Rugby critic Stephen Jones says the English game has been hamstrung by a "feeble devotion" to a few major elite schools.
Writing in The Sunday Times, Jones said Ireland was ahead of England in terms of rugby development, citing the fact Joe Schmidt's Six Nations squad had five world-class props to England's one.
Jones raised a querulous eyebrow at the Six Nations squads going into camp almost a fortnight out from the series start on February 2.
"What on earth do they do in there? Does a virtuoso concert pianist or a prima ballerina train for as long relative to the length of the actual performance? If they did, they would be bored rigid.
"Rugby was never meant to have every performance nuanced, every play within a play within a play polished to a sheen. Even international players now have their heads full with such minutiae that they lose the totality of it all, the vision of how to proceed."
"About 80 per cent of international matches are won by the team whose coach has managed to disperse more of the asphyxiating culture of his own obsessions, and given his team a licence to play and some idea of what that actually means.
Stephen Jones said the England players coach Eddie Jones had "brought to the start line last week are children of the undeveloped years".
"England lose so much talent because of their feeble devotion to a few major rugby schools - major in the opinion of the schools, that is - and academies rather than keeping their hearts and minds open to other social classes and other types of educational establishment.
"They go for elite streaming way too early, they rob teams of lifeblood and reduce the overall numbers who play because the tiny elite have been streamed off somewhere else."
Jones hailed Ireland's deliberate policy of nurturing "attacking props".
Tadhg Furlong is one of five world class props in Ireland's Six Nations squad.
"They have developed the best the best group of front-row forwards that any team ever had, so much so that Tadhg Furlong, the rampager on the tighthead, is in many ways more representative of what Ireland are about and more important to the team than Johnny Sexton at fly-half."
Mako Vunipola was England's only world-class prop, Jones said.
He said, under Schmidt, Ireland were "one of the most programmed teams you will find outside an Xbox", but they still "make room in their planning for occasional inconsistencies and the flying feet of Joey Carbery and Jordan Larmour."