Ojomoh was given a chance against Argentina at Twickenham and he grasped it like few others ever have. His running lines, his cross-kicks, his deft array of passes, his cool. All magnificent. He was a fly half’s dream and man of the match by a country mile. In the first few weeks of the season at Bath he filled in for the resting Finn Russell at fly half. He was a revelation, displaying the balance of vision and skill that Bath expects from its No10s in the era of Russell.

Against Argentina, he steered England to victory. Now he isn’t even part of the squad. It was — and remains — a crass decision to omit him. Especially as it doesn’t even have to be a matter of whether England prefer the Gloucester man’s robust nature (with plenty of skill) or the skilled Bath player (with plenty of power). The pair are a potential dream. Inside centre, outside centre or somewhere in between, it doesn’t matter. They would slot tidily alongside each other.

Ojomoh was a revelation against Argentina in the autumn, but was curiously omitted from the Six Nations squad altogether

PATRICK KHACHFE/GETTY IMAGES

If England want to employ their very own Damian de Allende to do the job of keeping the forwards and their scrum half advancing, Atkinson is as good as anything they can offer. Ojomoh has bundles of experience defending at outside centre. The fact that he is such an astute player potentially helps England sort out their rearguard problems on and outside the 15-metre line. But he’s not even in the equation.

Charlie Morgan

George Ford is being targeted — is it now time for Fin Smith?

Yet Ojomoh, 25, has the brains and boots to force defenders to think twice, to hold their ground. There’s lots of understandable talk of full backs acting as a second fly half, but Ojomoh at inside centre is that second No10 with the presence to stop the opposition from rushing up. It would take the heat off Ford and, with defences cautious about the centre’s clever kicking game, enable the Sale Sharks man an extra split second to find a way for England to threaten in the wider channels.

In those channels, there’s no one better than Atkinson to play the part of McCloskey. Based on international form, potential and the smallest degree of rugby nous, Ojomoh should not only be in the squad — he should be playing inside and outside Atkinson. Then let’s see whether Ford is finished or not.

To defend his fly half from the excessive criticism is admirable of Borthwick, and probably correct. But to not pick the man to balance the midfield in tandem with Atkinson . . . that is curious. To omit him from the squad? It’s astonishing in its ineptitude.

He’s dropped Ojomoh from the squad.

becs, did you see Chippo's claim that Pollock was the result of an A-section birth (different to the more common C-section)?

Still laughing!

He’s being very naughty, Rooinek !