Interested about Farrell, I think he wants to play heads up rugby, but does not have the skills and unfortunately in the England there is nobody willing to challenge him, for whatever reason.
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It's very consistent with his other performances for England over the last few years, so I'm not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt
He's very strong but feel like he lacks the venom for the kind of role he plays - like he takes contact and tries to drive players back,
Look at someone like Jasper Wiese who takes contact on his own terms, accelerating into the line and trying to burst through
The Billy of old would bulldoze people, the current one just draws in defenders, but even then I don't think he draws in more than our other options would
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I'd also add that we were that slow to secure our own ball that the welsh defence had 100% reset every time. We lacked so much urgency and support play.
I'm really shocked with how bad we looked yesterday. I'm starting to get the impression SB has been training the wrong things in camp.
Our tactics were also shocking, being down to 12 men, Ford just kept kicking the ball at them to run back at us. It's brain dead rugby.
I'm really shocked with how bad we looked yesterday. I'm starting to get the impression SB has been training the wrong things in camp.
Our tactics were also shocking, being down to 12 men, Ford just kept kicking the ball at them to run back at us. It's brain dead rugby.
Whilst I wouldn't want Billy there if im honest....it was his first game since April or something....so it was never going to be a blockbuster....
He notoriously needs a lot of games to get match fit and match form compared to say Lawes who can come in an instantly put in a fairly Lawes like performance.
I'm not sure Billy has enough games to get there.
Another option might be
6 Lawes
7 Curry
8 Earl
He notoriously needs a lot of games to get match fit and match form compared to say Lawes who can come in an instantly put in a fairly Lawes like performance.
I'm not sure Billy has enough games to get there.
Another option might be
6 Lawes
7 Curry
8 Earl
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From what I remember of that 12-man period, Wales had hands on the ball twice, both of which were in their own 22, with both teams scoring a try.
If "brain dead rugby" means a draw on the scoreboard, whilst 3-men down, I'd happily take brain-dead rugby with 15 on the pitch over anything we've seen from England in the last 3 years
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The thing is he hasn't been blockbuster for years. No other player is given the same chances to get match fit. If he's not fit enough, don't select him. If he's too lazy to put in the work to get fit, don't select him. I'd be more inclined to give him time if he had been absolutely tearing things up prior to his injury but he hasn't done that for years. He burned through all his credit years ago and has added debt on top of that by being self-confessed lazy and his generally **** attitude. Literally the only merit he has that gives him special treatment is he breaks the scales when he stands on them. The simply should not be good enough any more.
We could waste time getting him match fit, get to the end of a few games and nothing has changed with him. Instead we could be playing an 8 who is already fit and get them exposed to more international games. We cannot afford to waste caps on a lazy player.
England confirm player who's on stand-by to replace Jack van Poortvliet
Alex Mitchell is on standby to replace Jack van Poortvliet in England’s World Cup squad if the Leicester scrum-half’s worst injury fears are confirmed.
www.rugbypass.com
So, we go from a game manager SH to a sniper.England confirm player who's on stand-by to replace Jack van Poortvliet
Alex Mitchell is on standby to replace Jack van Poortvliet in England’s World Cup squad if the Leicester scrum-half’s worst injury fears are confirmed.
Says a lot about game plans at the moment, do we want someone to manage the forwards and kick or one that may make errors but has a running threat around the fringes and has a bullet pass to give the backs more time!!!!
I know what I prefer, but it is incredulous that the coaching team seem to gave no game plan!!!
If Mitchell is in start him with Smith, as he is the best fit.
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And if this really is the case, then surely Mercer can't be left out because he isn't what Steve's looking for in an 8…. Unless he doesn't really know what he's looking for.
mkersyshull
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Am I right in saying that because Farrell had tucked his arm the tackle is always illegal therefore no mitigation taken into account? (unless I'm wrong about the law there)
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That's my understanding.
You can't claim that any falling from Basham (absolutely minimal) is mitigation, when without that, it would, at best, have been a card-worthy illegal tackle.
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Ford needs to start, he's the best option we have but he's not started a game for England at 10 since March 2021, and not started a game at 10 without Farrell at 12 since Sep 2019, against USA in the last world cup
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It said on the screen when they confirmed the red card that there was no mitigation, not sure if that comes directly from the TMO or is just an Amazon graphic though (presuming the former?)
Perfectlt put and the current issue.
We talk about wrong game plan, but actually there is NO gameplan
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Just some random thoughts having the fortune or misfortune at being at the game yesterday.
We are so robotic it is unbelievable. The opposition know exactly what's coming and tbh aren't overly worried about it. We come across as a poor mans South Africa. 'You know what's coming, try and stop us'. Without being particularly good at the 'know what's coming bit'.
The other half who's better at the whole non-verbal communication observation, is convinced the players aren't happy or buying into what's been asked. It wasn't till we went down to 12 the team really did seem to switch to a '**** it attitude' and started to play.
I'm really starting to feel there's issues in camp and it's not with the players. They are good players and something is really not right. The lack of attack, energy etc is seriously worrying. If England click we might be ok, i just can't see it.
We are so robotic it is unbelievable. The opposition know exactly what's coming and tbh aren't overly worried about it. We come across as a poor mans South Africa. 'You know what's coming, try and stop us'. Without being particularly good at the 'know what's coming bit'.
The other half who's better at the whole non-verbal communication observation, is convinced the players aren't happy or buying into what's been asked. It wasn't till we went down to 12 the team really did seem to switch to a '**** it attitude' and started to play.
I'm really starting to feel there's issues in camp and it's not with the players. They are good players and something is really not right. The lack of attack, energy etc is seriously worrying. If England click we might be ok, i just can't see it.
Duck a l'Orange
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2003 RWC semi-finals style player revolution coming up then, just three months earlier.
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This is what I've found baffling, in a lot of very poor England performances, particularly when we have been carded, the team do seem able to switch to this "**** it" balls to the wall style and nearly always end up running rampant for a few minutes and actually scoring. It seems like that option is always there under the surface but, for whatever reason, is suppressed for huge chunks of the game or the entire game in many cases.
TopTen2003
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2007 vibes all over it. This is from the post RWC 2007 review in a Guardian article, and it could almost be written today but with different coach and player names- scarily accurate:
"So many harsh words have been flying around English rugby in the past 10 days that someone was bound to get caught in the crossfire. Unlike Mike Catt and Lawrence Dallaglio, Olly Barkley has not written a book but he certainly deserves a share of their royalties. As Dallaglio acknowledges, no one summed up England's World Cup pool stage travails more succinctly than Barkley - "Look, Brian, no one's got a f****** clue how we're supposed to be playing here" - during the fateful meeting after the 36-0 drubbing by South Africa.
Barkley's life would have been easier had Dallaglio phoned him in advance to ask if he was happy to be quoted directly slagging off the England head coach, Brian Ashton. Instead the 25-year-old Bath fly-half was outed without his consent and yesterday, for the first time, he chose to elaborate. If those responsible for the World Cup review are seeking an honest eye-witness appraisal from a player with aspirations to be involved in New Zealand in 2011, they should read on.
Interestingly, for a start, Barkley does not retract a syllable of his heartfelt plea - "If you ask the 15 guys who played against South Africa to write down the game plan, you'd get 15 different answers" - to Ashton the day after the Springbok fiasco. If anything he is glad he spoke out. "Ideally I'd have liked to have been asked before the comment was used. And if I'd said it behind closed doors and Lawrence had repeated it [in his book] I'd have been slightly put out. But in fairness to Lol it was a comment anyone could have picked up on. It was a very open and honest meeting. He hasn't changed my words or exaggerated them. I felt it was the truth at that stage and I'm not going to back down from it. I'd like to think it went some way towards changing what was going wrong."
Yet listening to Barkley, as with Catt and Dallaglio, there is no question that the entire squad felt compelled to intervene to steer the good ship England away from the jagged rocks. "We felt teams were defending against us far too easily," says Barkley. "We weren't stretching them out nearly enough. We needed more variation in our game. It wasn't a case of saying, 'Let's wait and see.' We were in the middle of a World Cup in which we could have gone home during the pool stages. I didn't want that to happen and nor did Catty or Jonny Wilkinson or several others."
Significantly, too, Barkley backs Catt's assessment that Ashton, a coach they both knew well from Bath, found it harder than he expected to cope with the top role. "I agree with most of what Catty says. Brian is a great attacking coach and he gives players the freedom to express themselves. But as a head coach you are asked to take on an awful lot. When you are asked to do more than you usually do it can have an impact on the way you coach.
"I'm not saying Brian was bad at it, only that it's an incredibly hard job. When he came back to Bath we played some great rugby under him but we already had certain structures in place. It was a massive ask for Brian to bring together a new group of players and coaches in a big year for England."
Furthermore Barkley believes England's analysis of other teams was not rigorous enough. "I don't believe in this country that we're tremendously good at analysing opponents and playing accordingly. Australians, in contrast, seem to be superb at it, probably the best in the world." That might seem a curious conclusion after the Wallabies' defeat in the World Cup quarter-final in Marseille but Barkley is no tactical novice. Catt reveals that his younger colleague came up with "pretty well all of the moves" once the team opted to change tack for the Samoa game and the fly-half-cum-centre, naively perhaps, is not shy of openly questioning whether the present coaching structure needs adjustment.
"Where has Brian been successful in the past?" he asks rhetorically. "It's been when he has been asked to coach the attack. Mike Catt's big thing is to get people playing to their strengths, and coaches are no different. You wouldn't ask Mike Ford to coach the attack or ask Brian simply to look after the defence and the media. Moving forward, everyone has to be clear what they're doing."
As yet Barkley has not rung Ashton to explain all this personally. First he has his Bath place to worry about; the dead leg which cost him a possible World Cup final appearance is now virtually healed but South Africa's Butch James has arrived at the Rec and competition for Barkley's preferred No10 jersey is intense. Like everyone, though, he is watching the England situation closely. "We need to work out where we're falling short very quickly because the Six Nations and summer tours will soon come around. I'm sure there'll be certain changes but I don't know where. That's Rob Andrew's job and I've every confidence in him making the right calls. It comes back to consistency and clarity of coaching and selection. Players simply want to know where they stand."
Dressing-room tension:
Catt
"When we got back to our hotel [after the win over the US] the players were very down. I sat up with Olly Barkley, who had been our best player, until 2.30am, talking about how we could put it right against the Springboks. We came up with a game plan we believed would work. The question was whether we could convince the coaches to implement it"
Dallaglio
"It was a tough meeting for Brian, something you realised when you heard Olly Barkley, who had worked with him at Bath, say: 'Look, Brian, no one's got a f****** clue how we're supposed to be playing here. If you ask the 15 guys who played against South Africa to write down the game plan, you'd get 15 different answers.' It was harsh, but it was true."
Catt
"Between us we devised a playing system, though it was Olly Barkley who came up with pretty well all the moves. On the Monday [after losing 36-0 to South Africa] we began practising what we had preached."
It was only going down to 12 men, when the pre meditated game plan went out the window that we began to look anything like dangerous. All of a sudden the physicality and intensity that you expect from England at Twickenham began to drip-feed back.
The one good thing is that at least 4 warm up games have really exposed the issues to give an opportunity to be addressed.
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The difference is - Ashton was famous, with a long history of complaining about over-coaching, and trying to convince players to take responsibility for their actions on the pitch, and to get the players to dictate the game plan they wanted for the coaches to then implement in training.
Borthwick doesn't.
The thing that surprised me about the "players revolt" in 2007 has always been Catt's part in it (more specifically that he didn't see the pattern, and start doing exactly that much, much earlier), as he'd seen Ashton do the same thing twice previously.
Borthwick doesn't.
The thing that surprised me about the "players revolt" in 2007 has always been Catt's part in it (more specifically that he didn't see the pattern, and start doing exactly that much, much earlier), as he'd seen Ashton do the same thing twice previously.
