Nationalism? Corks up bums? LIVING IN QATAR?! WHAT MADNESS IS ALL THIS?!?!?!
Okay yeah. I saw the game at the local rugby club and apart from one very excited fellow - who insisted that all Australians and Irish referees Cee You Next Tuesday much to the embarrassment of everyone around him - the feeling of the game was that England pulled it out of the fire. Still nowhere near what we'd need to win a Six Nations or beat the ABs in a week and a half though.
Still though, both Vunipola's had a good laugh and I think Mako had great fun putting the tighthead in front of him to the sword. I think he's totally come on leaps and bounds since his baptism of fire in the Lions series this year where it looked like he was like the last guy manning the walls in the Alamo at times with his beleaguered defence in the scrum. Billy was rampaging at times and loved the break he made which linked up well with Launchbury...one of the few times England really gelled in that first half.
Farrell though frankly didn't have a very nice time in the first half. Missed three penalties and Dickson's..controversial service at times meant he gave just as crap service to his centres. That whole combination just didn't work and to be frank I don't think parachuting in Burns or Ford would have solved anything. Despite what many people believe, just going "***** the system" and running it yourself every time because your scrumhalf can't pass and your center pairing are handling things like the White House is handling Obamacare isn't the answer to everything.
So I'd rather bring Farrell up on his kicking and even though his radar came back in the 2nd half that was 9 points he shipped in the 1st. He's our most accurate kicker and if he misfires against New Zealand like he did against Australia - a game where frankly every point counts - then we're screwed and again the supposed plan B (have Freddie Burns run 99% of the time) will look even more silly against a Kiwi defence eager to turn over opposition ball more than they do their pancakes on a cold shrove tuesday.
Farrell's try though was great. All the whinging about the supposed block would be a bit embarrassing if I was Australian but I'm not so I just laughed when I saw the comments across the media about it. Call me naive but naturally I'm thinking that if the attacking team are drifting to the right the
natural thing to do for a guy defending would be to
walk slight to the left straight into the back of an opposition player like Stephen Moore did.
It wasn't as if Hartley had dived in his way. He had his back to Moore and stopped. Frankly, Moore could have taken evasive action straight away and probably would have put himself directly in Farrell's path as a direct result of said evasive action. In any case, Farrell's gap was pretty small and even though both Australian players managed to get hands on him but he powered through. I liked that try and in any case, as a fan who was victim more times than I'll admit of Johnathan "x-ray vision" Kaplan - who always seemed to be able to find a ball grounded over any England line under god knows how many layers of bodies - I'm happy England got the rub of the refereeing green for once!
Anyway thats my ramble over!
