Rugby World Cup 2015: George Ford and the creative outsiders eager to prove Stuart Lancaster wrong

Might England have created more scoring opportunities against the Wallabies last Saturday had George Ford started the game at outside-half? Could they have maximised their hard-won overlaps instead of butchering them with blunt knives had Henry Slade been operating in one of the centre positions? Welcome to the latest meeting of the Moot Point Society – just about the most irrelevant organisation in the whole of rugby, given that it convenes only when the damage has been done.

All we know for sure is that Ford and Slade, two of the brightest and best from the red-rose point of view, will share the artistic duties when England say their premature goodbyes to the World Cup in Manchester on Saturday night – joined, it is worth mentioning, by another member of the creative community in full-back Alex Goode, summoned from the back end of beyond to bring some imagination to the mix at this posthumous stage of proceedings.

If these three combine in holy triangulation to make a mess of Uruguay, it will be sorely tempting to wonder if the coaches missed a trick earlier in the tournament. There again, the South Americans are about as far away from Australia rugby-wise as they are geographically, which perhaps explains why England’s overcautious coaches are finally prepared to give their most inventive players a run together.

The head coach, Stuart Lancaster, not necessarily the most conservative of the back-room quartet but unshakeable in his commitment to collective responsibility, has hinted that he could have been more adventurous in his selection.

“Could Henry Slade and Jonathan Joseph play together at centre? I think they could,” he said. “Could Owen Farrell and Joseph play together? I think they could. But I would then have been picking someone who doesn’t play in that position for his club, so it comes back to the challenges and complexities of being an international coach – someone who is involved in a must-win game every game.

“You also have to recognise the need for back-line physicality at Test level,” he added. “The All Blacks have a wing like Julian Savea, the Wallabies a centre like Tevita Kuridrani. If you don’t have wings of the Savea type to give you some go-forward, and you don’t have a physical presence in midfield, are you going to win a game in Ireland in March, or a World Cup match against a team as good defensively as Wales?

“I’ll be interested to see if we get an answer this weekend. I appreciate that Uruguay are the opposition and that there may not be a full answer, but I have no doubt that footballers like Ford, Farrell, Slade and Joseph are the most talented players we have, as well as some of the youngest. Three of them are in our back division for this game; the other is on the bench. We have so many ball-players suddenly, I’m not sure who’ll be doing the carrying.”

If Slade, with only a single cap to his name before the start of this competition, probably expected to struggle for a starting spot, Ford cannot have anticipated playing second fiddle to his old friend Farrell in the games that really mattered. After all, he was at the heart of the win over the Wallabies at Twickenham last November (what England wouldn’t have given for a similar outcome five days ago) and lit any number of attacking fires during this year’s Six Nations. He may be small but his rugby brain is perfectly formed.

How disappointed had he been, on a scale of one to 10, to lose his place ahead of the big game with Wales? He declined to make the calculation. “That was two weeks ago,” he said, apparently bewildered that such ancient history should be dragged up at this stage in proceedings. “Everyone wants to start, don’t they? But the coaches make the decisions – they pick a team they think will win the game that particular week. And there’s a reason why they pick it in the way they do, so you back it 100 per cent and crack on with your training.”

So far, so predictable: there is precious little career advancement to be had in holding selection decisions up to public ridicule, even if the men responsible for those decisions might soon be looking for alternative employment. But Ford was more forthcoming on the wider playing group’s reaction to England’s humiliation on home turf – a failure exposed in all its gory detail in the marketplace, with a tripling of tickets on sale for this Saturday’s game and prices falling through the floor.

“We’re devastated to be out,” he acknowledged. “We’re frustrated because we feel we’re a better team than we seem at the minute. We’re on the biggest stage – a World Cup in our own country – and we wanted to pick up some good results, give it a real shot and challenge for the title. Having come up short by a long way, we have to take it on the chin. I think it helped, going out on the training field this week. It means you’re not moping around the hotel, thinking about what you could have done.

“When the Uruguay game is over, I think I’ll go straight back into club rugby with Bath. If I decided to get away from it, all I’d do is sulk. So yes, I reckon I’ll crack on. I love being here with England, but I love going back to Bath. Everyone loves the upbeat environment there, loves the way we play. I’m massively excited about it.”

Being a northern lad himself – he hails from Oldham – Ford recognises the need for England to put on a show in Manchester.

“We understand the nation’s disappointment, but I hope people get behind us this weekend,” he said. “England haven’t played union in the north since 2009. We all want to do our best for the crowd.

He added: “It’s not a nice time to be going through, but as long as we front up to it, don’t try to dress it up as something different and come out as better players and people, we’ll look back on this in four years’ time as a learning experience.”