[2015 RWC] Pool A: England vs. Australia (03/10/2015)

[McTallshort]

Think the coach is an irrelevance to be honest. I have obviously been thinking about this and I just don't think we have the players. Ok Watson and Brown are good, Ford has great potential and the coaches don't seem to trust him in the big games which could nail his confidence and other than the Youngs brothers who else is there? We seem to be missing a whole generation of player's, were are the guys in the late twenties early thirties who normally steady the ship in the big games? If we want success we need someone like Gatland who coaches an easy to learn, limited but effective game that inexperienced players can follow until they develop their potential, otherwise we will have another 4 years of muddled selection and disappointment.

Well played Australia, great performance,great set piece and a surprisingly likeable coach.

 

[The Jones Boy]

I would be genuinely afraid of England if they got a Kiwi coach. England has the players to dominate world rugby, they just need someone to shake the tree the way that Graham Henry did in Wales in the late 90's early noughts. Now Wales are no longer a push over as they were in the 80's and most of the 90's.

England were woeful last night.
The breakdown was like watching men and boys as Pocock and Hooper cleaned up and harassed the English back row.

 

[Don't Skip Leg Day]

Think the coach is an irrelevance to be honest. I have obviously been thinking about this and I just don't think we have the players. Ok Watson and Brown are good, Ford has great potential and the coaches don't seem to trust him in the big games which could nail his confidence and other than the Youngs brothers who else is there? We seem to be missing a whole generation of player's, were are the guys in the late twenties early thirties who normally steady the ship in the big games? If we want success we need someone like Gatland who coaches an easy to learn, limited but effective game that inexperienced players can follow until they develop their potential, otherwise we will have another 4 years of muddled selection and disappointment.

Well played Australia, great performance,great set piece and a surprisingly likeable coach.

I think your missing the point, it's the coaches job to find and develop talent and there is plenty out there.

If you picked the best English 15 for the last 4 years playing in the premiership not many are in the England team now.

Lancaster has wasted too many caps on average or useless players

 

[Atco]

Lancaster and Robshaw (and Barritt) are admirable people. But I don't believe we don't have the players to win the world cup. A lot of potential winners are already in our squad. However, as has been said so many times, most of the battle is about selection. The right coach and the right teams. It starts with getting the right coach/manager. He will select the best coaching team. They will select the best squad and selected teams. They will give the players the right messages. If that is done, we will achieve all the success we should achieve. The fact that we don't perform proves we've got the first selection decisions wrong. We have the resource and the will to win. Let's sort it out and get a proven international coach and face the fact that this is a professional sport and the best coach is likely to be from a winning rugby culture and therefor probably, but not necessarily, not from the home nations.

 

[Vieux Talonneur]

Calling it now; Lancaster's post match interview will be manaical laughter while he screams I HAVE ALL THE MONEY at the camera

I'd have said flat out incorrect.

As for the bit about regretting not taking Hartley... *shrugs*

Never been a fan of Parling. Decent player, but too one dimensional for me & I think his lack of power compromises our scrum which should be one of our strengths.

Marler has taken most of the flack for our scrum, but he'd previously shown a huge improvement, so what went wrong? Never an easy question, and the 2nd row has to cop some of the blame. But I'd be looking more at Youngs who has neither the size, natural strength or technique required. Without a solid scrum so much of the rest of the game is compromised so for me it's back to basics for the 6N. That means Hartley with George coming off the bench and becoming no1 in a year or so. Youngs brings too many problems, webber's off the pace and LCD's darts are nowhere near good enough.

Can't help wondering if our conditioning team also got things badly wrong.

 

[Colombia]

After all the bull**** from the poms brigade saying what they were going to do with the wallabies on Saturday we end up seeing a total whitewash and Burgess not being worth a bar of soap and another "alsoran"ending up best on ground it became a complete farce, If England don't try and revert to the style of play the Southern Hemisphere teams have adopted they are never going to be in the same class,..it's only a matter of time before Argentine are above England in class all the others are way above England......By the way what are the ages of the Pommy players? some of the forwards look to be in their 40s to me.

England need to play like England, not try to emulate Australia. All nations have their traditional strengths, they need to play to them.

As bad as it seems right now, in the longer term this loss may turn out to be the best thing that ever happened English rugby.

There are many issues within the English game as a whole that need to be sorted out, for too long the RFU have been sweeping them under the carpet. Now it has hit them in the pocket the RFU might actually do something about them. If they can finally get their systems right and properly harness the talent which lies within player base, the sky is the limit.

"If...", of course the RFU's uncanny ability to screw things up should never be "misunderestimated".

 

[Peat]

Parling and Lawes powered a dominant scrum in the Six Nations. Youngs has never caused scrums to disintegrate by his presence before either. Neither should be the issue. Neither should Marler mind. It's one hell of a puzzle what's gone wrong here... but whatever the answer is, it's not Hartley.

 

[smartcooky]

England did exactly what I said they shouldn't; run and fall at the feet of Pocock and Hooper... that was just meat and drink to them


I don't now whether Australia was very very good last night, or England were just bloody awful. England missed 15 tackles last night, and the Wallabies made them pay, but the Wallabies missed 22 tackes, and England didn't capitalise.

So, what was England missing in this campaign

1. A Genuine 7.
Instead, they had a 6 wearing a 7 jersey. If you want to go away from your usual 10 man rugby game plan and play the open, running style that the All Blacks and the Wallabies play you MUST have a genuine fetcher.

2. A settled midfield.
All they did leading up to RWC was chop, change, rearrage and experiment with God knows how many different 12/13 combinations. I read somewhere that they had 14 different starting midfield combinations in their last 15 tests (can anyone tell me if this is true?).

3. A decent scrum
I never thought I would ever say this about England, but their scrum today was absolute pants! They were utterly dominated by a vastly improved Australian pack, largely thanks to the Wallabies Argentinian scrum coach, ex Puma Mario Ledesma. Argies know how to scrum!!!

4. Leadership on the pitch
I had my suspicions about Robshaw when England toured hear last year. He seemed to carry the same attitude to captaincy on the field that Rocky Elsom did a few years ago; not interested in listening to what the referee tells him, more interested in having his say. Also, there appears not to be a "leadershiop group" on the pitch. In the All Blacks, that group is comprised of a few senior players who assist McCaw (Liam Messam, Conrad Smith, Ma'a Nonu, Dan Carter & Kieren Read). For the Wallabies its Genia, AAC, Hooper & Pocock. If England does have a leadership group, it wasn't apparent in this game.

I also have to wonder about the infrastructure of English rugby. They have the biggest player base and the biggest budget of any National Rugby Union in the world. What on earth are they doing wrong? Is Stuart Lancaster really the top rugby coach in England? They have 12 fully professional club rugby teams. Surely they must have systems in place to identify coaching talent. Its no accident that over a third of the teams at RWC have kiwi coaches.

New Zealand (Steve Hansen)
Wales (Warren Gatland),
Ireland (Joe Schmidt),
Scotland (Vern Cotter),
Canada (Kieran Crowley),
Fiji (John McKee)
Georgia (Milton Haig)

This is becasue we have a coaching talent identification system that works.

IMO, they should offer Dave Rennie a truckload of money to move to England. I hear he is keen to coach in UK

 

[nzlizard]

You picked the wrong one, I was never a fan of Robbie Deans, built his reputation on the back of the rise of McCaw and Carter and a stacked Canterbury team.

So true, the players in that team, hell I reckon even Kirwan could have won a super 15 final, was just so much talent.

IMO, they should offer Dave Rennie a truckload of money to move to England. I hear he is keen to coach in UK

He would do an amazing job, think we have him till end of 17

 

[Colombia]

I also have to wonder about the infrastructure of English rugby. They have the biggest player base and the biggest budget of any National Rugby Union is the world. What on earth are they doing wrong? Is Stuart Lancaster really the top rugby coach in England? They have 12 fully professional club rugby teams. Surely they must have systems in place to identify coaching talent. Its no accident that over a third of the teams at RWC have kiwi coaches.

There's a push-pull between club and country, they don't work together. It's a bigger deal than it sounds. The Aviva Premiership is like a mincing machine for player welfare. There are loads of other things too. It's a disorganized disaster. Poor selection of head coach is just the nail in the coffin.

It's a tough fix, but fix they must. If they don't do it after this humiliation then they never will. It's a big opportunity to put things right with open eyes.

 

[RoosTah]

I really don't know what to expect from this game. The Wallabies have shown serious improvement in their scrum this year and also put on some pretty slick moves over the RC and games since, but at the same time we just don't have a world class goal kicker,

What to think about our not world class goal kicker Foley now sanzar???

Hahaha mate I've never been so happy to be wrong!

To be honest though, we all knew it was in him - he was brilliant for the Tahs in 2014! Just seemed to have dropped off this year. The man couldn't have picked a better match for a return to form though! Just incredible... Beale was brilliant too, even in defence

 

[McTallshort]

Hahaha mate I've never been so happy to be wrong!

To be honest though, we all knew it was in him - he was brilliant for the Tahs in 2014! Just seemed to have dropped off this year. The man couldn't have picked a better match for a return to form though! Just incredible... Beale was brilliant too, even in defence

Good for your win mate, best of luck for the rest of the tournament.

 

[Colombia]

The upset of England going out is nice because it's good to see upsets in this sport where there are so few but it's a shame it had to happen when they are hosts. Whether it's football, RL or whatever sport, you like to see the host team get a decent run in the tournament.

 

[RoosTah]

Good for your win mate, best of luck for the rest of the tournament.

Cheers mate. Tough luck to your boys... The pressure looked like it really got to them last night, and they're a better side than the showed I thought

 

[McTallshort]

Absolutely everyone always worried what would happen if you lads ever got your set piece sorted, now you have I think you are genuine contenders

 

[korn1]

Sad to see the hosts get knocked out but Australia did what they had to do.

 

[wooli]

Yep, private schools and all that.

Kane Douglas is from Yamba, a sleepy seaside town with a population of about 7,000

 

[spartan32]

Really interesting looking at the stars post game. England were toe to toe on all apart from penalties and turnovers. They made way more meters with ball in hand but just didn't have the capacity to break down the Aussies when it really mattered in the red zone. Lancaster based his game on defence and kicking and that was clearly a mistake. Aus played beautifully last night but much of what they did well can be seen getting done at bath with Ford Eastmond and JJ week in week out. Put simply Aus prove the point that big lumps don't win you games, deft hands, quick minds, and two bloody good fetchers win games. So have we learnt our lesson now England. We need to pick attacking players, alongside defensive ones, and when we do pick attacking players (Slade) actually bloody play them.

SL and team have to go, not as punishment, but because they are simply not up to the task. They tried to play it their way and they have failed utterly. I feel for the likes of Brown, Watson and JJ who deserve to be in the later stages of this cup.

At the very least I hope SL picks and all put attacking team come next week and gives Slade Ford Care and others a decent run out. They deserve to have at least played once before returning home.

 

[LeinsterMan (NotTigsMan)]

I will nail my mast at
Head Coach - Wayne Smith (needs a shot at head coach somewhere now)
And let him build a coaching team around his vision.

 

[Kiwi_]

I will nail my mast at
Head Coach - Wayne Smith (needs a shot at head coach somewhere now)
And let him build a coaching team around his vision.

He's honestly one of the best out there. If Hansen were to suddenly drop dead tomorrow, I would want Wayne as headmaster straight away. But to be straight with you, I think Wayne would reject the job.

Just saw this from David Campese, he has written in the Australian Financial Review on why, for Australians, it is always a great feeling beating "the Poms"


"A sense of entitlement. That attitude of "We gave the world this or this sport - we are its true guardians". The English also have a tendency to gloat in victory. Maybe it is just the media. England have the most resources, the largest pool of players, the biggest fan base. They should win. Only mostly they don't. You build them up like there is no tomorrow. It is the same with football. All that money and hype".