I expect a better performance - I don't want to be excited about a worst ever result against a side we've never come close to losing to
Just to add...14 of that squad play for Benneton...so going down the same route as the Irish...cohesion best players in the country training together ever day...makes a huge difference.
Under Jones the closest we got to losing was 31-14 so sorry, that's wrong. There were a few in the 2010's that came close. The issue, as has been said, it this is off the back of a whole year of appalling England performances, literally breaking records for worst ever. Those of us complaining aren't expecting him to have turned the team into ***le contenders, and the constant jumping straight to this strawman is getting tiresome, but DO expect him to be bringing the team up a level. As it is, he's just added another 2 record worst performance stats to the list. If anything our attack has slightly improved and yet we still scored fewer tries than Italy. Our defence however has somehow managed to get even worse. We have had a problem with defending too narrow and not realigning fast enough for years and nobody is addressing it. How many times must sides breeze past our completely non-existent wide defence before someone works out we can't just keep leaving huge gaps out wide if the players aren't going to put the effort in to drift across when the attacking team goes wide. We aren't talking complex rugby here, these are the absolute basics.
I think it's a reasonable point. Some of the best teams have been based on a core of one club. For England it's historically been Leicester then Saracens. Nz with Crusaders etc, etc.
I'm not sure where this came from TBH?
I'm a bit on the fence here but a journey implies having a destination and a route to getting there, I just don't think that route has been laid out for anyone to see. Its hard to see tangible progression given some of the selections, Ford has no place based on current form, clearly credit in the bank, I get this is somewhat forced by M smiths injury, in F Smith you have the form 10 give him some descent minutes. I have long been a Daly fan being a Wasps fan watching him come through, even I am now struggling to justify his selection, chopping and changing positions hasn't helped him but that's another story, we have plenty of other options for wing. steward was solid yesterday but still question his all around game, is really like to see what Furbank can do there, if he's proven he can't hack it at international at the second time of trying fine, his form this season and the extra attacking threat he carries warrants a second chance IMO.
Ok which players are being played out of position and Earl and Underhill both put in a good shift so I'm not sure how they were anonymous.
To be honest I'm not really sure, but a bit of honestly, to accept publicly we don't have a big dominant pack that will bully opposition into summation like SA do, whilst there is a place for kicking the game plan isn't so reliant on it and using it to cause opposition into mistakes, to actually have some attacking invention of our own. To this point it's just kind of seems more of the same aimless tactics with a few tweaks in personnel. I'm not expecting over night miracles by any stretch of the imagination. If you are going to play a plan involving a lot of kicking you have to have the players to retain possession a descent chunk of the time and a water tight defence, England have the worst of both, selections and game plan for said selection at the moment just seems to make the coaches the architect of Englands downfalls at times.
For me, if you are rebuilding and want to temper expectations, I'd say the team should look at getting the "difficult to beat" label. That means rock solid defence and a good tactical game to keep pressure on the opponents. An attacking game can be built off that afterwards but you want a team that you think can stick if for the full 80 and minimise nasty surprises.
Yeah the whole "journey" "building" thing.
No. I don't think there is any dispute that we were in a very, very poor place this time last year (and before). We have improved, but not by much.
I would have preferred Smith to have some time with Mitchell to see it that helped. Having said that, Dawson made a good point which was once the subs came on, England went very conservative and played like they were trying to see out the win, which suggests it was a coaching decision and we weren't going to see Smith's natural game anyway.
Isn't that more to do with the decision making on the pitch?
