Planet Rugby Forum

elfieldinho

Jones should have been hammered, possibly even banned for those comments- and for his whining about the ref after this game. Seeing some kind of causal relationship between him shooting off his mouth and his players being tackled low takes a special kind of insight though. The focus on this thread h...

elfieldinho

I know it goes against the animating spirit of pettiness without which this bored would die a dusty death, but the shit fighting about who did what to who is obscuring a more important point here. The prevalence of lax and inconsistent refereeing and a game which is now almost entirely about maximum...

elfieldinho

Right, had enough of this midfield now Eddie. I'd rather Ford at 10, but if the only way to get Faz out of 12 is to play him there, then bench Ford. We just didn't do a thing with ball in hand today and it's because of the lack of zip at 12.

elfieldinho

Imagine what a team with a good 9 and a threatening 12 could do with this platform.

elfieldinho

How much longer do we have to watch Ben Youngs do this?

elfieldinho

Genge does need to start. I think I might have a lower opinion of Ben Youngs than anyone on this bored, but he was a big, big, jump up over Heinz. Juggling the world's worst international 9s seems to be Eddie's plan and at least today it was funny.

elfieldinho

Started to enjoy this. If England are going to be leaderless, rudderless and utterly stupid, then it might as well be very, very funny.

elfieldinho

Just checking, but is it safe to suggest that Captain Marvel has been a bit, well, shit? Again?

elfieldinho

I think we are over-complicating things a bit here. I agree that Curry at 8 is ego-driven madness on Eddie's part. i hated the selection of Lawes at 6, but he seemed to my less than expert eyes to have a pretty good game really. Bringing on JJ and asking him to pretend to be Manu wasn't ideal. All o...

elfieldinho

I've no issue with the team as selected. Once we started to get dismantled in the scrums though it was clearly time for either Marler, Kruis, or both to come on and shore that up because the scrum penalties were killing us.

elfieldinho

Congrats Boks! Didn't just win it, but won it in style. Enjoy it

elfieldinho

Boks dominated us today and were well worth it. I found it bizarre that Eddie didn't get Kruis and Marler on as soon as it was clear that we were going to get humped in every scrum. We just bled out up front and it was crying out for him to stabilise that. Youngs was as shit as he we all feared and ...

elfieldinho

Does she know he's from Wigan? Were he from Surrey then I would agree with every word she said about him being a 200 year old pasty rapist. Her logic is flawless throughout, but for that one initial mistake. I think we should let her know and then she can see if any of the posh, southern types in th...

elfieldinho

The English media are the biggest group of bell-ends going. I'm amazed that this has previously escaped your attention. Our press - largely owned by an Australian- are in the main cynical, dishonest, jingoistic pricks who make actual English rugby fans cringe. There's no doubt that should England wi...

elfieldinho

I'm in Singapore so the game didn't start until 4pm. Can't imagine how bad I'd feel now if it had been a 9am start.

elfieldinho

I read and watched a lot of the NZ Herald's coverage as I was up, drunk, happy and unable to sleep. To pick that one comment and spin from it the idea that they were graceless is misleading in the extreme. They- as all the Kiwi media have been - were incredibly gracious and fair-minded. Like Shag sa...

elfieldinho

It is a shit game, but it was working for Wales. They are insanely good defensively, but might have been worn down by endless waves of Springbok runners. As it is, they can have a fag and a chat after every knock-on. To be fair to South Africa, Wales are horrible to play against, but they do have th...

elfieldinho

I know losing is hard, but we're seriously at the Savea can't play stage?! This has been the best side on the planet for a decade. The best of the 6 Nations combined sneaked away with a draw due to some 'interesting' refereeing and every team in the world has had a slapping at their hands. Sometimes...

elfieldinho

Random drunken happy thoughts: I'd rather play SA than Wales because Wales are utter, utter bastards to play against. Defensively they are insanely good. AWJ is a god amongst men and they have zero fear of our power game. They know how to throttle us. I love Wales and am fond of the Welsh rugby team...

elfieldinho

Hansen is a great coach who was notably gracious about England, so the original post is utter shite. He may have lost out to Eddie on this occasion, but hindsight is the curse of all coaches and I certainly expected NZ to dominate in the line-out. Sometimes one team rides a wave and the other doesn't.

elfieldinho

Commiserations Kiwis. Two world cups and undisputed best team on the planet for an age. I still expect to wake up and find the game hasn't started yet! England knew they had to play the game of their lives today and they did it. I have never seen England play better. A little bit of experience and m...

elfieldinho

The Ireland of a year or two ago would not have rolled over just because NZ had a good 20 minutes. This was an under-powered Ireland that suddenly looked old and clueless. Worryingly for Ireland and new coach Andy Farrell, they looked very similar to England at the 2015 World Cup...

elfieldinho

Ireland were abysmal in that game. They looked exactly like they did when they played England in the warm-up before the tournament, underpowered and flat. Don't expect that level of performance from England in this game, or Wales if you meet them in the final.

elfieldinho

Right, as an optimistic England fan, this is as close as I can get it man for man. NZ are hugely stronger at 9. They are unquestionably stronger at 15 and at 5. I rate Ford very highly, but you'd have to say they are stronger at 10. At 8, Reid is better than Billy V anyway, but hugely better than th...

elfieldinho

Worried about the scrum from an England perspective. Marler and Cole will be strong there when they come on, but Mako and Sinkler are not especially strong in the scrum. Lawes doesn't provide the same grunt as Kruis either I suspect. We might be int rouble there.

elfieldinho

I don't think he's implying otherwise Guy. More that Kiwi posters seeing this as a game that worries them a little is encouraging as an England fan.

elfieldinho

I am desperately hoping that we win Enzedder, and that Maro Itoje whoops right at the final whistle and the camera catches him in close-up.
Your problem with him seems to spur the same poison as the grudges you're dragging up from the past- which is kind of ironic really...

elfieldinho

Most England fans expect to lose and hope to win I think. Hopes are pinned on Curry and Underhill making us buggers to attack against and maybe scragging us some turnover ball. Fears are based on Smith and Mu'anga being too good for us, the line-out and the scrum being a problem and Beauden Barrett ...

elfieldinho

It was perfect. So utterly dull that all of the spite and tension went out of the dodgy race and rugby discussion. Thanks both.

elfieldinho

My dream win is for 12 man New Zealand to heroically defend their first half lead, only to be undone by Eliot Daly fumbling a clearing box-kick backwards into the arms of a surprised Ben Youngs, who panics and attempts a long pass out to the wing, which bounces metres short of its target and flicks ...

elfieldinho

The Kiwis are a good bunch, with an occasional exception. You have to run the thought experiment of how smug or 'precious' if you will the posters of any country would be if they won 90%+ of their games. Start by imagining a team which was favourite for their third world cup in a row, continually pu...

elfieldinho

This is largely straw-man territory now. Whilst finding ignorant shit-heads in England is never a challenge, the vast majority of rugby fans in the country are long past the days of suggesting that players of island heritage who grew up in NZ are somehow poaches. You can still find people that think...

elfieldinho

I think we're probably better than we were in 2016, but less consistent. The blast them with Hask strategy worked with the policing of the ruck as it was in 2016, but it was unlikely to trouble NZ as much as it did a poor Australia. The emphasis towards a contest there set England back for a couple ...

elfieldinho

I don't where the Kiwis have got the idea that this is a peak England team from. Throttled in Cardiff, we were also lucky to get away with a draw against Scotland, having been 8000 points up early in the game. There's no shame in losing away to Wales, but being unable to put away Scotland at home ha...

elfieldinho

Perhaps, but the third will be gripping and the fourth bowel-shakingly intense.

elfieldinho

I'm saying that in their terms, we have poached a lot of talent from the islands. Comes across wrong when I read it actually, as anyone born here is in no way a poach. My point was that we have deliberately tapped in to Pacific Island talent, but you're right to object to the phrasing of it.

elfieldinho

Two different conversations trying to happen here. The first, about the oddly high proportional representation of people from the South Sea Islands is simple enough. The islands produce the best rugby players on earth. If we could ever level the playing field enough for all of the best Fijians to pl...

elfieldinho

Fans of world's best team in slightly smug shocker. If England were as good as the All Blacks, we'd be unbearable. This is basically the good guys of the Beige Brigade spoiled just a tiny bit by decades of brilliance- apart from Ali's Choice of course who would presumably have been a bell-end regard...

elfieldinho

Those combined sides are farcical. I think England have a chance, but these are joke-shop selections. If picking a team today to beat South Africa, I'd probably go. Moody Taylor Sinckler Retallick Whitelock Savea Read Cane Mo'unga Smith L-Brown Tuilagi Bridge Barrett Watson None of the three English...

elfieldinho

I wonder if we can stop inviting New Zealand to this shindig? They used to be kind enough to shit all over themselves when pressured, but now they have stopped doing that, they are rather ruining this for everyone else. This is a very good England team. It has a better back-row than we have had for ...

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