Six or more burly men grappling and wrestling their way forward an inch at a time in one big sweaty mass as a guttural chant of ‘heave’ echoes around the stadium: this is as close to Steve Borthwick’s vision of rugby porn as you can get.
Mauling was central to Borthwick’s identity as a second row and so too in every team that he has coached. It did not take long for him to set out his blueprint for what he wanted to define his team as England head coach.
“Ultimately at this point I think it’s clear to say that England’s set-piece in recent times has not been strong,” Borthwick said following a 29-23 home defeat to Scotland in his first game in charge in 2023. “We always want to have a strong set-piece and maul, but those will take time to build, and we have to persevere with that. England haven’t had a strong maul for a few years now, so have to improve that. We have to add different weapons to our game.”
England duly delivered on those instructions by using the maul to batter Italy into submission in the following game, mauling 10 times for 53 metres and two tries. Not everyone was delighted by the aesthetic value of the tactic, but this was as close as Borthwick comes to experiencing nirvana. “I think the fans enjoyed the maul, they certainly enjoy a maul at Twickenham so I was pleased to see a few,” he said.
Over the course of 2023, England fans saw more than a few mauls. By the end of 2023, only Argentina, among tier-one countries, bettered England’s return of making 21.9 metres per game through a maul or 3.9 metres per maul in 2023. The maul was front of centre of England’s identity and one of the main attacking weapons, yielding five tries.
For all the discussion around the defensive blitz installed by Felix Jones and now carried on by Joe El-Abd as well as the attacking overhaul led by Richard Wigglesworth, perhaps one of the starkest differences between the England of 2023 and 2024 has been the diminishing of the maul.
Statistics provided by Opta Sports show that no tier-one side are mauling more than England this year at 6.1 per game. However, the metres made per game has more than halved to 10.3 (sixth best among tier one) and their metres per maul at 1.7 is ahead of only Italy, Ireland and Japan. The maul has yielded only one try this year, against Japan.
By their very nature, mauls are messy beasts that do not always lend themselves to strict statistical analysis. A side may use a static maul as a platform to launch a strike move around midfield which will have gained no metres but have served its purpose perfectly.
However, the eye test also suggests that England’s maul is not the weapon it was 12 months ago. Traditionally Australian sides come to Twickenham expecting to be scrummed and mauled into the turf. Last Saturday, not only did the Wallabies slowly build ascendancy at the scrum but they comfortably defended England’s maul. Now the litmus test of any mauling team comes to Twickenham in the form of the Springboks and a rematch of last year’s World Cup semi-final.
A key difference in personnel from that day is the loss of Courtney Lawes since his international retirement. Lawes was an excellent mauler, his long levers perfect for disrupting attacking mauls and a technique honed by hours of topless mauling under the eye of Dorian West at Northampton.
His heir apparent, Ollie Chessum, was also raised in a mauling tradition at Leicester Tigers and his absence from the Autumn Nations Series should not be underestimated. Chandler Cunningham-South will appear on more highlights reels with his big hits and carries but England desperately miss the unseen grunt and graft that Chessum provides at blindside flanker.
The maul has a bad reputation in some parts, particularly in Australia and New Zealand. Yet it is equally cherished in other places. World Rugby introduced a law trial earlier this year that meant a team had to use the ball once the maul was stopped once, rather than twice. Telegraph Sport understands there was negative feedback from players on the proposal and it is unlikely to pass when it goes to vote before World Rugby’s Council in Dublin on Thursday.
Even if it survives that vote, the maul may be on borrowed time in its current incarnation. What better time, then, for England to deliver Borthwick’s vision of X-rated filth than re-establishing a dominant maul against the Springboks on Saturday.
