England Must Exploit Lineout Strength to Rise Above Tonga

And then there were eight, or there will be after the weekend. Twelve teams go home and almost certainly not the dozen most of us would have picked three months - or even three weeks - ago. Ireland are gone unless they can do something miraculous against Argentina on Sunday and England will be chewing their nails before tonight's game in the Parc des Princes.

However, I fancy it's the Tongans who will be packing their bags tomorrow morning while England heave a huge sigh of relief. It won't be easy, but England have one tool in particular which can hurt the team that has surprised everyone it has played - and that includes the South Africans last Saturday. The video of that game - and I'm sure John Wells, England's forwards coach, will have been poring over it - shows where Tonga can be undone: in the tight and in particular the line outs.

Tactics are a trade-off. If you make yourself strong in one area you tend to weaken another, as Ireland did against France last weekend. I'll come to that later after explaining why the line out is key to England. There are more line outs than scrums in a game and, by and large, you get more from them. The scrum is such a technical area that domination doesn't always bring its due rewards. New Zealand, for example, have the best scrum in the tournament technically and they dominated Scotland, but Marius Jonker had his whistle in his mouth so often the All Blacks didn't get enough benefit from their excellence.

The line out, however, tends to produce cleaner ball and this is why Wells and Brian Ashton have concentrated England's focus in that area, picking Steve Borthwick and Lewis Moody to play tonight. On England's own ball they should have jumpers all over the place, even though Borthwick and Ben Kay are natural middle-of-the-line operators. But it's on Tonga's throw that we should really see their value.

Tonga have lost Paino Hehea with a shoulder injury and have moved last week's blindside flanker Viliami Vaki into the second row. I won't pretend to have a comprehensive knowledge of the Tongan line out, but it wasn't that strong last week, losing a third on their own throw without snaffling a defensive ball, and the loss of a specialist should hurt.

It also means England can play a kicking game and try to starve Tonga's dangerous midfield running backs and lively back row of ball. Jonny Wilkinson can go long for touch in the knowledge that England should win a reasonable percentage of the line outs in Tonga's half

Mind you, if Wilkinson gets it wrong or the jumpers don't fire, then England's midfield of Mathew Tait and Olly Barkley will be doing a lot of tackling. They'll see enough of Finau Maka and Epi Taione anyway, but Wells and Ashton have gambled that potential line out dominance plus Moody's extra pace in defense will offset the loss of Joe Worsley's tackling power.

Eddie O'Sullivan went the other way against France and that, in part, is why Ireland are in a pickle. He gambled that Donnacha O'Callaghan and Paul O'Connell would see off the French line out and excused David Wallace lifting duties to shore up the midfield. The Ireland coach saw a threat in France's centers running at Ronan O'Gara and deputed the flanker to be his minder.

He was right in one aspect: David Marty and Damien Traille did pound away at the Irish midfield. But by moving Wallace, O'Sullivan undermined his jumpers. O'Callaghan and O'Connell have been the dominant lineout force in European rugby but the Irish lost five of their 15 line outs.

O'Sullivan must have given his line-out a lot of thought before announcing the team to play Argentina. By sticking with the men who have done it for him in the past, he's gambling again.

But there you go, it's a trade-off. And if O'Callaghan and O'Connell don't do something wonderful on Sunday, it'll be home time for the team that was beating South Africa and Australia convincingly less than a year ago.