England Vs Scotland

[westwaleswasp]

This is not a reaction to one test, this is a reflection of many months of a coach who consciously walked us into this debacle. Scotland fully deserve their victory, but Jones stubbornness of picking his favourites despite their lack of game time and his ever limited game plan has delivered us the result we deserved.

Well said. This has been a long time coming.

[Shugs]

Unimaginative selection equals totally flat unimaginative play. No creativity at all. Not sure how Vunipola and Daly get anywhere near the team. I've never seen what all the fuss is about with Genge either. England are just so boring and predictable and they got what they deserved.

[HDAWG]

The actual players are all very good. But under this coaching structure, since 2019 has been dreadful. We've just not survived without Wisemantel.

But today in particular, Jesus Christ. To pick that many players who've not played in months is delusional. Ford, and Malins should've started. Billy shouldn't have played. Just overall poor performance. Only Itoje impressed me. And actually, didn't think Wilson was that good. This season, most of those players have played well. But from club to international, form hasn't translated.

[Bloke in North Dorset]

If they're going to play that unimaginative, one dimensional, rugby why do they need a defined squad that is taken away from their clubs for long periods in training camps and other sessions?

It can't take more than a few days prep for that style of play.

[petros]

Wilson hadn't played this season until the beginning of last month but what a shower of sh*t

[Heathen]

The same could be said for the Sarries contingent. They did not look battle hardened IMHO.

[mike909]

I looked up the RWC QF when I saw the selection as I thought the game strategy might be similar and the stats seemed to bear that out. We had much less possession, were set up to tackle/defend effectively and looked to what I might call "points of physical advantage" to enable scoring. What this did need was an opposition that wasn't so organised defensively or prepared to match England at tackle and breakdown.

England's plan to kick was also blunted, for me, partly, by a ref prepared to apply Laws 14 and 15, which provided more incentive to keep possession and Scotland were given the ball and happy to take into contact in an organised way. This also meant that England (lucky on the yellow card front) gave away a plethora of penalties and had nothing other than kick, and run forwards through narrow channels. Such an approach when needing to change, wanted intelligent players, coached to think for themselves....and yet that was not forthcoming.

Well played Scotland - reminded me of 6Ns 2018, when the new emphasis re the breakdown, left England bereft of ideas and 5th in the 6Ns table. Jones is obviously able to prepare teams in great detail, but seems unable to provide teams with a framework which is to be used as a basis for play, but not the template. You could see this in the Autumn Cup and too often when teams outside the "first group" were played. Vs Japan and Argentina in AI's come to mind. Games won but ineptly.

The reaction to this game ought to be a reflection on how you are coaching such that the team is less than the sum of its parts. And why did Lawrence, Watson, May and Daly not get a pass....... Defence - fine - but you have to work out how to score when matched or challenged.

[Shugs]

It was naive to play anyone from the Cheats. There's just no way Vunipola, George, Farrell and Daly are the best in their positions. Couple that with the fact they are rusty and you lose. Add Youngs in and it's boring as well. But the blame lies with the ethos coached into them. As Wasps fans the intention to play without the ball is always going to be offensive to us.

[hopwood]

Boring boring England yet again. Lawrence doesn’t get a touch, two of the best wingers in the world used as kick chasers, just boring again. Eddie still wants to play without the ball and the players will kick away even if there are options in front of them because that’s what they’re told to do.
Farrell should have been hauled off at half time, looked so rusty as Billy did as well.
Eddie is losing the fans and I was cheering on Scotland really from the start

Need to find that applaud button.
This! A million times over.
Eddie won't change course, he assumes he is right and everyone else is wrong. Some of those players- the cheats who stayed with the cheats- simply have had no rugby. This should have been just as well, because the game plan is to play no rugby, but no England team has been so packed full of talent and yet had so little ambition.

 Ultimately Eddie is not the "arse but a winner" he is seen as by some. Two world cup finals as a losing head coach, a six n win pc lower than Lancaster's, record worst 6n ever for England, Australia being reduced to rubble under his leadership, the blots are there for all to see. He has high points to counterbalance, of course, some very good moments, especially in the first two years of any job he has been in, but recently he crowed about winning the autumn cup vs France third XV, and about the 6n, thanks to France imploding, when the warning signs have been there for all to see.

Eddie Jones is actually very insecure.
Some may seem to think he has an overly-inflated opinion of himself.
But actually....he is deeply insecure.
He is desperate to protect his win/lose ratio...and sets up England ‘not to lose’.
He hates change....and loves control (a good indicator of someone with esteem, OCD and anxiety issues). 
He is trying to prove to the world that he understands rugby better than anyone else...and is ahead of the ‘curve’, whatever that means. 
He keeps inventing ‘modern scenarios’ that actually don’t exist.
He keeps over complicating the game...and trying to be too clever.
“Let’s play two 7.5’s, three 12’s and four 15’s”???!!!
Basically....he’s terrified of being found-out as an inferior coach. 

He keeps going back to his ‘trusted lieutenants’ because he’s terrified of playing people that show up his gameplan for what it really is....which is limited.
He can’t ‘see’ in his own mind how to play a more ambitious and expansive game....and so he won’t empower others to allow it so.

Eddie Jones is over.
I’m sure he’s a lovely guy over a glass of red....but his inability to expand his awareness and broaden his approach is his downfall.
England may continue to win some home nation games....but the RFU will eventually realise he’s not bringing in young fans into the game...and shirt sales will plummet.
English cricket on Channel 4 will win the hearts and minds this Spring. And build steam through the Summer.
Go Joe Root and Ben Stokes!!

England Rugby has a mountain to climb. People are slow to renew their debentures.
Fans are turning away.
Kids are struggling to find interest.
And Eddie is stuck in his own little bubble of limitations and anxiety.
And strangely enough, I feel for the guy.

[westwaleswasp]

Towards the end of the bottle, I have to admit to some small sympathy for him.
He clearly needs to show he is in control,  and cannot ever take conventional wisdom. He is convinced that England need to play like some mythical England that beat his lads in 2003. Now in fairness by the time the final hit then, England were on the slide and had little left but the memory of winning, which was enough, just. But that Engkand team had four years of often expansive three dimensional play before they tightened up, and even tightened up offered more in attack.
Ultimately Eddie's best suited to a tier two nation like Japan, where he makes best of what he has got, rather than a well funded tier one nation who have resources in abundance.

[Heathen]

Hats off to Scotland but this was one of the worst England displays I have ever seen

Lawrence Dallaglio
Sunday February 07 2021, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

The game has ended but for this Englishman the disappointment hasn’t subsided. Certain things need to be acknowledged. Scotland were magnificent. They outplayed England in every phase of the game and the only surprise was that they didn’t win by more. They had the collective will and the star performers. Jonny Gray was outstanding, so too Cameron Redpath and Stuart Hogg.

Other things also need to be acknowledged. I was quick to suggest that the performance against New Zealand in the 2019 World Cup semi- final was the best I had ever seen from an England team. Now I’ve got to say this was one of the worst.

England looked clueless. Not just for parts of it, all game. I don’t know whether that’s down to the fact that a number of key players hadn’t played for eight weeks or whether everyone just had an off day. Whatever the cause, it’s got to be sorted out quickly because that was as bad as it gets.

This is not me being overcritical. It was there for everyone to see. I’ve got nothing but respect for all these England players but you’ve got to keep earning respect and they didn’t do that in this game. The players need to take a very long, hard look at themselves and come out with answers.

Sometimes when your team lose, disappointment can lead to an excessively negative reaction. Half an hour after the game I was looking through the stats and everything I felt during the game and immediately afterwards was borne out by the analysis. I thought England didn’t fire a shot. The stats said they didn’t make one line break. Scotland made five.

I wondered why Ollie Lawrence and Anthony Watson got so little opportunity and it turns out that neither got their hands on the ball in the first half. Two good attacking players and not one touch between them. The conditions weren’t that bad.

I had a sense that England’s indiscipline was one of the principal reasons why the team were under so much pressure. The stats say they conceded 15 penalties to Scotland’s six. Clive Woodward use to warn us that if we conceded ten or more penalties in a Test match, there was a good chance we’d lose it. Give away that many penalties and you just can’t get a foothold in the game. England’s lineout creaked and the pack came out on the wrong side of the scrum contest. In fact the penalty count was the only statistical category that England won.

I felt there was a mindset problem. England hadn’t anything like the same energy and hunger that Scotland had. Of course the team were without a number of key performers but that’s no excuse for an abject performance. Eddie Jones will wonder about the effects of his Saracens players not playing for eight weeks.

This was always going to be a topic of conversation and after such a disappointing performance, it is even more relevant now. Jamie George, Maro Itoje, Billy Vunipola, Owen Farrell and Elliot Daly haven’t had the kind of competition that is vital for a player going into a Test match.

Going back to my own career, I was a player who wanted as many tough matches for my club as I could get going into a game for England. I needed to be match hard. Some of the Saracens guys looked off the pace. Farrell is a world-class rugby player but playing at ten for the first time in eight weeks, he looked out of sorts.

It doesn’t matter how good you are, you can’t suddenly make up for lost time. You cannot replicate match conditions in training. Periods of inactivity affected me regardless of how hard I trained. Rugby is not a game you can just pick up and put down. Not at this level, where it’s very unforgiving.

As bad as England were, the game shouldn’t be remembered for that but for just how good Scotland were. They played with terrific intensity but also with skill. Finn Russell fired some terrific passes to those outside of him and as a result Scotland were always more likely than England to make ground when they went wide.

Cameron Redpath went to South Africa with England in 2018 and I’m guessing he would have stayed where he was had he been offered any encouragement in terms of selection. I think of the players who have played in England’s midfield over the past four years. Not all of them are as good as Redpath and he should be remembered as the one that got away.

The centre and the rest of the Scottish players will look back on their country’s first victory against England at Twickenham for 38 years and wonder how they won by only five points.

[wasps]

I genuinely believe that Eddie would be happy to play open, attacking, free flowing rugby.
Look back to his Australia side from 20 years ago, or the Japan side.
He's not a completely negative coach


However, before he even started working with England, he had decided that we couldn't play that way and that we had no open sides.
As such, he went for a different approach more akin to what worked for South Africa and probably also during his time with Saracens.

In fairness, it's largely true. We have more players suited to the power game than the all field, think on your feet, attacking game.


However, that's not all we have. We do have natural ball players who can play across the whole back line.
We have forwards with hands that will shame most centres
We have broken field runners willing to back themselves against any opposition.
And we have play makers with vision.


Unfortunately, we are in an era of safety first. Even a club like wasps often need to play in the right areas and arguably shouldn't take anywhere near as many risks as we do.

A free flowing, attacking game plan is harder to replicate than a safety first, power based game.
We always talk about how Exeter's whole squad know the game plan, whereas sometimes even our senior players seem to have only read the play book 5 minutes before kick off.



I think Eddie is too far down his path to change it now, and I doubt he wants to. He'll point at a world cup final as justification that he's close to solving the problems.
Ultimately, he may be right. Slow and steady sometimes does win the race - but it's usually pretty boring

[mike909]

Thing is - I think he's forgotten say, the SA tour in 2018 when England attacked like the best side in the world and then lost two games from basic defensive problems. They didn't lose the games because of having a great attack.

He keeps going on about "attack being for the future" but he's had 4 years and built a great attacking strategy - only to pull his attacking shoulders in when defence needed some work, and the breakdown and replacing Robshaw etc. Why forget how good England were nearly three years ago?

I don't know, obviously - but it seems now like a fear of something. Yesterday, Lawrence made zero metres and England made zero clean breaks. And faced with a team, comfortable with the ball, gave it back to them.....kicking proportionally twice as much as Scotland.......And we do have players, a back three of Daly, Watson and May barely got a pass...

I think he is in danger of trying to control the game too much and not allow players to play.

[westwaleswasp]

I find myself in accord with much on the thread, which makes me beg the questions-

Is it just a case of us fans, and to be fair much of the media including ex international players,  not being as clued in as Eddie and he sees stuff that we can't?

Did Eddie's sports scientists let him down by assuring him that the Sarries contingent would be fine when common sense and ex-players were flagging it up as being an issue? Did Eddie just ignore their advice because he does not believe players need prem rugby/thinks prem rugby is not relevant?

[Trevs Big Tackle]

I wasn't expecting England to show much ambition with ball in hand but I was surprised that we showed literally none.

Our first kickable penalty came after 32 minutes. I'm not surprised we went for the the points rather than the corner lineout. However, we had a penalty advantage (a scot not rolling away at a ruck) Young's had his hands on the ball and rather than try a "shot for nothing" training ground move or even just a crossfield kick for a winger to chase, we're just happy to get the ref to blow his whistle.

Were the players happy the game plan was finally working? Win a kickable penalty and kick it? That's the gameplan. In its entirety? Complete lack of ambition or invention.
https://youtu.be/7k0QFyNT-14 from about 35 minutes on the video clock.