Six Nation Rugby

The Game Room
21

I doubt anyone is that interested in this - given that the thread didn’t get revived over the weekend’s games. Nevertheless, here goes if anyone is still watching.

Firstly, and speaking as a ref and therefore duty bound to defend fellow refs where possible, the refs really buggered up this weekend. Bryce Lawrence bottled the big decision at the end of the Italy-France game: that succession of scrums should have resulted in a penalty for France, as they mangled the Italian scrum. He clearly didn’t want to give it though, as it would have resulted in him being run out of Rome on a rail (that said, I’m pleased he bottled it - pretty great performance from Italy to comeback from that far down to pip France by a point).

The howler in the Wales-Ireland game was unbelievable too - the law regarding the quick throw in and usage of the same ball gets drummed into us down at the lower leagues (where one man and his dog usually comprise the spectators) and is, perhaps unusually for rugby union, pretty black and white. Kaplan and, especially, the touch judge got it so horrendously wrong that one or the both of them should be riding the pine for the RWC in New Zealand, simply for ineptitude. Ireland should be disgusted with themselves too though; they made terrible decisions all game (with the tryline begging in the final minute being the most obvious) and both O’Gara and Sexton kicked very badly. Wales, without playing brilliantly, look to be rounding into shape in the forwards at least. Rees and Warburton were excellent - and their 2nd row looks really good. Need to sort their backs out now though.

England were rubbish this week. Scotland still lost. How bad are Scotland? I suspect, very bad. Bar one piece of magic from Max Evans they created nothing with ball in hand and had to rely on English profilgacy with the ball in hand - the number of times England built phases 1-4 and then knocked on, or failed to commit enough men to the breakdown was far too high. The Scottish forwards were thoroughly outplayed (witness the possession and territory stats) and the praise being heaped on some of them was disproportionate given that they weren’t winning any ball at set piece and, though they slowed England’s ball down well, they could have nicked more off England, given how few forwards England committed to the tackle area. The Scotland forwards also weren’t helped by Parks, when he came on, kicking what little ball they had away.

Even then, they could have taken heart as they weren’t that far behind (though England did bin a number of chances) until, yet again, the ref changed the game in the favour of the winning side - I don’t quite understand how Poite could stick Barclay in the bin for what he did, given England committed similar offences in similar numbers and failed to have a man sent to the bin themselves. 10 points scored in the time Barclay was off. Game, set and match to England.

So, in sum, an actually pretty depressing weekend all round. Performances were poor from the players - if this 6N go to New Zealand in the autumn and play like they did this weekend, they will be collectively stuffed - and the refs were also pretty terrible, giving incorrect decisions in games that were all pretty tight and thus potentially changing the result.

One can only hope next week will be better. England have all but won the Championship (they’d need to lose by a hatful and Wales would need to win by a hatful to reverse the points difference) but the pressure is still on them Grand Slam wise, so I suspect that game will be pretty tense. Hopefully Ireland will cut loose - as they have nothing to lose. France-Wales should also try and throw the ball around - Wales need to score points and the French need to show something. Scotland-Italy has the makings of being very tense - Scotland need to score some bloody tries though. Maybe they’ll actually try and build some attacks next weekend.

22

I am!

It was interesting that in the England/Scotland match, the ref/touch judge got this right - I think.

Yes, as an England supporter I have to agree, that is a depressingly accurate analysis all round. However, I remain relatively optimistic that we can build on this performance, correct the obvious mistakes, and put together our best effort so far for the Ireland game. If we do this, I can only see one winner, but there are a lot of uncertainties in there.

Thanks for reminding me that the final round is next Saturday - I was all set to make plans for two weeks’ time!

23

Yeah - the tell tale sign on that call is the ball boy standing in front of you handing the ball to the hooker. You’d think you’d be able to spot that, given it’s happening two metres in front of your face. Clearly the guys officiating on Sunday had their eyes open. One wonders what the hell Kaplan and his touch judge were looking at on Saturday afternoon.

I’ve been pretty pessimistic about our chances in Ireland all along. I suspect that they will be massively up for the game after what they will feel was a bad decision went against them - plus they have something to prove as they didn’t play all that well. I still give Ireland somewhat of an edge, though not by loads. It could come down to the ref…again.

24

I felt this way too, but yeah would have been the bravest refereeing decision ever made to call a penatly there. At one stage in all those scrums the ball poped out on the far side and an Italian fell on it, so the game should have been blown up ealier. Maybe things worked out evenly enough so.

Paddy Wallace once again does something crazy in the final minutes of a match in Cardiff. All I can think of was that he didn’t think a try in the corner with a difficult conversion was worth it considering Sexton’s goal kicking. But even still it was a stupid decision.

Yeah between the refereeing and the performances this weekend hasn’t been the best advertisment for nothern hemisphere rugby ever. Still World Cups tend to be closer than the performances by the respective hemisphere unions would lead people to expect.

Hopefully the Ireland v England game next week will produce some entertainment. However bad England were against the Scots I’m still very wary about the English coming to town. Just try and get your players to stand on the correct side of the red carpet this time!

25

Well, all credit to Ireland for finally coming up with the performance that England had feared. There is no doubt that they fully deserved their win yesterday. However, it seemed to me that England barely got a decision from the referee (no doubt mainly due to their consistent ill-discipline - more on that later). I was particularly incensed that O’Gara was not carded for his dive over the top of a ruck well after the whistle had gone. His pleas for innocence that he had not heard the whistle, while they apparently convinced the referee, were belied by his sly wink to his team-mates afterwards.

No doubt part of my annoyance is because we were well-beaten by then, and O’Gara has undone us on many occasions before, but it does anger me in general when hugely talented players, pre-eminent in their sport, resort to underhand tactics like this (see also Rooney, and Schumacher, to name the two most obvious examples which spring to mind). Anyway, the point is moot as it would not have changed the outcome, but it did confirm my impression that the ref was something of a homer (and who wouldn’t be, in that atmosphere?), particularly when O’Gara raised his hands after being unceremoniously hauled out of the way by an England player. But perhaps I am thinking more of what would have happened in a football match here - you seem to get away with a lot more shoving (and even punching) in rugby, for some reason.

As I said above, much of England’s woes were brought upon themselves. I am somewhat divided over Ben Youngs’s yellow card - on the one hand, it could be seen as harsh because with England players in the area, there was no chance of a quick throw from the Irish there anyway. On the other, throwing the ball away is a stupid, petulant, and obvious foul and you could say her deserved what he got. Given that earlier in the match he had tried to illegally disrupt his counterpart’s put in to a scrum (which was missed by the referee - he instead gave a penalty to Ireland for illegal binding), I think it was a good decision by the ref.

Things like this make me think that this sort of thing is somehow in the mindset of England’s players all the time, which suggests to me that the coach (Johnno) does not do enough to discourage it. I suspect the mentality is “do whatever you can as long as you don’t get caught”. I think it probably fair to say that this is the general mindset of rugby players at all levels the world over, but you simply can’t get away with it at international level - even if the officials on the field miss it at the time, you are liable to get fined and banned after the match is reviewed (although this only seems to happen, at the moment, in cases of violent conduct). Nevertheless, if England cannot stamp this out (ha!) by the World Cup, they are not going to have a chance. If they can, I am not too discouraged by this performance - at least it means they will not be over-confident.

26

Ireland was ready from the get-go. The Spanish language commentator said the England coul get a Grand Slam and Triple Crown, but it look for like England didn’t come to play. I agree that the ref was not the best, but Ireland would’ve won the game no matter what.

27

I don’t think I agree that England didn’t come to play - they won the opening kick off and had a good 90 seconds of pressure that seemed to suggest that they were going to have a go. From there, of course, it went downhill. The fact is that they were utterly outperformed by the Irish, particularly in the back 5 of the pack, beaten consistently to breakdown and failed to commit enough numbers to win the ball until the game was out of reach. England played basically as well as Ireland allowed them to play - and Ireland only allowed them to play badly, due to their dominance over the England team.

Two major problems that I could see - England’s hinge was pretty ordinary. Youngs didn’t have a good game, compounded by the beating the pack was taking but Flood didn’t manage the game correctly with the ball he did get. England should have played more in the Irish half but Flood kicked badly and failed to kickstart enough phases with ball in hand. Dare I say it, England looked an awful lot better with Wilkinson at fly half in the second half. Phases started to be built and knock ons became the issue, rather than simply being over-run.

This leads me to my second point. England looked better with Wilkinson on the field because they lack leadership on the park. Tindall is perhaps a better captain that I gave him credit for. The game was still salvagable at 9-0 but England needed someone (preferably two or three) to take the game by scruff of the neck and try and change the plan on the fly, something that they failed to do. It was somewhat obvious that England needed to revert to basics, build phases and secure ball with more men and probably push the ball into the Irish half with a better kick-chase game but they never looked like doing that until Wilkinson came on.

All credit to Ireland - the challenge now is for them to perform like that more consistently. When they do, they will be a handful for anyone. They also need to get it right now because, though they have some young lads in the team, the papers today are full of the inspirational talk that O’Connell gave and how O’Driscoll led the team. Fair enough, but these guys are not spring chickens and advantage needs to be taken of having them in the team whilst they are there.

Broadly agree with Dead Cat’s comments. I am somewhat concerned that there is a streak of petulance creeping into rugby, in general, and with this England team specifically. They need to concentrate on getting the game sorted. The most obvious “old” example of this is the tale of Josh Lewsey complaining he’d been stamped on to Johnson in 2003 against New Zealand. Johnson’s reply was supposedly, “Wear it and get on with game” - more of that attitude would not go amiss.

28

You are definitely right about the half-backs, Youngs in particular - it seemed that as soon as he could see the game creeping away, he resorted to spoiling tactics of dubious legality rather than concentrating on just playing solid rugby, and this attitude seemed to permeate the whole team. Of course, it didn’t help that both our fly halves missed kicks that they would normally make, despite a commendably silent crowd - in fact, I noticed more shouts on Ireland’s kicks than on England’s hopefully the idiots behind that were silenced by whatever means was appropriate.

I saw at least one piece of evidence of England changing their plan mid-game - after the first few Irish scores, they realised that as Ireland were dominating the forward battle, it made no sense to go for a short kick-off, and they went for territory instead. But you are quite right, there should have been a lot more of that sort of intelligence than there was.

On the same subject, it is hard to see why Flood is England’s first choice at 10. Wilkinson shades it on the kicking front, is certainly the better decision-maker, is a lot better at tackling, and I would say their ball-handling skills are about on a par. I can only assume that Flood is significantly quicker over the ground, but I would say this is outweighed by the other areas by a long way. Perhaps the management just got fed up of Wilkinson’s injuries and decided a bit of consistency is what was needed. Plus of course he is getting on a bit. But that is no reason to discount him as a first choice - many would say that the England of the late 1990s would have been a better team had Mike Catt been first choice fly half, despite his age.

Indeed - this example (if true) makes it all the more surprising that the current team seem to lack this ethic, unless Johnno has decided that actually, it is better to try and be good enough at cheating that you don’t get caught. Well, Johnno, in the highly unlikely event that you read this: it ain’t working. Please drop it before the team suffers further embarrassment because of it.