Agreed - especially when you consider that at the time Eddie was looking for a #8 to play like Billy; whereas he's now saying that we need find a different way of doing things at 8 - which shouldn't be too hard to find given that A] no other teams has a #8 who plays like Billy; B] we have no other #8 who plays like Billy and C] we do have a lot of talented #8s who don't play like Billy.
Always interesting - I did something similar about 2 years ago, when again, people were saying that Mercer was too small, so we should pick Simmonds instead (at the time, Zach was 105kg, and I was saying that I expected hos playing weight to stabilse around 110-112 - his currently quoted weight is 110):
I'm on board with selecting smaller 8s but transitioning a winger to the position may be a step too far
Well - we've tried Cokanasiga and May; talked about Nowell (Don't recall seeing him actually pack down though).I'm on board with selecting smaller 8s but transitioning a winger to the position may be a step too far
Joe > Thorley is an easy call for me. Joe's a better athlete and a significantly better player IMO.
I don't disagree with anything you've said, but I would argue that while Joe's defence and positional play leave a lot to be desired, he's still significantly stronger than Thorley in these areas of the game. Thorley's incredibly erratic in just about every aspect of the game, which has its benefits and weaknesses offensively at club level because defences have no idea what he's going to do or where he'll pop up, but at international level against more organised defences he won't find nearly as many holes. I imagine it also makes him a nightmare to be in a back three with and to coach, which Jones will not be a fan of. In stark contrast, Joe always looks composed and assured with ball in hand and while he often doesn't make the best choices offensively, he's rarely going to do anything that'll lose you the ball. I don't think that the same can be said for Thorley.
I don't think that anyone in the world doubts the defensive abilities of an Underhill-Curry flanker pairing, nor do I think that there's anyone who thinks that the bigger the player, the better the tackler. Defence isn't the issue that a Curry-Underhill pairing presents. In the final we didn't have too much trouble containing SA's big units defensively - we were beaten in the set piece and by the fact that offensively we just couldn't find go forward ball. It's in the latter of those 2 that the pairing really falls short - Curry is no slouch with ball in hand but I doubt he really troubles defences too much, while Underhill (as good of a tackler as he is) really doesn't offer much going forward. I'd take a back row with 2 strong ball-carrying forward options (Hill-Curry-Dombrandt/Earl, for example) that can split a defence over a back row with 1 outstanding carrier (Curry-Underhill-Vunipola) who can be easily marked by a defence.
That's a massive oversimplification IMO. Yes, technique matters more than size, but size and strength are still massive factors and you can't just negate them. Vunipola gets a lot of stick for the crumbling scrum in that final, and a lot of it is deserved, but ultimately the best loosehead in the world would've struggled in a situation where his lock pairing was nearly 20kg lighter than the oppositions. Weight is far from the biggest factor in a scrum but it damn well makes a difference.
