Wuss have Sale next week, I suspect its going to remain tight between Irish/Wuss/Falcons right to the last day.

No pleasing some people – StephenJones-itis is alive and well ( “They won’t beat the AB’s playing like this”)

We won. First half not great – second half much better, and the bench all added. 2 from 2, top of the table.

When was the last time ANY 6N team put Italy away by half time? It just doesn’t happen. We won by 31 pts and haven’t conceded a try yet.

Positives – scrum immense, Itoje, George, Marler all added from the bench, we scored 5 tries. None conceded.

Negatives – we didn’t play the perfect game of rugby 🙄

Aaaaaaaaabsolutely not. Haven’t seen anything that would suggest it yet anyway. But I don’t think we’ll see where Jones really wants to take this team until summer.

It’s not really the big question, as nobody is realistically asking it. No matter how you slant it, England put a decent scoreline in Rome on an Italian team which France just snuck past in Paris.
If anything, it may just make amends for Englands frankly dreadful performance was last week and no more.

I’ll take the win and score line against Italy, but it was getting close to squeaky bum time at half time. The Ford / Farrell axis just isn’t working and Ford is trying too hard. I’ve noticed much more this year that he is get man handled in both attack and defence.

Haskell and Robshaw don’t complement each other – it should be one or the other plus Kvesic and Billy. It’ll be interesting to see if Jones does go after Underhill from the Ospreys for the summer tour. He seems to be getting a lot of praise and looked pretty handy against Exeter a few weeks ago.

I think we need to find / introduce an out and out 12 for the rest of the games especially bearing in mind some of the players that we’ll be facing. I think Farrell at 12 is one of the reasons that Ford is getting smashed about so much – a proper centre will offer him far more protection.

The Ireland / France game was tedious – both teams showed very little ambition. Ireland had a massive injury list though and are missing some pretty serious players.

Personally, I think the championship will be won by Wales – they don’t seem to be cutting loose like promised but look very effective with pretty solid defence.

Scotland seem to lack a cutting edge and don’t have a killer instinct – they did play some good stuff though.

The Wasps / Sarries game was very, very entertaining. Wasps were very good and played with a lot of ambition and speed. Sarries looked massively flat and seemed to really miss their international players (more so than Wasps). I imagine that they’ll only get stronger as the pitches start to dry out. A few big upsets this weekend – Worcs came close but like Scotland lack the ability to play for 80 mins.

Yes, this picking players out of position is always a bit odd. At the moment, can’t see the F/F partnership being the LT solution.

Agreed Wrecker – Ford is out of form for both club and country. He always, when faced with a difficult period, goes to pot, really struggling to achieve the impossible. We won’t change for the next match, Fazlet is there and will play at 10. I think that Cipriani, Slade, Manu and that wasps guy would be a far better midfield yes I know it’s one person to many, but it does show who’s waiting in the wings.
Front 5 look pretty good, amazed that with a malfunctioning lineout, it’s all the jumpers fault, where as with Tom Youngs, it’s all about the thrower. Nothing like a prejudiced view!
Back row is still poor, really, really need someone who can preoperl fetch, preferably 2 of them. The Hask and Robshaw look good in defence and poor on the ground, as expected.
Subs were very, very good. Gives me hope…..

He was forcing passes in the first half that just weren’t on – a bit like Saints a while ago which handed them the victory.

Cips must be pretty cheesed off because he’s had another good season behind a so-so pack.

But Imagine the devastation!!!
I do hope you are right mindmap, it seems Jones is far more open to blooding new talent than previous coaches.

I think Jones is trying to turn Farrell into Giteau Mk II – despite Giteau being more talented. Trouble is as soon as he’s back at Sarries, he’ll be back to 10 where he plays best.

We do seem to struggle for 12’s and 7’s – there seems to be lots of options in other positions but not many for these two. Hill from Exeter is a bit of a bosh merchant but I think he would have been worth a shout at least in the short term.

The summer tour will be interesting – the likes of Haskell, Robshaw, Cole etc will have played a lot of rugby and will be shot to pieces and will need a rest. Is that when we’ll see a few more bolters in the team?

I think there is a bit of a hang up on what certain positions should or shouldn’t be doing (e.g. 7 should play like a “7”) when just doing the basics at times would suffice regardless of shirt number. As I said before, there were several times when the backrow just needed to pick the ball up but the basic skills and decision making were poor. Billy got the idea late on but Robshaw and Haskell didn’t need to do much at times to win turnover ball as it was often unchallenged at their feet!

In theory, but history tends to say otherwise.

Am I the only person that thinks the whole Manu worship is starting to sound a little like the Welsh Henson worship of a few years ago?
Manu is off injured (again) and has not been outstanding in an England (since 2012 anyway) shirt nor in a Lions shirt.

The whole chop & change we want Cipriane, no Burns, no… whoever’s flavour of the week at fly-half & centre seems to move against building a team.
Now remind me how did our centre’s perform in the last world-cup?
Was the criticism that we kept chopping and changing partnerships?
…Of course silly me, why would EJ not listen to 000’s of armchair coaches.
Did England impress in their over-ambition & trying too hard against Italy – not really. Did any of the other 6N teams impress…nah.
If you’ve got a squad for a 6N championship should you stick with them and try to get them better OR swap ’em everytime the wind blows?

It reminds me of Stuart Barnes bleating about Will Carling at centre in the 90’s. I think he’s still bleating now the [@^- 😈

If a player isn’t performing, he should be dropped to the bench. The team previously has had considerable criticism with not changing things which were not working and quite rightly so.
There is a 6N squad which includes Devoto, Manu and Daly, and EJ should be free to select whoever he thinks will perform from that pool of players.

Manu was / is great when on song but brings his own issues – i.e. flies out of the defensive line looking for the big hit. I think he needs a run of games to get back to full fitness / form before winning any more caps.

Agreed – we need to select the combinations that work well for us and develop a style / identity from there.

ooh I like it – You’re shit which is why you’ll get better…!

In fairness, and if you look back through my posts, you’ll see I’m an utter Tuilagi fanboy, way back in 2001 when the big brother Freddy came across to Leicester, then watched in awe as a set of brothers became so utterly brilliant – damn near a team by themselves. Now there’s the first son in the Leicester academy, that’s astonishing.

I think Ford can be good, its just, at the moment, he’s clearly not. However, should he be dropped due to this, I suspect not as that’s going to knock him further. Christ knows what’s happened to the Bath lot, although JJ looked to be full of beans by the end of Sunday.

Anyway, thanks to this thread I watched the Wasps demolition of Saracens. That was an enjoyable couple of hours. Premiership now looking really, really tight. Good for the game!