Since I can remember watching England, I've always said we're stupid. We give away dumb penalties at will, and then can't adapt to refs. It's not just this game or this tournament, even when we're winning we give away stupid penalties.
Youngs and Binny both had decent games, but both need to keep it up to stay past this tournament imo. Daly is just washed now, he brings nothing to this team, I'd rather Goode there, Andy or Alex. Lawes and Launchbury are both missing and either start in the rest of the 6 nations teams, Hill and Itoje didn't help their causes here
I think as a sport we don't breed intelligent people. We like deference. So if the score goes well, we blame Eddie. (That doesn't mean he isn't to blame - but the players don't have self responsibility not to give away or do dumb ****)
In regards to today - the ones presumed under pressure:
Billy Vunipola - 2nd best player on the pitch I thought he was excellent. That might irk some but the intent was good he carried well and offloaded well.
Owen Farrell - Actually, on field he was fine. No idea how he deals with both situations - people say he should do better? Um, what now? I've been a big advocate for dropping him based on skills but today he seemed pretty good. Missed a long kick, meh, that's not my concern about him and he did well otherwise.
Elliot Daly - that was bad and a continuation of bad. Perhaps at youth level, we're giving him too much credit. the weavy runs covered up everything else and perhaps worked for a little while at international level but his hop skip is nonsense as a fullback and his tackling, although I'd be worse obviously I can only compare to other international standard fullbacks and hes easy to beat. Malins has to be looked at now.
Ben Youngs - Good. Funny thing is he was the better scrum half. Well taken clever try to boot.
Negatives today:
Jonny Hill - Dumb call at a wrong moment cost us very, very dear.
Dan Robson - Whilst coming on with 10 to go is a pressure and somewhat of an excuse. He's there to change the game. His passing is way better than Ben but everything else... I mean I'm beginning to see why Youngs stays there.
Ellis Genge - Big fan of his, but too many penalties when he comes on at scrum time or at the breakdown. His open field game is fine but he's killing us atm.
Maro Itoje - He's my first name on the team sheet and the guy I'd have as captain. However, it's clear he's a student of the game and wants to pride himself on living on the edge. For about a year he's been on the wrong side of that despite being world class. Just needs to tweak his game to the laws and be the Maro we need again.
Discipline - The less said the better. Actually, I have a theory on this. We're a team who simply want to push the laws to the very fullest and are NOT concerned if the refs are taking a more studious look at us in the short term with the linespeed and offside line as well as the breakdown calls. We've either taken the option we don't care or they are all small penalties which in the short term are hurting us but in the longer term we don't care. We've been like this since Eddie took charge and I really don't see this changing either.
Other things:
Are we kidding ourselves a bit?
So this is the bit I wanted to discuss. Is Eddie right about the team. What I mean is, yes, there are certain players who need more of a look. Sam and Joe Simmonds, Jack Willis/Tom Willis, Ben Curry, Freddie Stoddard/Max Malins, Olly Lawrence, Marcus Smith especially. However, that's a 12, 15s, lots of 10s and a couple of backrowers. Do they fundamentally change under Eddie? Do we have to change to accomodate them and are many coaches willing to do this? Do we improve that much by placing a few players here and there? I don't know maybe we do maybe we don't but there's something to ponder here.
It's also noticable how many of our fringe players are ******** the bed. Are they mentally weak? Do we have the depth we think we do?
The Premiership? Is it as good as we think it is with talent? I have to say I've watched the last 2 seasons and I must confess I think the standard is really poor in the premiership and pretty much across the board in both hemispheres at the moment. There's a few decent players here and there but the standard isn't fantastic shall we say. Yeah Exeter won the ERC and Bristol won the ECC but I can't say I'm overly enamered by anyone team up here or down south atm who I'd say is a good complete team, with nous, few weaknesses and simply breaks the offensive line at will.
The game itself. It's in a bad place for me. First time I really looked at the game and thought its in a bad way. Not just last year whilst England were winning, it's been coming for a while. They have absolutely no idea what to do with the breakdown and are **** scared with the data they are getting on concussions. Players are getting bigger and bigger and we've no answer for it but it's not really the getting bigger and bigger I've got issue with. It's fitness. Fitness is the no 1 issue the game has right now. It's such a slog breaking any defence with the accuracy and fitness of defences now that it's better without the ball, eddie is right about that, we just take it to the extreme in terms of style. Fitness means line breaks are less frequent, it's harder to score and it's harder to watch too. It's less entertaining than watching 2 teams with less fitness make mistakes but is much more fluent and glide around the pitch. Unless we find a way to deal with the defensive aspect and make it more entertaining, I do fear for the game somewhat.
I dunno today has given a lot of food to ponder. Are the players in our league all soft and are we producing soft weak minded players who aren't enjoying internationals much? Are we not skilling up our players well. It's been an interesting day as well as the obvious reffing deficiencies which have been awful for the game. Is the game in a bad way in terms of what it wants to be and where it is?
