Your England match day squad

[Rossm]

Oh and my missus is scared of his snake eyes when he lines up a kick😳

With his eyes, my missus thinks there is a hint of a zombie about him

[hookender]

[quote my missus is scared of his snake eyes when he lines up a kick😳
[/quote]
My take is shoplifters eyes before making the snatch.

[Neils]

[quote my missus is scared of his snake eyes when he lines up a kick😳

My take is shoplifters eyes before making the snatch.
[/quote]

Yep +1

[westwaleswasp]

My perception on this is not that Jones is doing a good job because most agree with a high % of his squad. Rather that they are the obvious picks. It's telling that not many agree with his 9, 10, 12 axis. Those positions dictate the style of play. As fans we are guilty of wanting everything from our teams. Dominant forwards, backs with flair and an opportunity to see both of those aspects in play. For a Premiership side that is a difficult combination to achieve. But for a national side with the resources of England we should be seeing both sides. Jones has created a side that wins a lot of the time but is dire to watch. I think he could easily have the same results and provide entertainment.

Again- I agree with the sentiment. 'Wins a lot of the time'is what we get with Eddie, but delving deeper we are 50 pc vs SA and NZ, and a lower 6n win pc than Lancaster. The Australia results are great, and overall  the figures are not bad, but his style (and mouth) would be more tolerable if those figures were better.
It is easy to forget, but in the pro era, England should be a winning vs nearly everyone at HQ, and historically in that era they have pretty much won vs NH opposition at HQ regardless of who is in charge. In other words, at the risk of being an arrogant Englishman, a lot of matches England play should be/have been a forgone conclusion, leaving a small number of key matches- away 6n fixtures, home AIs vs the old tri nations, tours to the RC, and every now and then, WC fixtures vs tier 1, and home matches vs Ireland and Wales when they have peaked or England troughed. It is not that big a sample size.

[hopwood]

My perception on this is not that Jones is doing a good job because most agree with a high % of his squad. Rather that they are the obvious picks. It's telling that not many agree with his 9, 10, 12 axis. Those positions dictate the style of play. As fans we are guilty of wanting everything from our teams. Dominant forwards, backs with flair and an opportunity to see both of those aspects in play. For a Premiership side that is a difficult combination to achieve. But for a national side with the resources of England we should be seeing both sides. Jones has created a side that wins a lot of the time but is dire to watch. I think he could easily have the same results and provide entertainment.

Again- I agree with the sentiment. 'Wins a lot of the time'is what we get with Eddie, but delving deeper we are 50 pc vs SA and NZ, and a lower 6n win pc than Lancaster. The Australia results are great, and overall  the figures are not bad, but his style (and mouth) would be more tolerable if those figures were better.
It is easy to forget, but in the pro era, England should be a winning vs nearly everyone at HQ, and historically in that era they have pretty much won vs NH opposition at HQ regardless of who is in charge. In other words, at the risk of being an arrogant Englishman, a lot of matches England play should be/have been a forgone conclusion, leaving a small number of key matches- away 6n fixtures, home AIs vs the old tri nations, tours to the RC, and every now and then, WC fixtures vs tier 1, and home matches vs Ireland and Wales when they have peaked or England troughed. It is not that big a sample size.

Agree with all this.

[InBetweenWasp]

Again- I agree with the sentiment. 'Wins a lot of the time'is what we get with Eddie, but delving deeper we are 50 pc vs SA and NZ, and a lower 6n win pc than Lancaster. The Australia results are great, and overall  the figures are not bad, but his style (and mouth) would be more tolerable if those figures were better.

It is easy to forget, but in the pro era, England should be a winning vs nearly everyone at HQ, and historically in that era they have pretty much won vs NH opposition at HQ regardless of who is in charge. In other words, at the risk of being an arrogant Englishman, a lot of matches England play should be/have been a forgone conclusion, leaving a small number of key matches- away 6n fixtures, home AIs vs the old tri nations, tours to the RC, and every now and then, WC fixtures vs tier 1, and home matches vs Ireland and Wales when they have peaked or England troughed. It is not that big a sample size.

I can see where you’re coming from, but don’t the facts undermine your opinion?

By win percentage, Eddie has the best win-rate (78%) of any England coach in the professional era.

He’s second to SCW, who had double the tests under his management and only a marginally smaller win rate (70%+).

Eddie has lost:

- To NZ at HQ (the dominant team in world rugby at the time)
- To SA twice in SA and again in the RWC
- To Scotland away
- vs Wales twice (was one home and the other away?)
- vs Ireland once
- vs France away in a year they look to be just about the most capable NH Team

Ireland and Wales were both at their peak when losing to them under Gats and Schmidt.

As far as I can tell, Eddie’s (the only coach to have ever) lived up to your expectations, but it’s still not good enough?

[westwaleswasp]

Win rate by itself is meaningless, you need to remove all the guff, which was my point.  By and large works cup warm ups, and tier 2 matches need removing to get fair comparisons.

Win rate vs SA and NZ is fifty percent.
It is better than most but short of Woodward, but still only fifty pc from a small number of games. Eddie has not had a series vs NZ yet either, unlike his predecessor who had them to NZ and SA. Eddie lost his tour to SA.

Win rate vs Australua is excellent. Fair play.

Win rate in the 6n is lower than Lancaster and Woodward, better than Ashton and Johnson. Mid table currently.

Those are the facts, really. WC warm ups count for little to nothing. You can forget the rest, basically.


If you want to take into account peaks, then you devalue Eddie's 7 matches vs Australia as much as you gain with Ireland and Wales.

Anyone can take charge of England for ten matches vs Uruguay and will have the best record of any England coach in win pc terms, so I don't see how anyone can use  straight win pc as a method of attacking or defending a coach. Eddie has a good record overall, please don't get me wrong, but in 6n terms he is mid table percent win wise, and his record is not as good as the headline win rate.
Clearly both Woodward and Lancaster matched my 6n expectations as they have a better record in terms of matches lost and won, and Woodward more than exceeded it with his trinations matches,  Eddie overall is about in line, don't get me wrong, but to suggest he is better than Woodward based on win percentage seems way off, and I don't think many would agree Eddie's record beats Woodward.
Obviously trophy wise Eddie scores very highly as his losses clumped.

[wasps]

I feel that comparing win rates with previous teams is completely pointless

Everyone's perceptions of every game is different.
Were the opposition in transition?
Were we experimenting with a new backline?
Were either team playing a 2nd/3rd team because of club / lions commitments
Etc
Etc


We could have a 100% record for 2 years, but critics would say it's simply because the opposition were rebuilding following a world cup.


The only facts are that we made a world cup final, won a weird 6 Nations and an even weirder autumn Nations cup.
That doesn't mean we're unbeatable, but suggests that things aren't completely hopeless

[Marlow Nick]

England should be judged as a top 8 team and therefore the meaningful stats should be results against the other 7 in the top 8.

[InBetweenWasp]

I'm not suggesting win-rate is the key determining factor of success - (As Lancaster's vs Eddie's 6N record shows!), although there can't be much variation between coaches in terms of:

-- No of WC warm-up games and/or opposition for them
-- No of Tier 2 games in a given year (it's typically once in the Autumn internationals and then a handful in WC years from the group)

So broadly speaking it should all balance out, which makes it a reasonably decent comparison from coach-to-coach.  My point was more that based on westwaleswasp's own criteria, they should be deeming Eddie a success.  But they're pretty negative on Eddie which from what I can tell is largely down to personality, some team selections and playing style (at the moment).

But take those away and look at what they've suggested England should be doing and Eddie's hit the mark.  Sure, he hasn't had a tour to NZ (yet) and Australia aren't the force they once were (although their tour to Australia had a pretty decent team when they were whitewashed).  But it's not like he's played completely crappy opposition the whole time and dodged the big games.

I totally get why Eddie rubs people up the wrong way and am exasperated with England's current dull style of play as well as wanting to see him begin to blood other players in key positions of the team.  But I also think he's been a successful coach and at this stage a close second to SCW.  The next 3 years will tell whether he can hit the standards of Clive's 2001-2003 team. 

[westwaleswasp]

I was not really playing down criteria for success, save that for Eddie's mouth I expect more than a record that can be debated. His mouth is that I might accept from an All Black world cup winning coach. A good record is not enough for the mouth.