England World Cup Squad

[HamJan]

At the world cup? No. For all the scapegoating, Burgess was not at fault for our world cup loss. It was poorly handled but the real issue I think was Farrell snr taking control and our whole style of play shifting from quite adventurous attacking play in the years proceeding the world cup to stodgy, hyper conservative defence play in the world cup. We changed our entire tactics from ones we had been developing over years to ones we had not played, aligning more with what Farrell snr would have focused on.

I don't blame Farrell snr as he would have pushed things from the perspective of a defence coach but it seems there needed to be more push back so we didn't sacrifice our entire attacking structure in favour of it.

As I remember Jonathon Joseph was on fire during 2015, and he got injured before the Wales RWC group match. Instead of replacing him with Slade, Lancaster / Farrell ripped up the backline to include Burgess at 12 and Brad Barrett at 13.
Burgess did nothing wrong during that match, but I often wonder what would have happened if Lancaster had stuck to the players, and the style of play, that worked reasonably well for us during the 6N instead of redesigning the wheel.

 

[Which Tyler]

As I remember Jonathon Joseph was on fire during 2015, and he got injured before the Wales RWC group match. Instead of replacing him with Slade, Lancaster / Farrell ripped up the backline to include Burgess at 12 and Brad Barrett at 13.
Burgess did nothing wrong during that match, but I often wonder what would have happened if Lancaster had stuck to the players, and the style of play, that worked reasonably well for us during the 6N instead of redesigning the wheel.

For me, it was Dave Attwood's story that summed up why I went into the 2015 RWC knowing we'd screwed up massively.
He'd been told to lose some weight, and work on his mobility; so he did, and was then dropped for not having the same impact in the tight exchanges.

The Burgess thing was a fiasco, but a side-show, and absolutely not the fault of a player who shouldn't have been selected anyway.

 

[BPM]

Not just Attwood. IIRC, Cole, Morgan and a bunch of others were the leanest and fittest they'd even been but lost masses of impact because they were too lightweight.

 

[TRF_Olyy]

Yeah Cole lost arguably* his prime international years due to slimming down so much

(On paper, at least - it'd be hard to top the impact he had in his breakthrough seasons)

Attwood too good of a player to have been used as little as he was - hadn't realised he'd been asked to slim down and then dropped for it. Proper tighthead locks are rare as hens teeth in this country, such a waste

 

[BrokenWing]

Wasn't Luther Burrell on pretty good form leading up to it and just got binned to accommodate Burgess?

I don't think anyone with a modicum of common sense blames Burgess for any of it, but it caused disruption and alienated players IMO.

 

[Geordie]

John Connolly was nicknamed 'Knuckles' on account of his past occupation as a nightclub bouncer and the former Australia head coach pulls no punches on his assessment of Eddie Jones' return with the Wallabies.

"A bloody disaster mate," Connolly says from Down Under. "How did we end up with Eddie again? He is full of it. He talks a great game but plays a terrible one. He is a charlatan, he is a failed selector. He was the captain's pick by the chairman who just came into the job."

Connolly succeeded Jones as Australia head coach first time around in 2006 and had to deal with the broken shell of a Wallabies squad that had lost eight out of nine Tests.

"When I took over from Eddie, the players were like beaten down sheepdogs," Connolly said. "If you walked in a room they would have their heads down and were scared to do anything. There was no leadership. There was no development. It was a total void that took nearly a year to rebuild. I can't believe we have made the same mistake again."

Does this sound familiar?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-u...a-regret-eddie-jones-return-john-connolly-nz/

 

[BPM]

That last paragraph is pretty much what I was getting at yesterday.

 

[TRF_Olyy]

Makes sense why he's notorious as a quick results guy - come in and scream at people and they take notice. Keep that up for 7yrs and it wears everyone down

 

[BrokenWing]

Rugbys Mourinho

 

[Ragey Erasmus]

Makes sense why he's notorious as a quick results guy - come in and scream at people and they take notice. Keep that up for 7yrs and it wears everyone down

Reminds me of a story one of my dads friends told me about a place he worked. He put in a huge shift working tons of overtime to get a project completed on time along with his team. The management saw it an said all projects should work to those timescales going forwards. He said it was a one off and that rate of work could not be maintained indefinitely. They ignored him and his team were immediately lumbered with more intense work and told to see if they could go even better than they did before. The entire team handed in their notices on the same day.

 

[TopTen2003]

Getting clearer by the day that this Group match with Argentina is an absolute hum dinger of a game.

Massive test for Borthwick.

 

[Don't Skip Leg Day]

I remember Burrell playing great in the premiership at 12, then he was played at 13 which I wasn't fond of but he played brilliantly there with (I think) 12trees at 12.

I always thought with Lancaster we were 'nearly there' but lacked that final but of grit. I don't think I'll ever get over our group stage exit though. It's crazy that players were being told to lose weight but I do remember a bit of a fascination to try and be the all blacks. Not sure if that was just the press or something Lancaster said but attwood was a brilliant player and should have had more caps.

 

[Vieux Talonneur]

Article on Borthwick /England's progress from Stephen Jones in the Sunday Times.

Apparently the squad's sense of purpose is "close to frightening".

Apparently we have, in SB's words "a lot of leaders. We think out leadership group of Farrell, Lawes and Genge is fabulous".

Finished it by saying that it was good to see that SB didn't hold any grudges, proceeding to list a number of damning quotes he'd written about Borthwick the captain and player.

 

[BPM]

A damning quote from Stephen Jones is an accolade of sorts.

 

[Ragey Erasmus]

Well that's

Article on Borthwick /England's progress from Stephen Jones in the Sunday Times.

Apparently the squad's sense of purpose is "close to frightening".

Apparently we have, in SB's words "a lot of leaders. We think out leadership group of Farrell, Lawes and Genge is fabulous".

Finished it by saying that it was good to see that SB didn't hold any grudges, proceeding to list a number of damning quotes he'd written about Borthwick the captain and player.

Well that's annoying, generally whatever Jones writes, the opposite is true.

 

[BrokenWing]

Getting a Rentaghost vibe from that look…

 

[Geordie]

So no point taking anything from the random squad leavers and joiners...

 

[Not Mike Brown's Sock]

So no point taking anything from the random squad leavers and joiners...

Frankly wouldn't be surprised if he started next week at this point.

Doubly unsurprised if he scores a hat trick and gets dropped for Christian Wade

 

[Becca]

View attachment 17221

Getting a Rentaghost vibe from that look…

I'm getting Guy Fawkes !

 

[TRF_Olyy]

....but why?

Like I'm glad he's back, don't get me wrong, but what was the point of having him miss a week of training?
Is one of the retained guys injured? Or just in poor form?