EOYT: England v New Zealand, 01/12/2012

[Big Ewis]

Congratulations England!
Will have to watch highlights.
We softened them up for you

pssssssshhhhhhh pleaaaaaaaaase !! Even with the wink smiley !! :lol:

CONGRATS ENGLAND. Totally deserved this. And as I've said it all autumn long: no team in the 6N this year is sheltered from an England championship.
Will be VERY interesting.
France super impressive, England gets NZ in their biggest ever victory. Can Wales respond ? Ireland's dismantling of ARG despite missing key players...

 

[UlsterRugby2012]

Why the **** did I only put 53 vCash on England.

congratulations well done

 

[austingtir]

How wrong was I about Tuilagi? Amazing performance from him and the whole of the England forward pack. The scary thing is is that this team is so inexperienced, imagine a couple of years time in 2015, home advantage, will they take it?

Whats scary is NZ have given confidence to a young team like that as you say playing at home in 2015 BIG MISTAKE.

Wasnt that long ago on this forum their was a thread where all the NZ supporters were talking like this team would be almost unbeatable with carter/mccaw until the WC 2015.... well wake up guys. This is a sign of things to come.

 

[TRF_Olyy]

Saw at one point that Richie McCaw has more caps than the entire England pack combined!

 

[Surefire]

Congratulations England & thank you vbookie!

Winning four straight away from home is very hard at this level, and England were just too pumped for this game.

 

[Peat]

Mate, where I am from most expected this.
Although we love to see the AB's win, there has been an underlying feeling that as soon we come upon a strong opponent our paper sword will be exposed. Most of the teams we have been playing have been under par. England are playing strongly and deserve to be ahead on the board.

I hope we come back, but we already look spent!

I can see where you're coming from but pre-match, the idea that we'd be that strong opponent was risible.

Now...

Sober thought will come later, I'm just going to giggle a lot.

 

[erwanseb]

Whats scary is NZ have given confidence to a young team like that as you say playing at home in 2015 BIG MISTAKE.

Wasnt that long ago on this forum their was a thread where all the NZ supporters were talking like this team would be almost unbeatable with carter/mccaw until the WC 2015.... well wake up guys. This is a sign of things to come.

2015 is way too far away to have any significance when rwc will come.
But this result will have some effect on the IRB player of the year choice on tomorrow.

 

[nickdnz]

Hell of a game for England. Congratulations!

Some tough calls I felt - but nothing can really hide that England just looked a lot hungrier and they grew in confidence from then on in. My quick thoughts on the NZ team:

Didn't think our front row went too poorly - a lot of guess work by Mr Clancy in the scrums. Lineouts were a bit of a mess and I thought Brodie Retallick had his worst match to date. In the back row I actually thought all went relatively well - Vito teared up when he came on - but by that stage it was too little too late. For our forwards in general - we seem to have forgotten since Kaino and Thorn left - that if you get numbers to a breakdown then you can actually turn over ball - England looked far better in this area.

Aaron Smith was pretty damn woeful. Couldn't believe I was praying for Weepu to come on - and he genuinely looked good when he did. Daniel Carter way played out of the game and looked pretty average. It's tempting to be very critical of Conrad Smith as he didn't play anywhere near as good as he can, certainly defensively, but he wasn't too terrible, just by his standards. Does Nonu break the line anymore? Savea and Jane both had very good games with the ball they had - while Israel Dagg wasn't fantastic.

From England's perspective - almost all facits were better to be honest. The game was won at the breakdown in which the loose forwards were immence - especially Wood and Robshaw. Farrell actually looked suprisingly creative - he may have come from very left fiel for IRB Player of the Year (which would be a joke, but still..). Congrats England! Very well played.

Anyway - I'm a kiwi and this loss hurts, so I can't really comment further. Time for me to get some sleep and pretend this is just some terrible nightmare. Still, well done. A decade is a long time for an English supported to see a win against the AB's - and I'm genuinely pleased for them, at least as much as I can be while being terribley bitter. The terrible thing is I left a club at 3am, while dancing with a cute chick with the possibilty of going home with her - so I could watch this match. Sorry to use this language - but **** my life.

 

[Rhyer]

2015 is way too far away to have any significance when rwc will come.
But this result will have some effect on the IRB player of the year choice on tomorrow.

No, it will still go to McCaw. 12 wins, 1 draw and 1 loss is better than England's track record.

 

[Taylo2]

Wow.....just wow!

I think what was really really scary, was how impressive the NZ tries were. Considering how dire they had been, and how well we had played in the first half, those 2 quick tries from NZ were magic.

I don't think I've seen a better performance from an england team in the past 3-5 years, every single player, expect Vunipola maybe, were on top of their game. Great to see Launchbury in an England shirt, he has impressed so so so much this season. Tom Youngs held his own and threw pretty well considering thats his weakness. Farrell played the best I've seen him play this season and Manu....well the boy did good! The kind of form that got him his debut finally back.

One happy chappy

 

[Patchey]

Wow...

That was something quite special. Shocked at how short of the mark New Zealand fell but I think that if England had played this well against an on form NZ they might still have edged it.

Long list of players who stepped up but the most encouraging thing in many ways is the way our subs worked. Rather than a set of formulaic changes in the last 2015 mins players actually got brought on and made an impact, especially thinking of Burns here. Flood was probably watching this feeling pretty ****...

Also very nice to see Barritt and Manu playing to their potential.

 

[racingmetrofan]

Big vindication for Lancaster.

Everyone stepped it up a gear today! Burns seems to inspire players running onto the ball at pace. Farrell did very, very well. Roll on 6 nations. Best thing was that was a pretty much full strength NZ team.

Goode will be feeling confident, Browns selection was vindicated, Barritt and Tulagi were great. our pack is looking excellent. I bet Robshaw is feeling so relieved!

 

[Peat]

Anyway - I'm a kiwi and this loss hurts, so I can't really comment further. Time for me to get some sleep and pretend this is just some terrible nightmare. Still, well done. A decade is a long time for an English supported to see a win against the AB's - and I'm genuinely pleased for them, at least as much as I can be while being terribley bitter. The terrible thing is I left a club at 3am, while dancing with a cute chick with the possibilty of going home with her - so I could watch this match. Sorry to use this language - but **** my life.

You're a gentleman and I sincerely hope she finds you and asks you to stick it in her butt.

 

[Aristodemus]

Is that enough to put us back in the top four again of the IRB rankings?

 

[SomeOke]

Firstly just to get this out of the way:
- Some of Clancy's calls were pretty questionable especially in the first half which stifled NZ's momentum.
- This was the last match in a very very long SH season which started back in Feb, some of these players have played every week since then.

The only reason I say this is to give some perspective for the NZ supporters, I don't think anyone would argue that they are not the best team in the world based on the balance of things over the past year.

That said England played absolutely phenomenally today! Their forward packs was absolutely brilliant. Robshaw, Tom Youngs and the rest of the forward pack just choked NZ out of the game, they were all over the break-down like a wave. They dominated every single aspect of the forward battle, specifically the breakdown which made it impossible for NZ to get any momentum, truly fantastic!

If England had played half this well against Aus and SA I have no doubt in my mind they would have thrashed them/us. What surprised me the most was that at 15/14 I really thought the dominance of England was done but they showed an inspiring character in keeping the fight out and beating NZ's will to compete out of them minute after minute.
A very dangerous side with a lot of potential!
As I said earlier Robshaw and Tom Young were brilliant but so were most of the English pack, surprisingly Ben Youngs, and Owen Farell really came to the party today, I've always thought Tuilagi had a lot of potential but he has now displayed what he can do against the highest level of opposition and I thought Brown was very good too.

All in all well done England! This is the first step too really staking a claim for 2015 ***le.

 

[Big Ewis]

I'll say smt slightly on the philosophical side of things. For NZ, playing in Europe is obviously an "exotic" thing. We play each other in the 6N all the time, they play their tournament and that's that. But from just the rarity of the event (not even every year does NZ go to Twickenham) England turns into some sort of Alien.
NZ has just come off a TRC against the two best other nations and an up-and-coming fantastic ARG side. Every year NZ annihilates everyone, or they'll lose narrowly to AUS and SA. But sides like England and France, we can have an edge on them just because that - our otherness. They don't calculate us as well as AUS that they play all the time, despite Australia being better than FRA and ENG. Hence, they don't feel dominant, and it takes a powerful rush of pride from England (to redeem themselves btw, talk about redemption !!) to hit them hard a few times and they're stunned, blinded by the shock.

Wide victories like this (17pts), one would imagine, would happen relatively often in the SH against NZ...but it just doesn't.

 

[nero]

I watched the game against Australia last week and felt this England team looked strong if they could put the phases together and get a grip on their handling. If they had done that they would've beaten Australia soundly. I thought NZ weren't great last week - they looked tired and fed off Welsh mistakes...hence my sinking feeling heading int this game. Again, well done England.

 

[Teh Mite]

Wow. That is all.

 

[Big Ewis]

I watched the game against Australia last week and felt this England team looked strong if they could put the phases together and get a grip on their handling. If they had done that they would've beaten Australia soundly. I thought NZ weren't great last week - they looked tired and fed off Welsh mistakes...hence my sinking feeling heading int this game. Again, well done England.

Absolutely...
I kept saying I thought England looked dangerous offensively during the Australia match (mostly the first half).
And yeah it's true, the Wales game was boring and NZ didn't look GREAT...maybe we all should have seen this defeat coming...IN STEAD OF BETTING ALL MY VCASH ON NZ....ahemm...many pardons, got carried away.

 

[smb64]

Everyone played brilliantly today! I now have complete faith in Lancaster. Who would of thought Young's/Farrell selection was so so right for this game. With Burns looking feisty, Croft/Hartley/Foden to come back and Manu offloading/passing like a pro, things look bright for the future!

Also T.Youngs looked impressive today.

NZ will bounce back, still hands down the best team in the world.