I don't get all the hate on here for Itoje. he is a very good player and has been consistently for a number of years. Yeah he had a shit game today but that alone does not make him a shit player.
Anyway, back to the game.. There just seems to be a lack of structure to England's game. Have these guys actually met each other before? It doesn't seem that way.
Someone else on here said that the scoreline flattered England and I would agree. If you take Smith out of the equation we would have been embarrassed on the scoreboard. All the good stuff we did in attack, pretty much, was down to his more off the cuff play. Everything else we were doing was just the same thing with no real variation. The mouthy little twat Healey called it - just one off runners hitting it up with no pop passes or distribution options, meaning that the Bok defence could just gang tackle and the jackal.
As for the substitutions and yeah, we don't have access to all the player data but, we again substitute Martin when he was by far our best 2nd row on the day. Has it been pre-decided that Itoje is an 80 minute man and Martin is only a 65 minute man? It seems so. Underhill was our best forward and got hooked off first and he didn't look off the pace at all at that time..
This is really taking me back to the bad old days of Andy Robinson's reign except that Borthwick has some decent cattle.
Well done to all the Saffer posters. The better team won. Enjoy the victory.