RWC 2015: England's George Ford and Anthony Watson aim for positive approach to Fiji clash

Two of the players at the heart of England’s recent attacking renaissance, the outside-half George Ford and the wing Anthony Watson, could find themselves transported back to the sporting Dark Ages if things go wrong against Fiji on World Cup opening night at Twickenham.

Ford, all 5ft 9in of him, will be the No 1 target for the mastodons in the Fiji back row, while Watson, plenty big enough by normal standards, must cope with Pacific rugby’s version of a fast-moving tower block, Nemani Nadolo.

The challenge of shutting down Fiji’s renowned broken-field runners has convinced most red-rose followers that the best way of keeping the backs safe from harm is to let the forwards run the show in the scrums, line-outs and driving mauls.

Yet Ford and Watson, so vibrantly effective in pushing Bath towards the Premiership final last season, want to play a positive part with ball in hand, rather than restrict themselves to a watching brief.

“Across the board in the back line, Fiji have game breakers,” Watson said, ahead of his personal meeting with the most substantial wing in the tournament.

“They’re all big blokes, they all have good footwork, and it means that, defensively speaking, we’ll have to be on the money. But while there has to be a sense of balance and a focus on implementing our game plan, we definitely want to get our hands on the ball and perform.”

Together with the likes of Ford, the left wing Jonny May and the outside centre Jonathan Joseph, the Bath back has been performing out of his skin at Test level just lately.

In his first taste of Six Nations rugby, against Wales in front of the hostile Cardiff masses in February, he went within an ace of creating the try of the season for Joseph, as well as bagging a five-pointer for himself. Since then, he has illuminated Twickenham with some of the sharpest finishes seen by a white-shirted No 14 in years.

Ford has been the principal driver of England’s improvement in what the Americans would call “offence”. Indeed, England have lost the try count only once in 10 games – against Ireland in Dublin at the mid-point of the Six Nations – since the old-style “touch” player from Oldham succeeded Owen Farrell as the team’s game manager in chief. (Not that Farrell has for a moment given up on the No 10 shirt. The training ground rivalry between the two long-standing friends is said to be more intense than ever.)

“We’ve worked hard as a team to bring a bit more width to our attack, to create more opportunities,” Ford commented yesterday. “The back three [the wings, plus Mike Brown at full-back] are seeing a lot more of the ball and there’s a massive potency there. The threat Anthony and Jonny bring with their speed, their footwork and their finishing… you’ve seen it in the last few matches. Mike? He’s a rock, a player who brings energy and aggression every single week. I think they’re understanding the game a lot better now: not just the attacking stuff, but in terms of things people don’t often see – the way they cover the back field and read the body language of the opposition. That has moved on to another level.”

According to Ford, there will be no conscious move to play an ultra-tight game against the Fijians. There are a lot of rugby hard-heads out there who will believe that when they see it – England win games against these opponents through discipline and control, not by throwing a party – but the outside-half does not want to be deflected from the idea that union is played in the moment, in reaction to the prevailing circumstances.

“We approach every game the same way, because it’s about decision making,” he argued. “We train so we can adapt on the run. Obviously, we go into a game with a plan, but there have been loads of occasions when we’ve had to have conversations about how to change things. I definitely feel Fiji will force us to think on our feet.”

Not for the first time, Ford bristled slightly at an implication that someone of relatively normal stature could only be a defensive liability in the modern, behemoth-populated game. “I practise my defence week in and week out,” he said with meaning. Then, after careful reflection, he added: “I am smaller than most lads on the pitch, but I don’t feel threatened by it.

“There are parts to rugby that aren’t necessarily about being big and powerful. There’s the mental side of it – being a bit smarter, a bit cleverer, a bit quicker, having a feel for the game. I do get asked about this a lot, often by little lads who come up and turn out to be bigger than I am. I tell them not to worry about it.”