@tjagain The whole personal rivalries thing fascinates me. On the world stage England thrashes all the other 6 nations, our wins against NZ, Aus, SA etc are more than any of the others, (this is reflected in the IRB rankings) yet for example our record against Wales is 50/50.
So this means that Wales play better against us than any of the other tier 1 nations outside 6N, same kind of analysis works for Scotland and Ireland vs England.
This is amazing in some ways, obvious in other ways, but really is a lesson about sports psychology over form/skill/resource.

9. Youngs actually had the best game I have seen for a long time I thought.

Sorry TJ, but I have serious issues with Youngs. He’s absolute mince. Every delivery of the ball is two steps, then fling it at whichever 10 is quaking in his boots for fear of going against EJ’s latest edict, it’s either at the 10s feet, 2’ above his head, or 2 metres behind him. The other 70% of slow ball is launched into the air with no thought as to distance or trajectory.

His best game in a while is still utter pap.

bigger so long as he promised to stop yapping

Biggar could teach Farrell a thing or two. Whenever Biggar complains he whinges and moans, there’s never any aggression, whereas Farrell comes across quite aggressively. His flapping of the arms etc are comedy gold 😂.

I’ve been convinced to drop Curry and play Navidi.

Does Anscombe have time to get himself match fit? 😂😂

none of the three would let you down.

1/2p would he’s way past his best

Could you play Watson and Tipuric?

bigblackshead – I agree Youngs is mince. But most of the rest of the contenders have a whiff of mince about them

On the world stage England thrashes all the other 6 nations, our wins against NZ, Aus, SA etc are more than any of the others, (this is reflected in the IRB rankings) yet for example our record against Wales is 50/50.
So this means that Wales play better against us than any of the other tier 1 nations outside 6N

I think there’s a feeling in Wales at least that we’re just not going to beat SH sides so it’s almost as if that’s a secondary aim, and we should just focus on the 6N instead. Not sure if that’s a plausible explanation or not.

Or maybe it’s just a question of muscle and ferocity up front.

and we should just focus on the 6N instead. Not sure if that’s a plausible explanation or not

I felt the opposite was true for England. Before the last WC it seemed like they sacrificed some 6N performance to help their WC.

Molgrips and nickjb, I guess both could be true, but its interesting nonetheless.

Is there a bit of tier1 and tier 1.1 going on. EJ sets up like SA, NZ, Oz so when they play them.the game plan is obvious. But the other nations don’t play that plan so do better.
Granted you need skill and physicality to be on the stage otherwise the big teams will rip you a new one. But sometimes that different approach will win you matches or confuse the big boys, see Japan and Italy’s non competing ruck from a few years ago.
It’s why we need Georgia etc to be in a series. It’d mean we have to think and play differently.

I’d consider Ben Spencer for scrum half. Probably one of the best in England for sure. Eddi doesn’t like him for some strange reason

On the world stage England thrashes all the other 6 nations

I think that is debatable. They do have a somewhat better record, especially against NZ, but England have a way of remembering things in a positive manner.

They often talk about how well they did in the World Cup, but they only had two good games. One against Australia and another against NZ. They were poor in the knockout stages and didn’t need to play France. They got thumped in the final.

The previous World Cup was a disaster.

Could you play Watson and Tipuric?

Not if you want to win

I think that is debatable. They do have a somewhat better record, especially against NZ, but England have a way of remembering things in a positive manner.

No, look up the records.

For example vs NZ
England 8 NZ 33
Wales 3 NZ 32
Scotland 0 NZ 29
Ireland 2 NZ 29

Or vs Oz
England 25 Oz 25
Wales 12 Oz 30
Scotland 11 Oz 21
Ireland 13 Oz 22

TJ

I’m not saying any of the others are better than Youngs. In fact all told we have a massive mince pie in the home nations at the moment.

Can we turn back the clock to the time That Connor Murray Lad was good?

AA

Obviously Tipuric is a bit light as a 7 v SA, let’s just play him at 12 or 13.

😉

Tipuric was in the heavily injured team that narrowly lost to SA in the semifinal.

Tipuric is class. In fact the Welsh back row of Tipuric, Faletau & Navidi are miles ahead of everyone else.

Underhill, Simmonds, & Byrne are close.

I’ll start looking with two eyes tomorrow.

🙂

I’ve just realised that with the bonus point Scotland scored today they can’t be caught by Italy.

😏

😂

Oops bad gateway, double post. Sorry

So this means that Wales play better against us than any of the other tier 1 nations outside 6N, same kind of analysis works for Scotland and Ireland vs England.

That’s a very simplistic way of looking at it.

Also I hate the crowd noise with a passion.

Red button to turn crowd noise off. Also looking at the table Scotland are four points behind England but have two games to play, one against italy.

This is amazing in some ways, obvious in other ways, but really is a lesson about sports psychology over form/skill/resource the misuse of stats to support a fallacy.

Ireland win percentage v Oz 36%
Ireland win percentage v England 36%

You’re talking bollix

Ireland win percentage v Oz 36%
Ireland win percentage v England 36%

You’re talking bollix

Not quite, bear with me. I don’t want to accuse you of cherry picking but I’ll give you Ireland against OZ, but what about Ireland against NZ?
However:
England win percentage against OZ = 50%
England vs NZ 24%
England vs SA 43%

Wales vs England 50%
Wales vs Oz 28%
Wales vs NZ 9%
wales vs SA 20%

Wales record vs Eng plainly way better than against Oz or NZ, or SA.

Scotland Vs England 30%
Soctland vs Oz 32%
Scotland vs NZ 0%
Scotland vs SA 22%

Scotland shite against NZ and Not good against SA

Ireland vs England 39%
Ireland vs OZ 36%
Ireland vs NZ 6%
Ireland vs SA 38%

Ireland shite against NZ but similar against SA and OZ

General trend they play better against us than against world sides.
This is also reflected in 6N placings vs WC placings.

Hence my sport psychology ref, if they could bottle what they gain when they play England they would be better elsewhere, conversely England need to find out why they let Wales get to them so much…

Really this only works for Wales…

There’s a lot of missing information in those stats though. Wales v England goes back to 18whenever when sides were just whatever 15 you could find. Didn’t the SH go professional much earlier too? You should limit that to the last 20 years.

…but what about Ireland against NZ?

All Blacks have always been the better team.

England haven’t, they’re not the All Blacks, never have been, and to put the difference down to “Ireland try harder against us” smells a bit of English arrogance and self-importance.

Really this only works for Wales…

…so you have a trend of 1.

Time for a new hypothesis?

Molgrips, what you say is all true, [part of the problem is that none of us get to play NZ that often. But for Wales the stats hold.
Essentially against England in isolation the teams are evenly matched, it goes up or down a few % but short or long term Wales are always an equal.
So why don’t they match that on the world stage.
As others have said it could be that they devote more resources to the 6n than anywhere else.
I just find it interesting.

You could say the same about OZ,

England vs Oz 50%
England vs NZ 24%

Auz vs NZ 38%

So either Aus raise their game against NZ, or we have a bigger beef with Aus and raise our game against them. Maybe a bit of both.

Wales vs England 50%
Wales vs Oz 28%
Wales vs NZ 9%
wales vs SA 20%

Wales record vs Eng plainly way better than against Oz or NZ, or SA.

How **** far back did you go to find Wales 9% of wins v NZ….too **** far to make any valid points re the modern game for sure.

Well OK but that just reinforces my point, in the last 20 years we are 22% against NZ and you are 0%.
Yet you are near 50% against us. (well 11/30 over 20 years, but I don’t want to be mean.)
So if we can beat you 50% of the time, we are as good as you, why can’t you beat NZ at the same rate as us?.
I’m not trying to be facile, I am just interested in it.

So if you can beat us 50% of the time, you are as good as us, why can’t you beat NZ.

If anyone comes up with an answer can we post it to WRU HQ please?

Well I think the answer is in psychology. I think it is a bigger thing for Wales to beat England than NZ.
I find this amazing. That pro sports players don’t tap in to this more. Surely if you recognise that you can raise your game against one team for whatever reason, you need to find a way to enhance your performance against other teams.
Or maybe its the other way round, maybe Wales don’t raise their game against us, maybe they get intimidated by NZ and do not play as well as they would when playing England?

I think it is a bigger thing for Wales to beat England than NZ.

Look at what these b******s have done to Wales. They’ve taken our coal, our water, our steel. They buy our houses and live in them for a fortnight every 12 months. And what have they given us? Absolutely nothing. We’ve been exploited, raped, controlled and punished by the English — and we’re playing them this afternoon.

Well I’m not sure its as incendiary as that is it?

He’s also got it wrong. Go back a bit and you’ll find the Welsh are the true Brits, us lot over here are Saxons, Danes and a few others.

So you can blame the French.

On the AB’s point, EJ was quite open before the RWC that he was developing a game to beat the AB’s for the RWC. Surprisingly after telling them that for 4 years and showing everybody what we were doing, we did. I never did understand why it wasn’t seen and countered.

I don’t think it’s that the Welsh raise their game to play England as much as they (of recent) have been a tournament team. They generally to crap in AIs and tours but play better for the 6N and last couple of WCs. The times they play the southern hemisphere teams is generally in the AIs, and they lose whereas the times they generally play the NH teams is 6N when they’ve done better/more consistent. Add in that Wales can’t beat Aus, seem to have played them about 100 times in the last 10 years been beaten in all of them but the total points difference is about -1.

Scotland have been the other way round playing really well in the AIs then failing to deliver on that promise in the 6N and WC.

Teh numbaz

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/56292157