From being the fly-half the coach was building the team around to being moved to full-back and now a replacement who is third in the pecking order at No 10. For Marcus Smith, you could just as easily read Damian McKenzie.
On Saturday, McKenzie and Smith will sit on their respective benches at Twickenham with 23 on their back, but as recently as England’s 2024 summer tour of New Zealand both players were lining up opposite each other as starting fly-halves.
At the start of another World Cup cycle, new All Blacks head coach Scott Robertson made McKenzie his chosen one, handing him eight successive starts at fly-half. He finished 2024 in World Rugby’s team of the year.
Yet despite some sparkling individual displays, most notably against Ireland in Dublin, Robertson seemed to doubt whether McKenzie could go beyond being an attacking spark plug to the tactical general he needed. So Robertson reverted to Beauden Barrett at No 10 while furiously fluttering his eyelashes towards Richie Mo’unga in Japan as McKenzie slipped into the role of replacement. Sound familiar?
