Johnston attacks young skills gap

Ben Johnston trained with England last Tuesday, but the Saracens centre will be absent from his club's Premiership match against Worcester today, as he undergoes a hernia operation tomorrow. If it sounds like another daft week in the diary of club v country cock-ups, Johnston sees hope for all concerned, while arguing that there are deep-rooted problems with English back play which will need more than seven days' attention to put right.

Johnston toured with England to South Africa in 2000, but by the time he won his two caps to date - against Argentina and New Zealand in 2002 - Brian Ashton had stood down as backs coach to run the Nat-ional Academy. The 2003 World Cup victory was, according to Ashton himself, achieved with a more conservative style among the backs than he would have liked. Last summer, when Ashton was reappointed to Andy Robinson's staff, it was seen as a chance to start again. Johnston, in his eighth season of sterling service with Saracens, has been intrigued to observe the results at first hand.

"I trained with England before the Argentina match a fortnight ago, and again last week," he said. "Definitely every-one in the squad is positive and trying to be upbeat about what's gone on. I don't know if it regressed when Brian left but they probably did miss him. He has got innovative ideas on the way backs should attack. It doesn't matter where you are, he believes the skill levels should be high enough that you attack where the space is."

Both Ashton and Robinson have talked about England playing "more intelligently". Does Johnston understand what that means? "I hope so," he said with a smile. "You will have a set structure but the opposition might do something else and it's all about how the players react. It's a general understanding of rugby."

But is it too late to be picking that up in your 20s (Johnston recently turned 28 and has just become a father, too, to five-week-old Zak)? "There are always little bits of information you can learn. Brian would like ball-players from one to 15, and I think that's the way rugby is heading. But in England I don't think we're doing enough from a young age to develop players.

"I've been coaching at my friend's school and you find kids just want to catch the ball and give it to the biggest one to run. There's no real emphasis on skills. It's all about working as a team, whereas if you broke them down into small groups and worked on their skills then I reckon school sides would be better, club sides would get better and inevitably more players would come through with better skills.

"If you look at the All Blacks, they've got ball-handlers all over the place. That's what you need, forwards who can catch and pass and allow the backs to play. It takes time and that's why it needs to be targeted at a younger age. There needs to be more emphasis on that growing up so by the time you get to 25 or 26 everything is already embedded in you, and it's not foreign, your core skills are there and you can progress to a higher level from having a pretty high basic."

Saracens' Australian head coach, Alan Gaffney, has got his men playing skill games in training rather than what Johnston calls "mundane running", and they have won five matches out of the past six. Today Andy Farrell wears the No 12 jersey which was Johnston's in the early part of the season. England and Saracens argued over when and where Farrell should play, and that highlighted the problem inside-centre position, which Ashton wants occupied by a creative player, and a good kicker.

Will Greenwood, Henry Paul, Stuart Abbott, Mike Tindall, Olly Barkley, Jamie Noon, Mike Catt and Anthony Allen have all been tried there since the World Cup, with Jonny Wilkinson a possible contender.

As quickly as an answer presented itself, an injury or loss of form raised a fresh question. "Andy Farrell has got a good rugby brain," said Johnston, who is up for the challenge on every count, "and he's got an eye for putting people in holes and distributing. He can't be expected to be a superstar straight away but he's definitely capable of it."