Marcus Smith doing very well behind a dominant pack.
@sparky said in England v Japan - Autumn International:
even though the conversion's been taken and missed
What's the issue with that?
@sparky said in England v Japan - Autumn International:
@Bones The rule used to be if the conversion has been taken they wouldn't check it.
The rule also used to be no lifting in the line out. I'm not sure what you're trying to say.
England are masters at getting away with being in the way of the opposition at the breakdown, "accidentally" ending up there in the tackle and/or rolling the wrong way. I wish refs would penalise it when the halfback is marginalised by having to take an extra step or two backwards or work his way around a player, rather than just ignoring it because the halfback got it out.
Fell asleep in the second half, woke up to see the same back row on the pitch. Learned nothing from that game, still can’t defend, still not dynamic enough at the breakdown.. awful autumn all told, worse than I thought we might be with fundamental flaws in our game. Change the coach…
It finished 59-14. Not a great contest or spectacle. England have lots of good players, but don't really feel like the sum of all their parts.
This was a game where we had the opportunity to firstly try out some newer guys and secondly look to hone our attack. Farrell did both yesterday with Ireland and learned a lot. But what did we actually learn that we didn’t already know? JVP is not up to it at this level. We knew that. Randall is a menace if given time and licence by the coach. Well we knew that too.
Take away our four tries from a driving line out against a modest team and where were we?
We needed an emphatic win and we got that but sheesh, what a waste.


