[RWC2019][The Final] England vs. South Africa (02/11/2019)

[TheOvalBall]

Rassie and the boks pretty well turned the whole "4 year cycle" thing on its head by the way.

Good point, and also first ever team to win the World Cup after losing a pool game.

This is excellent for world rugby, and will give lots of coaches new hope that things (in the long term or short term) don't have to be perfect, but you can still win.

 

[Grizwald]

Why would he though? He's literally been guaranteed his starting place for the last 4 years. It's probably too soon for an inquest but concerns about certain players and their weaknesses all came home to roost in this one game.

Indeed. I would say at the age of 30 he won't be around for the next world cup. If Jones is staying on he may feature for the next year or two but need to start selection with a view on the next WC cycle.

 

[Not Eddie Jones]

Well that was anti-climactic! Calmed down now.

Congrats SA, you were great. And we were terrible. I never expected our pack to get comprehensively out-muscled, and I certainly never expected a hammering, the biggest defeat of the Eddie Jones era. Hell, it's our biggest defeat since the pool match against Oz that knocked us out of the last world cup! Before that, you have to go back to losing by 23 points in NZ in 2014, but that was the last game of the tour and we weren't playing our first team, so before that was the Cardiff game in 2013 when we blew the Grand Slam and the ***le. Notice a pattern here?

There's something very wrong with England rugby. We freeze time and again in the big match. We've blown a fair few teams away this year, but the two crucial matches, Wales in the 6 nations and yesterday, we crumbled. Not lost, but crumbled. England are the nearly men of world rugby. Even when we won the WC in 2003 we did our best to throw it away in the second half with endless penalties and handling errors. How many times have England failed to secure the Six Nations grand slam in the final game of the tournament? How many times have we finished second in the Six Nations on points difference? In 8 of the last 9 years we have lost no more than 1 Six Nations game, yet we've won the ***le only 3 times in that period. Hard to know where we go from here in order to break this horrendous cycle of crumbling at the crucial moment.

On the plus side, the team won't be blown up and started over as it has been after the last 4 world cups. Could this defeat be this side's Jannie de Beer moment that sees them kick on (sorry for the pun ) and win the next WC? I doubt it, not unless Eddie can solve the problem at the heart of England rugby. Win a couple of grand slams in the next 4 years and I'll be convinced he's done it. Anything less, and I won't be expecting anything other than another case of stage fright in 2023.

PS. Can I become a Boks supporter? It must be nice knowing your team is gonna turn up every time come the big game.

 

[Joe Schmidt]

I really wish our media hadn't been so arrogant in thinking that this final was a foregone conclusion, fair play to Gatland who called it absolutely right when he said England had their world cup final last week.

So to the game well lets start with losing Sinckler after only two minutes, heartbreaking we will never get to find out what would have happened had he stayed on the pitch, then that unbelievable situation where we went through a ridiculous amount of phases but still failed to score a try. Man that felt like such a turning point along with when Farrell missed that penalty at 18-12 which would have got us within three points of them. Finally I just wonder if there were a couple of occasions where England could have kicked to the corner with their penalty opportunities just to put some pressure on their line because only once did we really threaten them in the whole game.

I am not going to focus on whether or not that was a forward pass for their first try, we simply just did not do enough when we had the chance and made uncharacteristic errors that we just hadn't made the rest of this tournament. Painful wait until the six nations gets underway in early February 2020, gonna be a long old winter for those England boys but just maybe this setback could be the making of some of the younger ones.

Congrats to South Africa but my god this is going to hurt for a while, especially when my football team got beat today too and now the T20 cricket team is also suffering a little bit right now.​

Swing low sweet parrot

 

[Andrew Spreadbury]

Well that was anti-climactic! Calmed down now.

Congrats SA, you were great. And we were terrible. I never expected our pack to get comprehensively out-muscled, and I certainly never expected a hammering, the biggest defeat of the Eddie Jones era. Hell, it's our biggest defeat since the pool match against Oz that knocked us out of the last world cup! Before that, you have to go back to losing by 23 points in NZ in 2014, but that was the last game of the tour and we weren't playing our first team, so before that was the Cardiff game in 2013 when we blew the Grand Slam and the ***le. Notice a pattern here?

There's something very wrong with England rugby. We freeze time and again in the big match. We've blown a fair few teams away this year, but the two crucial matches, Wales in the 6 nations and yesterday, we crumbled. Not lost, but crumbled. England are the nearly men of world rugby. Even when we won the WC in 2003 we did our best to throw it away in the second half with endless penalties and handling errors. How many times have England failed to secure the Six Nations grand slam in the final game of the tournament? How many times have we finished second in the Six Nations on points difference? In 8 of the last 9 years we have lost no more than 1 Six Nations game, yet we've won the ***le only 3 times in that period. Hard to know where we go from here in order to break this horrendous cycle of crumbling at the crucial moment.

On the plus side, the team won't be blown up and started over as it has been after the last 4 world cups. Could this defeat be this side's Jannie de Beer moment that sees them kick on (sorry for the pun ) and win the next WC? I doubt it, not unless Eddie can solve the problem at the heart of England rugby. Win a couple of grand slams in the next 4 years and I'll be convinced he's done it. Anything less, and I won't be expecting anything other than another case of stage fright in 2023.

PS. Can I become a Boks supporter? It must be nice knowing your team is gonna turn up every time come the big game.

I agree with just about everything here. England are the most consistent team in the world when it comes to 'bottling it' when it really counts. There's an obvious psychological weakness going on within the setup which other sports address with sports psychologists. I don't know if Eddie is big on this side of the game or not.

Clive Woodward made some very telling remarks on the ITV coverage saying that if you cannot boss the scrum or win your lineouts you are going to be under pressure for the whole game. The 'saffers' got the shove-on against us in the scrum for most of the match, only in the second half did England show at least some resistance - but it was not enough to create any kind of dominance in the game and this is where SA won it.

I'm not sure about this but if there any lessons to be learnt from the game at all it is that even if you think you have a superior strategy, if you haven't got the go-forward it means nothing. The Boks showed that strength and power always trumps anything you've got at the set-piece and ruck and that even possession doesn't necessarily convert into points against a solid defence. England's 25-phase attack on the SA try-line only produced 3 points which were repaid with interest by England being shoved hither and yon down in their own 22 time and again. With fifteen minutes to go they were so knackered having been under the cosh all match they just couldn't stop the Boks back-line even though their much vaunted defence was supposed to stop a bus.

 

[TRF_Olyy]

Swing low sweet parrot

If only we'd had Schmidt in charge, then we wouldn't know what it's like to lose in a world cup final

 

[Ragey Erasmus]

I agree with just about everything here. England are the most consistent team in the world when it comes to 'bottling it' when it really counts. There's an obvious psychological weakness going on within the setup which other sports address with sports psychologists. I don't know if Eddie is big on this side of the game or not.

Clive Woodward made some very telling remarks on the ITV coverage saying that if you cannot boss the scrum or win your lineouts you are going to be under pressure for the whole game. The 'saffers' got the shove-on against us in the scrum for most of the match, only in the second half did England show at least some resistance - but it was not enough to create any kind of dominance in the game and this is where SA won it.

I'm not sure about this but if there any lessons to be learnt from the game at all it is that even if you think you have a superior strategy, if you haven't got the go-forward it means nothing. The Boks showed that strength and power always trumps anything you've got at the set-piece and ruck and that even possession doesn't necessarily convert into points against a solid defence. England's 25-phase attack on the SA try-line only produced 3 points which were repaid with interest by England being shoved hither and yon down in their own 22 time and again. With fifteen minutes to go they were so knackered having been under the cosh all match they just couldn't stop the Boks back-line even though their much vaunted defence was supposed to stop a bus.

The stupid thing is, had England been as clinical as they were against the ABs and not kept knocking it on all the time, that would have massively reduced the SA advantage from the scrums. It's ridiculous how when you know you are losing the scrums badly the players were still throwing wild passes and putting ourselves under pressure. Also we reverted to slow 1 out passes to single forwards running at 2 defenders. Why the hall did we revert to this when not doing this had been so successful!? We play a multi distributor setup and yet our gameplan was a bish-bosh-bash one.

4 world cup finals, 1 win. Numerous grand slam chances bottled, there is a serious problem in English rugby and English sport in general of just falling to pieces at the final hurdle. It's not just rugby, our football team has won only 1 world cup as well.

 

[Leonormous Boozer]

If only we'd had Schmidt in charge, then we wouldn't know what it's like to lose in a world cup final

Hey! We were bottlers long before Joe and we will continue to be long after, don't let this chode distract you from that.

I'm also taking major offence to the English trying to claim they're the world's biggest chokers... I mean, dare I say it, the arrogance!

 

[TheOvalBall]

Another Jones wins a World Cup trophy with South Africa. Felix Jones from Ireland.

 

[Kapa O Pango]

If only we'd had Schmidt in charge, then we wouldn't know what it's like to lose in a world cup final

Haha good stuff

 

[Hydraulxx]

Yoh, not partied that hard in a long time. What an amazing game by the Springboks, Faf, Le Roux and Pollard really showed up in this game. I did not expect us to dominate the scrums like we did at all. Hard luck to England, you guys had an amazing RWC before the final.

I went to the shops before the game and everyone was wearing their springbok shirts, it was awesome to see.

A friend and i made a deal to have a shot for every point we win/lose by expecting it to be close.. Needless to say i don't remember much after the 12th shot and felt rough this morning

 

[TheOvalBall]

https://twitter.com/AllBlacks/status/1190592577671557121


That's nice.

 

[Chief Pete]

England, when we win, we are the best team in the world and when we loose were crap and its a crisis, truth is somewhere in the middle...

Spent the week listening to people telling me Tom Curry's the second coming of Jesus Christ and its Sam Underhill's planet we just happen to live here, we have a group of exceptional young players who given time and experience will become world class ON A CONSISTENT BASIS, truth is Curry and Underhill are not Hill and Back YET, just like Itoje isn't quite Martin Johnson YET ...

More player's coming through, drop those that have come the end and blood the next generation right now, we'll be fine, well done SA, their best players turned up to a man and that bit of rugby intelligence and experience came to the fore...

 

[Ragey Erasmus]

Really want to see Dombrandt given a run at 8. He seems to have a good rugby brain and could do the bashing game of Billy but likely with other aspects too.

 

[Vieux Talonneur]

England, when we win, we are the best team in the world and when we loose were crap and its a crisis, truth is somewhere in the middle...

Spent the week listening to people telling me Tom Curry's the second coming of Jesus Christ and its Sam Underhill's planet we just happen to live here, we have a group of exceptional young players who given time and experience will become world class ON A CONSISTENT BASIS, truth is Curry and Underhill are not Hill and Back YET, just like Itoje isn't quite Martin Johnson YET ...

More player's coming through, drop those that have come the end and blood the next generation right now, we'll be fine, well done SA, their best players turned up to a man and that bit of rugby intelligence and experience came to the fore...

Good post. It just really hurt that the Boks based their win on smashing us in our traditional strengths.

Really want to see Dombrandt given a run at 8. He seems to have a good rugby brain and could do the bashing game of Billy but likely with other aspects too.

Sooner the better in my book.

 

[Chief Pete]

Good post. It just really hurt that the Boks based their win on smashing us in our traditional strengths.


Sooner the better in my book.

I'd have started Marler over Mako to try and get parity at the scrum early on, personally think he's our best scrummager by some distance, once Mako and Cole started going backwards and as a result Youngs started panicking the writing was on the wall..

 

[croadymeister]

How?
EJ loves playing up to the press when they feed him **** questions, sure, but his real interviews have been good and OF has been nothing but classy

Also stop double/triple/quadruple posting. The edit button is there for a reason

What I meant to say was our media can come across as arrogant at times, I only posted a few times because was replying to earlier messages that interested me but apologies anyway

 

[croadymeister]

Swing low sweet parrot

I actually supported all the home nations at this world cup but unfortunately for some reason the rest of you have it in for England

 

[Chief Pete]

Really want to see Dombrandt given a run at 8. He seems to have a good rugby brain and could do the bashing game of Billy but likely with other aspects too.

I agree, I'd also include Sam Simmonds in the mix, who before he got injured was playing some good stuff and is quickly coming back into form..

 

[croadymeister]

We had a couple of injuries that really weakened the Welsh side come that semi final against you guys. Anscombe was a blow pre tournament as was faletau. Navidi was a big loss as hes been outstanding back rower for me in Wales.However the major casualty was Liam Williams he really could of been that "difference maker" in that semi final and hes soo good under the high ball we really missed his attacking threat although halfpenny had a decent turn out to be fair.

Yeah I was gutted that Liam Williams went down for you guys just before that semi final, like you say could have really made the difference when it got to 16-16.