[2025 Six Nations] England vs France - 08/02/25

[spartan32]

Anyway, theres always the U20s match this evening to keep the mood up. The young lads stand a good chance of getting a win tonight. In terms of tomorrow's game I going to throw caution to the wind and say the lads are going to pull off a mighty 1 point victory in the dying minutes!!

 

[Vieux Talonneur]

Maybe I'm being unfair on the incumbent set up

You're not.

 

[Reiser99]

In defence of the England players, they've hardly had a very stable coaching set up. Coaches coming and going like bloody buses. One week doing one thing, then all change. So these lads have to first adapt from what their clubs want from them to what England want, and then that keeps changing. No wonder they are struggling to be consistent. If we really are to turn things around we must have a set, consistent, and top quality coaching team in place. I am no expert in coaching, but I suspect it would be fair to say that our coaches would be way down the pecking order on the international scene. That surely creates somewhat of a glass ceiling for the players. How can they reach their full potential when the team coaching them doesn't have the skills to get them there?

Maybe I'm being unfair on the incumbent set up, but it always seems like there's plenty of talent to work with, it just never comes together.

Any experienced coach has left. Not only do we have an inexperienced head coach, but the rest of the coaching setup too. It's a complete shitshow and is definitely affecting the squad.

 

[Grizwald]

Anyway, theres always the U20s match this evening to keep the mood up. The young lads stand a good chance of getting a win tonight. In terms of tomorrow's game I going to throw caution to the wind and say the lads are going to pull off a mighty 1 point victory in the dying minutes!!

Allegedly Dean Ryan and the tearing up of the player pathway etc is the main reason that there is a pretty obvious gap between the older generation of players Itoje etc and the new young lads starting to impress at senior level Pollock, Asher Opoku-Fordjour, Junior Kpoku etc.

It's a multi-faceted issue really, there's only really Willis that I can think of who's playing abroad that you'd have in the side, maybe Joe M4gmmarchant. Willis has become a better player for the experience but the gap in finances probably mean it will continue to happen. If it were me I'd be spending some of that dual contract money on keeping English qualified players in England unless they relax the rule. I think the likes of Kpoku playing in France isn't a bad thing for their development or bank balance but there always the chance they get capped by France too......

I think the bigger player pool kind of hinders giving young lads a shot rather than with smaller nations who take more of a 'if they're good enough they're old enough' approach.