england

[Bloke in North Dorset]

I think the more apt term is one we were taught as young soldiers: if you’re going to talk b*****t, talk it confidently.

[Westy68]

Youngs kicked too deep and was his usual slow self. We didn’t stretch Scotland at all and made defending easy for them which they did well.

LCD was silly and the substitutions at the end were poor, Dombrant at 6 was odd. Possession wish we were dominant but were too slow and looked lost.

I thing EJ just runs the players into the ground and doesn’t work enough on a game plan. The bench had wrong players on it

[Andywasp50]

Eddie finally gets caught out for playing players out of position.

Marchant a 13 playing at 14 races off to defend the 13 channel when the 15 is sucked onto the wing and leaves Cowan-dickie in a hopeless position. Daly playing 13 kicks the ball away with a three man overlap. Both centres out of position as were both wingers - no wonder we did nothing in attack.

Stewart is great under the high ball but offers absolutely zero in attack and is useless when kicking from hand - but Borthwick is Eddies mate so he gets in.

Malins was dismal - ran around like a headless chicken until crashing into contact and bounced off every tackle. It was his non tackle attempt that ultimately led to LCD’s yellow and the penalty try. Yet Nowell - superior in a every aspect - got 7 seconds (why bother bringing him on?)

Just as Smith had found some space to operate in due to the fatigue of 60 mins, Jones took him off and replaced him with the anonymous and conservative Ford who put England into reverse.

The RFU needs to take a look at the ECB for an example of realising mistakes and showing ambition before it’s too late, rather than continuing to dig a hole with someone who’s lost their way.

[bigad82]

I bet Eddie Jones tries to make toast in the dishwasher.
Totally baffling substitutions.

[JonnyD]

The understanding that Eddie has that you’re better off without the ball at test rugby is so infuriating!
Go through a series of phases on the front foot and then put a grubber in kicking it away, even cowndickie did one. Youngs kicks too long again, you’d think he’d be better at box kicking by now, on two occasions the backline was all in line to attack and he kicked long meaning there weren’t even any chasers. Just bizarre.

Picking players like Dombrandt and Simmonds and then not letting them play their game is frustrating too, Dombrandt in particular was just anonymous when he came on. Ludlum was playing well and probably should have stayed on.
Guess we’re only putting a 9 on the bench on car Youngs gets injured. If Randall can’t be trusted to pick the game up with 20 to go over Youngs’ ponderous outing then he should not be on the bench

[Shugs]

Eddie finally gets caught out for playing players out of position.


Marchant a 13 playing at 14 races off to defend the 13 channel
when the 15 is sucked onto the wing and leaves Cowan-dickie in a hopeless position. Daly playing 13 kicks the ball away with a three man overlap. Both centres out of position as were both wingers - no wonder we did nothing in attack.

Stewart is great under the high ball but offers absolutely zero in attack and is useless when kicking from hand - but Borthwick is Eddies mate so he gets in.

Malins was dismal - ran around like a headless chicken until crashing into contact and bounced off every tackle. It was his non tackle attempt that ultimately led to LCD’s yellow and the penalty try. Yet Nowell - superior in a every aspect - got 7 seconds (why bother bringing him on?)

Just as Smith had found some space to operate in due to the fatigue of 60 mins, Jones took him off and replaced him with the anonymous and conservative Ford who put England into reverse.

The RFU needs to take a look at the ECB for an example of realising mistakes and showing ambition before it’s too late, rather than continuing to dig a hole with someone who’s lost their way.

Agree with all of that. Baffling selection and in game decisions. We’ve now lost 4 of our last 6 games in the 6N after being poor in previous years. For Jones is just a bit of a myth.

[wasps]

I often question the removal of head coaches / managers after a period of failure, as the adversity is often a huge learning experience.

But....

I am finding it increasingly difficult, near impossible, to find any defence for England rugby.

I can see arguments, whether I agree with it or not, for the high turnover of coaching staff.
I can sometimes see reasons behind some of the baffling squad decisions.

However, performance and/or results just aren't justifying such deviation from the norm.

If Eddie feels that England don't have the right quality of players for him to work with adequately, then it's time for the RFU to find someone who has the ability to adapt and work with the players at his disposal.

[Rossm]

Mitch must be very happy to be out of the England setup.

[Bloke in North Dorset]

I often question the removal of head coaches / managers after a period of failure, as the adversity is often a huge learning experience.

But....

I am finding it increasingly difficult, near impossible, to find any defence for England rugby.

I can see arguments, whether I agree with it or not, for the high turnover of coaching staff.
I can sometimes see reasons behind some of the baffling squad decisions.

However, performance and/or results just aren't justifying such deviation from the norm.

If Eddie feels that England don't have the right quality of players for him to work with adequately, then it's time for the RFU to find someone who has the ability to adapt and work with the players at his disposal.

Good points, well made.

Organisations rot from the top down, not bottom up. How much more evidence do we need that the Jones experiment isn't 0working? Or as Einstein pointed out, the definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

They've just manged to get terrestrial TV to start showing Premiership games to help spread the word about Rugby being a great spectator sport, and then England serve up this sort of result. The only way to attract new spectators to the game, especially children, is a winning England team, and if they aren't winning at least they're losing playing entertaining rugby.

[wasps]

I love watching Wasps when we play open, fast, attacking rugby as we often attempt to do.
I accept that it won't always work, and that when it doesn't it can look awful.


However, I also appreciate seeing a 3-0 power based grind of a win, with backs to the wall defence on your own try line.
Some of England's best wins in the build up to 2003 were herculean defensive efforts that feel very far removed from what I want to see from Wasps..... Yet it was still hugely compelling.


I therefore accept that England don't have to play a gung ho, suicidal offloading game for it to be exciting.
The problem I have with England rugby at the moment is that so often it is neither.
It's as though in an attempt to not be 1 dimensional, we don't really excel anywhere and become less than the sum of our parts.

The occasional enjoyable game where things come together suggests that Eddie is putting all the different parts together to come up with the solution that he always knew was coming but none of us can see....... He then changes it again for the next game and we're back to square 1.



I'm beginning to think that he is Agent Eddie still getting revenge for 2003

[mike909]

The SH commentators generally have suggested that jones has a sell by date, after which he tends to lose the dressing room, both players and coaches. Now - I'm not sure that's the case with England, but I do think he's failing to do the straight forwards when the straight forwards is indicated.

We've had 5 games post the debacle of the 2021 6Ns. The key problems behind the forwards was at 9 12 and 13 and yet we were sill pissing Dan about at 9 and trying to get Lawrence to play 12. even Dan Kelly played a game there. None of those players from those games, except Atkinson, are now involved....And he's not got a game...

Back three options are fine - but games are manipulated by the 9 and 10 and the centres. Back three rarely gets the ball if they're not on top of their game. And yesterday - we saw the folly of a backline that had a first time centre combination, a 13 at 12 a 13 at wing and an aging 9 - unable to do much with a virtually monopoly of possession....

Either Jones has some massive plan, or he's out of ideas.

If we're to do anything, then we have to hope certain centres are fit......

[hopwood]

You watch Dupont and the work rate, pace and craft he brings to France (even without much game time) and then you remember that Ben Youngs is your national scrum half, who’s about to become our most capped player of all time!

There aren’t enough hands-over-eyes emojis to communicate how I feel about that.

It’s so depressingly ‘Eddie Jones’.
It just perfectly reflects how stubborn and controlling he is, as he would prefer to stick with Youngs rather than realise another scrum half in the Premiership could do a better job, thereby making him wrong….and everyone else right.

Fragile egos around the world, especially people in power, really do ruin it for the rest of us.

[backdoc]

The best possible outcome of this would be to sack EJ at the QF stage of the next World Cup and let the players sort it out. The downside to this strategy would be that at least half of the best England players would have no International experience and many would not even be in the squad.

[Rossm]

The best possible outcome of this would be to sack EJ at the QF stage of the next World Cup and let the players sort it out. The downside to this strategy would be that at least half of the best England players would have no International experience and many would not even be in the squad.

Another downside. Would England reach the QFs with mental Eddie still at the helm?

[westwaleswasp]

In many ways getting to another WC final and looking so good in the event itself has done for England. The contract was renewed despite two awful years prior to the WC, and we are in the middle of two pretty awful years. That is a lot of awful years.   
We keep beating Australia and have wins vs the SH giants, but the cost has been a generally terrible 6N since 2017, with one outlier where we ground out 4 wins. Brian Ashton also got to a final and still left as it was clearly not working for him.
Now to me I genuinely do prefer wins over NZ/SA/Australia to success in the 6N, but that is because the minimum standard in the 6n should be 1 defeat/year. If Eddie's England can get SH results and hit that standard I would not begrudge him failing to lift the trophy, but we can't. We are pathetic in the 6n every other year, and when not pathetic as in 2018 or last year, we are plain middling to poor.  Eddie has gone past the sell by date and is Captain Redbeard Rum from Blackadder, convinced in his own methods when the rest of the world have stability in selection and coaching staff and picks no more than the odd player out of position.