Brookes is poor in the scrum, though.
It wasn't parity with him on, Bath were still on top, just not to the extent that they were after the 2nd choice Falcons front row came on - most (all?) of Bath's penalties at the scrum came from James vs Brookes.
That said, he's still very young and will improve here - wouldn't have him for England yet, and to say he put Wilson to shame is a bit silly.
Absolutely immense away from the scrum, though.
I remember it differently. Reading into the stats, for example, both Falcons and Bath lost 2 scrums on their own feed. The 2 scrums Falcons lost were the two following Brookes leaving the field. So up until Brookes left, Falcons had held their own scrum on every occasion and Bath had lost it twice. The turning point in the scrum was certainly when the entire Bath front row and Brookes were replaced. So all in all, I think Brookes did very well in the scrum. It may be that he's finding his feet, or the rule changes suit him, or he just had a really good game. Not sure.
On another note, looking at the stats, someone explain when Vickers ran 109 meters?
I think it's a little harsh to score the backs 5/10, when as you point out, they didn't get the ball.
5/10 suggests they were poor, when in reality they didn't have the opportunity to play badly, let alone well.
I think Webber did pretty well initially, his first 8 throws were good... then it got a little muddled.
Okay, I should have pointed out that I don't do the internet rating thing of 1-6 = crap, 7 = average, 8 = good, 9 = great, 10 = perfect. 5 is bang-in-the-middle average. Nothing special, but not poor either.
The good:
Watson 7.5 (second to Blair in the backs, best runner, think he's made a case to be kept at the back, with Bendy onto the wing?)
Stringer, Ford 7 (Stringer's passing was crisp, Ford controlled the hell out of the second half and put in some nice kicks)
The average:
Rokoduguni 6 (made some decent, powerful runs for the conditions)
Eastmond 6 (played one half, and still made more tackles for a back than any other back on the field - rating lowered because he didn't do much else)
Banahan 5 (made some good kicks ahead, but strangely seems to struggle at making meters in runs, for an 18st wing)
The bad:
Henson 4 (only involvement was to throw a poor pass, okay in defence)
Joseph 2 (when you play for 80 minutes, you have to do more than touch the ball once, regardless of the conditions - anonymous in attack and defence)
As a unit? 5/6 seems fair to me.
As for Webber... sometimes it's difficult to tell how much is his fault, the jumpers, the lifters or the callers. I think there was a ball that Garvey/Hooper (can't remember which) dropped, and I blamed Webber for it because it seemed as if the ball didn't reach the jumper and was too hard to take, but it may well be that the jumper mistimed the jump, or one of the lifters didn't give him decent height or the call was too confusing to begin with. It just seemed as if everything went a lot smoother when Batty came on.
