June International Test: Australia vs. England [2nd Test] (18/06/2016)

[j'nuh]

Don't mistake arrogance for truth.

The Aussie backline was simply terrible and Fardy dropped more balls than a teenage boy hitting puberty.

The AB's are clinical in attack, albeit a bit soft in defense at the moment. England defended nicely, but ultimately won because of Australias woeful handling error count and lack of imagination in attack. Can you really picture the AB's putting in a performance like that?

No.

Time and place though innit.

We beat Aus in a test series in Australia for the first time, a big achievement for England in the context of the last 13 years, and you come in saying All Blacks would beat England.

Fair enough, probably. But let us at least have our moment!

And TheOvalBall said that it's a pity England aren't playing NZ this year... which it is. England are on a high, and even if they don't have the firepower to win if both teams are at their best, they will give NZ a better game than NZ are used to from England. And catch NZ on a bad day...

 

[Prestwick]

They ran 4 tries past us, and broke our defensive line repeatedly. I think saying that we won through our "cold hard jagged rocks of Northern Hemisphere defence" is frankly inaccurate. We won through the Aussies giving away (lots of) penalties and making some poor mistakes and decisions.

Not quite. Two of those tries came in because not everybody bought into the defensive system. Burrell is a talented guy but Will Greenwood in his column for the Telegraph had sympathy for him when he said a) he probably was having an off day and b) he was caught between the drift defence he was taught at Northampton and the wolfpack/blitz defence Gustard is teaching him at England. They may have broken the line several times but the majority of those times the defence held and held well.

Also your evaluation of how and why England won misses the point of why Australia were making those mistakes: pressure through excellent defensive work. When you defend man for man and chase and pressure every player who has the ball and put pressure on the kickers then mistakes will happen. Australia were constantly playing with English defenders rushing up at them. When they passed out wide they found defenders in front of them and if they had the fortune to get past them and break, more defenders rushing in from the side to plug the gap in an almost borg-like fashion.

That forces mistakes. It forces knock ons. It forces crazy passes. Far from being inaccurate, my assertion was quite near to the reality and I think today's events in Melbourne vindicate my original statement.

 

[kiwichops]

Cheika is a fraud and it's finally starting to show. How he won coach of the year is beyond me. He was outcoached last year by Hansen and he ultimately should have lost to Scotland. Eddie Jones is a student of the game and twice the coach Cheika is. If it was World Cup this year the wallabies would be lucky to get out of group stage

 

[Pieter Steph du Teague]

Cheika is a fraud and it's finally starting to show. How he won coach of the year is beyond me. He was outcoached last year by Hansen and he ultimately should have lost to Scotland. Eddie Jones is a student of the game and twice the coach Cheika is. If it was World Cup this year the wallabies would be lucky to get out of group stage

Woah woah woah, hang on. In a year Cheika turned a team that got beaten by a poor England side and Ireland into a team that got to the RWC Finals. Calling him a fraud is just wrong frankly. Oz lost this test match through bad choices made by the captain, to always kick for corner instead of for goal. Cheika couldn't help the players' stupidity. I'm not going to say that he's done an amazing job this season, but a fraud?! No.

 

[Prestwick]

A few thoughts:
- I thought Joubard did a terrible job, allowing England to consistently not release, play offside, diving over the ball etc. England were fine in the last 20 but prior were consistently infringing. His ruling on the Robshaw choke of Phipps made no sense to me either.
- Australia is evidently allergic to forwards picking up off the base of the ruck. When the entire team is exhausted though after 15 phases and you are on their 5, give it a go. Low risk. I also don't understand avoiding penalty kicks. Take the points.
- I like the Aussie offensive structure, but it seems very predictable. Group of three, repeat, Foley. They needed to do something different with dummy runners or something to move the ball wide against England's rush defense.
- I know they don't want to kick, but there seemed to be many opportunities for backs to kick from 12 out but they never opted to.
- Great defense by England and great kicking. However, they weren't really out to play rugby and if that's what a rugby game consists of, I'm not that interested. Crash, crash, kick. Return. Kick. Try to draw penalty. Kick. Meh. Good on Jones for playing to their strengths, but to me it is boring rugby.

1. I think Joubert gets a lot of stick and some of it is warranted (like his great skedaddle in the RWC) but he fared relatively well in this game. England spent most of the game doing what the likes of the ABs do exceedingly well: straddle the line between legal and illegal. At times they did play offside but others they were just on the cusp but were fine. There were times where both teams were diving over the ball. One of the annoying things of this game was watching Slipper endlessly bore into the scrum at an angle which was anything but straight.
2. This goes back to my point about stepping up and changing tactics. It was something the ABs had to learn after 2007. This isn't Super Rugby. Sometimes you have to get down and dirty when the high flying extravagance doesn't work. Australia should have heeded that lesson but didn't. In any case I feel England's wall would have held strong and if anything would have increased the likelihood of a turnover or knock on.
3. I feel Australia were trying to get the ball wide when they could but note that throughout the game England were only using one, perhaps two people at the ruck. Sir Ian McGeechan noted just now that this meant that whenever Australia got the ball and pushed it wide, there always seemed to be 13-14 players on the pitch who had all bought into the defensive system. It isn't simply a blitz/rush defence. The first part of it is rush based but then it morphs to envelop the ball carrier with multiple tacklers who always seem to fade away and get back into the line. At times it looked as though the wolfpack was rope-a-doping the Australians and wearing them out.
4. You're right. They should have kicked. It shows a lack of direction on Australia's part that they were obsessed with getting the try when two penalties could have done it.
5. You have to take into account the conditions. Wet. Slippery. Surface breaking up. A opposing team who doesn't want to give up possession and is attacking you constantly. England judged the conditions and decided to play defensively and it worked. I'd say that was England's strength for that particular game but as we've seen in the previous game and in the Six Nations they have other strengths as well and can play total rugby.

- - - Updated - - -

Time and place though innit.

We beat Aus in a test series in Australia for the first time, a big achievement for England in the context of the last 13 years, and you come in saying All Blacks would beat England.

Fair enough, probably. But let us at least have our moment!

And TheOvalBall said that it's a pity England aren't playing NZ this year... which it is. England are on a high, and even if they don't have the firepower to win if both teams are at their best, they will give NZ a better game than NZ are used to from England. And catch NZ on a bad day...

Agree. There was a reason why Australia were knocking on and making mistakes: their ability (or lack of) to handle pressure. People seem to assume that a lot of these handling errors are unforced when the exact opposite is true. I think Argentina and New Zealand will be looking over the tapes of these two tests with interest as Australia appear to be fragile under pressure at the moment.

As for England right now against the All Blacks, I think it would be exceedingly close. England's defence and counter attacking would force the ABs to reevaluate their strategy but I'd say the ABs would still win at the moment as they don't seem to panic under heavy defensive pressure like other teams do.

 

[Lé Ddanno]

MotM
Week 1: Haskell
Week 2: Robshaw
I mean WTF, I just can't believe it, How did Eddie do it?!?!?
Even Cole looked like the Cole of old.
Who next

36 back in the side and becomes the 12 of legend.

Nahh.

 

[Colombia]

Where are all the fools who wanted to drop Haskell & Robshaw? :lol::lol::lol:

You don't know jack about the sport of Rugby Union bros.

 

[ratsapprentice]

Here.

And I still do.

 

[Lé Ddanno]

Right here. Still would. It's time to blood a proper 7 and get Clifford, Ewers et al some experience.

 

[Colombia]

:lol::lol::lol:


Can't account for insanity I suppose. Which one will get motm in the third test?

 

[Lé Ddanno]

It's a long term view.

 

[Colombia]

Cheika is a fraud and it's finally starting to show. How he won coach of the year is beyond me. He was outcoached last year by Hansen and he ultimately should have lost to Scotland. Eddie Jones is a student of the game and twice the coach Cheika is. If it was World Cup this year the wallabies would be lucky to get out of group stage

Australia are gonna do NZ in the RC, just watch.

 

[Rich Taff]

I found the NZ v Wales game more similar to SH style, and the Australia v England game more similar to NH style.

That's not a complaint, it's more of a congratulations to England being able to implement a proactive approach, and imposing their own game on Australia, rather than having a reactive approach to the opponents game (as we did with NZ).

The defensive effort was superb, but I'd still rate the Wales effort vs Ireland a couple of years ago above it (of recent memory).

Either way, was an excellent win for England, and congratulations.

 

[Pieter Steph du Teague]

I reckon our permanent back row should remain Robshaw, Haskell, Vunipola until 2017, and up until then start getting the younger back rowers game time off the bench and starts in Autumn internationals against the lesser Teams (Fiji) as well as against Italy, and dare I say it France in the 6 Nations. I think the number of potential back rowers needs to be cut down though. At the moment we have Clifford, Harrison, Ewers, Kvesic, soon Hughes, potentially Underhill if he came to England and I'm sure some others that I'm forgetting. We can't get them all experience so it's time to make a decision about who's going to make up our future back row, and stick to that. I'd go for 6. Ewers 7. Kvesic 8. Vunipola with Clifford and Harrison competing for the 20 shirt.

 

[Prestwick]

And thats not forgetting Will Fraser. I think the quality is so good now that every club in the AP has at least one decent back row player who can put their hand up for England duty...

 

[Pieter Steph du Teague]

And thats not forgetting Will Fraser. I think the quality is so good now that every club in the AP has at least one decent back row player who can put their hand up for England duty...

To be brutally honest I doubt Fraser has any chance of getting into the England squad unless there's a (long) string of injuries. He's 26, if Jones was considering him, he'd have put him in the Saxons squad. Same goes for Wallace. I'd say that in Jones' view, Haskell, Clifford, Harrison, Kvesic and Sam Jones are all ahead of the both of them.

 

[Bazzy]

Damn, England are looking good!

Itching for the next ABs vs England matchup.

 

[TRF_Olyy]

Here.

And I still do.

Ennit.
Said it earlier but that mindset does my ****ing head in.
Michael Bisping is middleweight champion of the world in UFC. Were the people who backed him vs Rockhold mental? 100%
Did he knockout Rockhold in the first round? 100%

Just because things change after the fact doesn't make past criticisms wrong because they can only be based on past performances.

 

[j'nuh]

Yeah. Two good games on the tail-end of 50 and 70 caps for Robshaw and Haskell respectively, and suddenly they are class world beaters and people are foolish for not backing them earlier?

Were they just biding their time in the other caps?

 

[TobesHodges]

Itoje this season: Started 25 games, Won 25 games.. 8-|