3 Key Moments That Could Have Made It So Much Worse For Wales vs England

[LiRFCMatt]

An excerpt from my blog (I know I know, this guy and his bloody blog):

"What Faletau did in order to set up the Rhys Webb try was brilliant, which is why he was in my team of the week, found here. But should the try have stood? Faletau goes diving in at the feet of the hooker to collect the ball, his knee clearly hits the floor as he steals the ball away from the middle of the scrum. It is absolutely illegal and bizarre that it wasn't referred, Chris Robshaw definitely should have had a word, especially when you see the effect that players and management can have on the decision of a try, which is what happened with Dave Attwood's disallowed one.


A lot of the talk before the game revolved around England running illegal lines that deliberately block defenders. This clearly had been drilled into the Welsh players and the referee as every man in red was up in arms about what would normally have been called a well run hard line with a man on the loop. Very harsh decision against the English, and I suppose you could attribute both of these decision to "home advantage" but it is a 14 point swing and would have made the final scores 9-28. To add on to the Welsh misery in my hypothetical alternate time line, you have the Haskell "moment".

"HOW!?" Is what I shouted when Haskell was magnificently tackled on the line by the post. The most solid piece of Welsh defence in that second half came from an inanimate object. It is bizarre, because Haskell was so brilliant for the whole game, apart from his two key moments, the missed tackle on Faletau which led to the try that shouldn't have been given, and the opportunity to score a try to seal England's victory early on."

A more complete view can be found here: http://fourballsblog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/just-how-good-were-england-against-wales.html
But that's effectively it.

 

[smartcooky]

"What Faletau did in order to set up the Rhys Webb try was brilliant, which is why he was in my team of the week, found here. But should the try have stood? Faletau goes diving in at the feet of the hooker to collect the ball, his knee clearly hits the floor as he steals the ball away from the middle of the scrum. It is absolutely illegal and bizarre that it wasn't referred, Chris Robshaw definitely should have had a word, especially when you see the effect that players and management can have on the decision of a try, which is what happened with Dave Attwood's disallowed one.

I agree, the try should not have stood, but Youngs was offside at the scrum (the non ball winning scrummie has to have both feet behind the ball) while Falatau was still bound, so it should have been a penalty to Wales instead of a try.

But then I'm sure that if the referee had looked long enough and hard enough at the Welsh scrum that was going backwards very fast, he could have found some binding issue to penalise them for.

 

[goodNumber10]

On youngs, he was offside, but the scrum was deteriorating at such a speed, after being hooked it would have been hard to stay on side.

For me he was in the wrong position anyway that close to their own line, i'd prefer him to drop off the scrum and defend the blind left with may leaving Ford to defend open.

That way the blindside is closed off, and we don't' have to surrender an openside player to do so. That means he could have come up off the line and tackled TF allowing May to hold his position, Ford coming from right to left is probably what made him bite in.

 

[smartcooky]

On youngs, he was offside, but the scrum was deteriorating at such a speed, after being hooked it would have been hard to stay on side.

For me he was in the wrong position anyway that close to their own line, i'd prefer him to drop off the scrum and defend the blind left with may leaving Ford to defend open.

That way the blindside is closed off, and we don't' have to surrender an openside player to do so. That means he could have come up off the line and tackled TF allowing May to hold his position, Ford coming from right to left is probably what made him bite in.

Yep, for once I agree with you.

The Welsh scrum was going backwards fast and it was unlikely that he could have got the ball. The obvious Welsh play in that situation was the 8-9 break to the big blind, If he had done what you suggest, he might have been the extra defender that would have made the difference to prevent the try being scored.