General Rugby Union Discussion

Some thoughts on this.

1. I'm not sure I agree with your claim that England have 22 test match standard players with the rest being mediocre. I'd say what's actually a bigger problem is that, apart from Mike Brown and probably Anthony Watson, every other position has two or three players who are relatively close in standard. Realistically I think you could play an England A vs England B team, and if nobody told you, you'd struggle to tell the difference between the two. I think that feeds into the same conclusion though, even if it's the opposite idea. Selection is important and it's important to find the balance between trying combinations/new players and having a consistent team that the players can feel confident playing in, rather than being worried that the coach will change things on a week to week basis.

2. The confidence point is an interesting one. I think in general, I'd usually be more confident in England beating the world's premier teams than I would be in pretty much anyone else in the NH. That might just be me as a biased England fan talking, but we seem to have come away with more wins recently than the rest of the NH who seem to always find a way to lose, even if they have a good position.

3. I'm not convinced a 10 man rugby style is really where we're clearly strongest at the moment, especially when we don't have an especially strong set-piece which felt like the case at the world cup. We might not have the best backs in the world, but they're mostly pretty young and if we pick the right line up, really have the potential to tear teams apart. It's why we all got so excited against France in the Six Nations, because it was a side to England we hadn't really seen before. I can't really think of an England backline which had the potential to be as exciting as this one.

That doesn't mean we have to chuck the ball round every game though and in every situation. We can be pragmatic and play a more closed style sometimes. But I'd rather we tried to play openly more often than not than the other way round.

 

Yeah I think the balance between pragmatism and running rugby is pretty key, and probably more pragmatic than Australia and New Zealand is what I'd go for. I think what I'd like is to play with a back line that's capable of the more creative brand of rugby, even if it's at the expense of the back line running into a lot of people. Lancaster was probably pretty close to getting it right at the end.


I don't know if I agree with your point about centres though. I think these are all the people who would be considered to play in the centres: Manu, JJ, Burrell, Barrit, Slade, Farrell, Daly (I think there's someone, Blunder maybe, who is a big Daly fan).

Of those, you'd probably say that Manu and JJ are the best, assuming that Manu comes back well from injury as he hasn't played at all in 2015. I'd worry about how well they'd work as a partnership though, but maybe that's just my personal thoughts. If you ended up playing any other combination of the centres I think they're all pretty equal.

My personal preference would be for Slade and Joseph to start and then Manu on the bench. There's enough flexibility between the three of them that we'd probably use them to cover the back three as well.

 

Shit, sounds like I really missed a trick by not giving the RFU my CV.

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Eddie Jones on scrum ball &quot;I’m sure the hookers in England can strike. If they can’t strike they’re going to have to learn to strike.” Amen</p>&mdash; Brian Moore (@brianmoore666) <a href="https://twitter.com/brianmoore666/status/668399690111668224">November 22, 2015</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>


Yes please<script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

I think that's definitely an issue with trying to hook the ball, but it's not like it can't be done. Teams definitely showed that ability during the world cup. I'd just love for us to be able to get the ball quickly out of the scrum and away to the backs. Think about the number of times in the world cup that we lined up with that straight line of 10/14/15 behind the scrum, and I'm pretty sure that never got used, because it just took forever to come out and ended up at the feet of the 8 who got tackled.

I don't know if we'll get Armitage back in the team though, assuming you're talking about Steffon. I think Jones has come out and said that he's only intending on picking players playing in England. Even if not, I think this was his world cup, rather than the next one where he'd be 34.