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<blockquote data-quote="klitarris" data-source="post: 1025458" data-attributes="member: 72501">I sat down and watched the 2015 France 6N game (the high scoring one) with my 6 year old the other day. He enjoyed it but got a bit fidgety and lacking in attention in the second half. Tbh I think he did pretty well!Anyway, three main things struck me watching it. Firstly we have come a hell of a long way since Robshaw and Haskell on the flanks. Not knocking them particularly and they both had some great games during some pretty good times for England, but compare our flanker options now to then and we&#039;re in a pretty good place.Secondly, Billy used to actually run at people without checking just before taking contact. I don&#039;t know why he&#039;s started doing it, but in the Wales match I genuinely don&#039;t think he took contact once without checking just before and losing some of his speed. Maybe he is slightly changing direction and going for the shoulders instead of straight in. If so then fair enough, but I reckon he is too big to be agile enough to really change direction quickly enough to make that an effective tactic.Thirdly, Youngs used to snipe around the rucks a lot, which kept defences honest and consequently freed up a bit of space further out. He doesn&#039;t do that any more (ok, he got a try doing exactly that against Wales but that was the exception rather than the rule) which is a shame. It may be that defences are that much tighter anyway (France&#039;s defence was pretty shocking that day) in which case sniping round the fringes would lead to more harm than good, but it would be nice to see him do it a bit more.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="klitarris, post: 1025458, member: 72501"] I sat down and watched the 2015 France 6N game (the high scoring one) with my 6 year old the other day. He enjoyed it but got a bit fidgety and lacking in attention in the second half. Tbh I think he did pretty well! Anyway, three main things struck me watching it. Firstly we have come a hell of a long way since Robshaw and Haskell on the flanks. Not knocking them particularly and they both had some great games during some pretty good times for England, but compare our flanker options now to then and we're in a pretty good place. Secondly, Billy used to actually run at people without checking just before taking contact. I don't know why he's started doing it, but in the Wales match I genuinely don't think he took contact once without checking just before and losing some of his speed. Maybe he is slightly changing direction and going for the shoulders instead of straight in. If so then fair enough, but I reckon he is too big to be agile enough to really change direction quickly enough to make that an effective tactic. Thirdly, Youngs used to snipe around the rucks a lot, which kept defences honest and consequently freed up a bit of space further out. He doesn't do that any more (ok, he got a try doing exactly that against Wales but that was the exception rather than the rule) which is a shame. It may be that defences are that much tighter anyway (France's defence was pretty shocking that day) in which case sniping round the fringes would lead to more harm than good, but it would be nice to see him do it a bit more. [/QUOTE]

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