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Rugby: Building up to Japan


ljkeane

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Thought it was a great and well deserved win for England.

It's why I keep saying there is 2 secondary contenders for the WC after the primary contender in the All Blacks.

On their day, this England team with a line-up like this that includes Tuilagi and Billy V as well as some other great players, they can beat Ireland, and can challenge ( but I suspect, not beat)  the AB's.

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4 hours ago, Calibandar said:

Thought it was a great and well deserved win for England.

It's why I keep saying there is 2 secondary contenders for the WC after the primary contender in the All Blacks.

On their day, this England team with a line-up like this that includes Tuilagi and Billy V as well as some other great players, they can beat Ireland, and can challenge ( but I suspect, not beat)  the AB's.

Is it worth pointing out that an England team without Tuilagi, and playing below the level of last weekend shoulda beaten the ABs just a couple of months ago?

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You could point that out but I would counter that, as I have also seen that game and did not feel they were:

a) Better than they were against Ireland

b) I am not convinced at all that the AB's we saw in the Autumn Internationals were in their usual great shape. They looked more tired and lacking spark than they did earlier on in the season and also compared to earlier years. I feel that the AB's in 2019 will still be a level above Ireland and England, two teams that to me are on equal footing with everyone fit.

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2 hours ago, Calibandar said:

 I am not convinced at all that the AB's we saw in the Autumn Internationals were in their usual great shape. They looked more tired and lacking spark than they did earlier on in the season and also compared to earlier years.

That's true to a point but they didn't do particularly well against South Africa in the Rugby Championship either. In 2018 they lost at home to the Springboks (admittedly a little unluckily but still) and away to Ireland and they probably should have lost away to South Africa and England too. I think it's notable that since the Lions tour they've looked somewhat vulnerable to sides with big packs using good rush defences.

They're still the best side in the world but I think the margin between them and the next few sides is lot tighter than it has been for most of the last 10 years due to a combination of the other teams getting a bit better and the All Blacks getting a bit worse. Hopefully it should make for a good World Cup.

As for this weekend's games.

Ireland and Scotland have both rung the changes a bit, some of them down to injury. It's a little bit after the fact but Kearney's come back at fullback  for Ireland and they've got a more physical pack with O'Brien, Conan and Roux in. There probably aren't any other sides in the Six Nations who can replicate what England did to them (France have the size but probably not the discipline) so it'll be interesting to see if they respond by making any significant changes to how they play.

Scotland, you'd think, will try and open the game up and beat them out wide. They have done it before, the last time the played in Edinburgh for example, but it's going to be tough with Ireland coming off an embarrassing loss. Dropping Kinghorn after scoring a hat trick is a little harsh.

Wales have made loads of changes for the Italy game and they're probably treating it as an early World Cup warm up. You'd like to see Italy punish them for taking the game lightly but I can't see it.

England haven't made too many changes to their team as you'd expect. Ashton in for Nowell is a little surprising but I suppose they want to see what he can do. Lawes for Itoje's pretty straight forward and they're brought Moon and Cole, probably their two best scrummaging props, onto the bench.

 

 

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I just caught up with the Scotland Ireland game. I think both sides will be a little disappointed with that.

Ireland will obviously be the happier of the two having picked up an away win, which is never easy, but it wasn't the emphatic response to losing to England I'm sure they'd have liked. The didn't look overly impressive and they really could have done with picking up a bonus point after they scored 3 tries with a quarter of the game to go.

Scotland will be very disappointed with that. There really was a win there for the taking for them if they had been more clinical. They conceded two very soft tries and spent a lot of time, especially in the first half, in the Irish 22 and didn't come away with any points.

The Italy Wales game was unsurprisingly meh. A Wales side with 10 changes weren't able to pick up the bonus point win but Italy still didn't have enough to win.

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Not as good a performance from England today as last week, they were less clinical and pretty much switched off for the last 20, but to be not quite at your best and score 6 tries isn't too bad.

I thought England had a really smart gameplan this week though. France have a big side and they probably spent all week gearing up to meet the England ball carriers on the gainline and knock them backwards, instead every time England drew their wingers up they kicked it in behind them. A lot of those kicks were contestable a lead directly to tries but even when they didn't it turned those big forwards around and made them go backwards. France looked bereft of ideas pretty early on.

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On 2/8/2019 at 6:36 PM, ljkeane said:

That's true to a point but they didn't do particularly well against South Africa in the Rugby Championship either. In 2018 they lost at home to the Springboks (admittedly a little unluckily but still) and away to Ireland and they probably should have lost away to South Africa and England too. I think it's notable that since the Lions tour they've looked somewhat vulnerable to sides with big packs using good rush defences.

They're still the best side in the world but I think the margin between them and the next few sides is lot tighter than it has been for most of the last 10 years due to a combination of the other teams getting a bit better and the All Blacks getting a bit worse. Hopefully it should make for a good World Cup.

 

 

I agree the gap between the AB's and England and Ireland seems to have narrowed.

However what I'm unsure of, is if that is really reflective of the real power difference between the teams, or was it just a blip in the All Blacks last year?

That is still a side very much in its prime.

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12 minutes ago, Calibandar said:

That is still a side very much in its prime.

That's arguable, I suppose it depends how big a part of the team you think Read and Sonny Bill Williams are, but I meant more that they've declined relative to the side they had in 2015. It's probably not too surprising that even New Zealand can't seamlessly replace the likes of McCaw, Kaino, Carter, Nonu and Conrad Smith with players of quite the same calibre. 

 

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Even Read and Sonny Bill are still at their best or so close to it as to be negligible, IMO.

The rest of the team is young. Some players haven't advanced into regular starters the way I thought they would, but on the whole they've done a decent job of replacing those legends ( which is not the same as me saying this team is good as the team was with all of those legends in it a few years ago).

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  • 2 weeks later...

The Wales and England teams have been announced for Saturday. No real surprises although I suppose there was a possibility Wales could have gone with Biggar and England could have picked Genge at loosehead.

I'm really looking forward to this game. Obviously it's pretty likely to be tournament decider, especially if England win, but I'm particularly looking forward to seeing how England's attacking tactics fare against a side who've had time to prepare for them and, you know, have a good fullback.

It's not particularly unusual for teams to employ an attacking kicking game, Ireland used to do it fair bit under Schmidt for example, but they usually tend to do via 9 or 10 putting up an accurate contestable kick. England have done a decent amount of that but what's quite innovative about their kicking game is they seem to be really reading the positioning of the wingers and attacking any errors, they're also quite happy to use kicking options outside 10 in Slade and Daly to do it.

What makes it potentially a real weapon is how modern teams are looking to defend. Pretty much everyone has a linespeed orientated rush defence in the modern game, so they really want to number up so they can get off the line quickly. That puts a lot of emphasis on the wingers (and sometimes the 9 too) getting up onto the line as early as possible. What England have been doing is creating quick ball that putting the ball out of the back of their big runners, reading the winger and chipping into the space behind them created if they come up too early. Alternatively if the wingers are too slow to come up because they're worried about the kick they can put the ball through the hands to attack the space out wide. 

It's looked very good so far but it's probably helped they've played against two makeshift back threes and there was a surprise factor against Ireland especially. How Wales handle it should tell us a lot.

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Wales vs England was a good one to watch.  England, as usual, seem to have greatest and most consistent physicality across their team — which I think comes from their much larger pool of players — but their indiscipline in conceding penalties kept the Welsh in the game until their surge in the last 15 minutes.  Wales struggled with the lineout but dealt well with England’s kicking, especially Liam Williams, plus Biggar gave them smarter kicking when he arrived as a replacement. 

Entertaining game, and one that sets up a huge match for Wales at home to Ireland in the final round. 

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14 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Interestingly, despite the Welsh win, the bookies still have England as favourites to win the Championship (on account of Wales still having Ireland to play in Cardiff).

England got bonus points against France and Ireland.  Wales have none yet, including games against France and Italy.  Even if Wales beat Ireland (who still look off form), England may match their points haul with bonus points, and have a larger points differential.

Overall, I would say Wales should be slight favorites.  Bookies odds are not a simple best probability estimate because they have to also account for the balance of wagers placed, and I suspect there was a lot of money bet on England after they defeated Ireland. 

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9 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

England got bonus points against France and Ireland.  Wales have none yet, including games against France and Italy.  Even if Wales beat Ireland (who still look off form), England may match their points haul with bonus points, and have a larger points differential. 

If Wales beat Ireland (and Scotland), they get an extra three bonus points for the Grand Slam. That was put in to stop this sort of thing happening.

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10 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

If Wales beat Ireland (and Scotland), they get an extra three bonus points for the Grand Slam. That was put in to stop this sort of thing happening.

Thanks, I did not know that.  It does not change my view of the odds.  I think Wales winning the championship hinges on their game against Ireland.  I’m assuming they can match England in any bonus point against Scotland (either they both get it or both don’t).  So a victory for Wales against Ireland in Cardiff, even without a bonus point, should be enough to clinch even if there weren’t a further three bonus points on offer for the slam. 

Looking at Ireland so far, Wales have to be better than 50:50 odds of winning that game.  If they do, then nothing England does will matter.  But the bookies may still show England as slight favorites because they’ve taken a lot more wagers on them.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The talk of introducing relegation to the Six Nations is really short-sighted. Yes, in practice it'd mean Italy playing off against Georgia every year, but once you let that genie out of the bottle, weird stuff happens at the theoretical level. Suppose Scotland had a terrible year, and got relegated. No more Triple Crown or Calcutta Cup game. Suppose England had a terrible year and got relegated...

Really, the problem isn't relegation. It's really whether Italy should have been invited in in the first place.

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