I don’t think these pundits are necessarily right to back Lancaster but it was more the subtext that there wasn’t a lot of love for Farrel

One telling thing at the end was Farrell Snr standing in front of lolcaster so he had to sheapishly walk round him to be at the front. Too many Indians not enough chiefs.
4 years to mold a team with the playing stock we have is more than enough the only real upset to the plan was tuie getting into trouble with the police and a lump missing in the scrum.

Booing him was out of order at the press conference let the football fans do that.

Armitage is an average player! A-a is right, he’s not the answer to England ills.
There are some good back row players coming through; itoge, Wallace, ewers, another young lad at saints (I think) and or course, burgess….

Speaking of Nige, I didn’t catch what he said to the Scottish player who took a dive after hardly being touched. Was it something along the lines of “You can come back here (ie a football stadium) in two weeks and do that…”?

I was watching it with a bunch of shouting toddlers milling around…

Didn’t the socceroos give the England soccer team a bloody good hiding in recent times?

That’s out of the top drawer. 🙂

Ah, that’s what it was. Nice. 😀

Keet!

@aa is spot on IMO with 1, 2 and 3 and his other post on Stefon. Big Billy V we did miss, he is big but a dynamic ball carrier. Not sure about the flankers and in tactics we where 10 mins and a few poor decisions away from beating Wales and finishing second in the group. Based on what we’ve seen so far Wales have zero chance of defeating Australia assuming they play as well again

We’d have wanted to win the group but we picked the wrong team against Wales (should have been Ford and anyone but Burgess) and still should have won. That’s the game that was a disaster. Australia where excellent and beat us fair and square whilst we contrived to lose to Wales, snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and all that. We had no idea about how to close out the first game when 10 ahead and should have taken the kick for the draw as damage limitation. We selected the sh1t or bust option and we know what happened. Hopefully we’ll clear out Lancaster and Farrel senior and put Farrell junior back on the bench. Burgess should prove himself over a season at Bath and then if he’s performed he can have another go.

Ireland slightly struggling to get past Italy, although Ireland should get it done.

Australia looked brilliant last night, best I’ve seen any tan play so far.

I hope Hogg feels suitably embarrassed today, that dive was shocking.

It’s worse.

Ah, Underhill. Problem is that the Ospreys have been so terrible that it’s difficult to know how good he actually is.

The point about Armitage (and Pocock, Cooper, Tipuric, Warbs indeed any decent openside) is that they can link and play out wide with the ball in hand – none of our Flankers currently appear able to do that at international level. Launchbury looked better with the ball in hand.

AA is right you can of course construct a game plan that just relies on big back row smashing it up (as we used to) but that’s never been particularly successful and getting less effective as the professional era moves on. Haskell’s never been particularly effective at the international level because just hitting it up and making hard yards doesn’t cut it against decent opposition. 2003 was the only time we had an all round game.

On the subject of turnovers of course it’s not the seven’s job to prevent them – that’s a whole team responsibility but he should be the best placed to make them if his lines of running are half decent.

Maybe… but it doesn’t come across well. Nevertheless the whole thing is a bit grovelly and odd for a pro as Kryton says

From the same link… I wonder how long it is before Dirkson gets a call?

For a. Not forbade!

Never understood the game was on another site today said code of rugby was described as kick and clap? Anyone explain.