Fantastic tournament overall.

This.  Thanks for everyone staying classy this morning.  Good thread and banter in the main over the last few weeks and good luck to all the players from all teams going forward.

Brillant advert for Rugby.

It isn’t an old English team, the spine of it will be back in 4 years. You can take heart from that.

It isn’t an old S.A. team… 😁

Turned up with a game plan, executed it, job done. The tries at the end were icing, they’d have been happy with 18-12.

For a kid whose favourite toy in the townships was a brick, that’s a special thing he’s just lifted. I can’t begrudge them any of the praise they’re going to get, well done Bokke

Englands main issue apart from the scrums is the half backs! Youngs was poor today and so was Ford

Bingo!! There’s always one poster who turns up to blame the half backs when the pack has been man shamed. England didnt run it much or well because they didn’t get front foot ball. What was odd was that all the tip ons and balls behind the forwards to Tuilagi etc just werent used to shift contact and keep the SA defence guessing. Got suckered in to a willy waving contest.

It was an enjoyable tournament and I’m not quite sure what I’ll do with my time now. I may be the only one though who actually prefers the 6 Nations tournament.
A wee congratulations from me to Josh Adams, top try scorer.

With Ireland, Wales, Italy (?), and to an extent England all about to have new coaches, does that put Scotland ahead of the curve for the 2020 6 Nations?

does that put Scotland ahead of the curve for the 2020 6 Nations?

No, because Townesend!!

AA – yes its harder to play well at half back with no platform – but 3 times england tried set piece moves and 3 times they failed because of poor passing from Youngs. Ford / Farrell does not work! How much shite ball was just shoveled on?

England have a fast attacking back 3. They got no ball to play with.

2 clean breaks all game from the backs is poor – especially as england actually had the bulk of the possession and territory

Trouble is England are just so predicable in play. When like SA did you negate vunipola and Tuilagi carrying then england have nothing else!

does that put Scotland ahead of the curve for the 2020 6 Nations?

NO – ~Scotland are on a downward path right now under Townsend and we will not improve till he goes.

@mboy, you can take solace that Jerome Garces just officiated his last match as a ref.

Well played to South Africa they bossed the scrums at a level unseen in a final and those tries were both fantastic.

Forwards win games.
Backs decide the margin.

SA scrum dominated that completely.

does that put Scotland ahead of the curve for the 2020 6 Nations?

NO – ~Scotland are on a downward path right now under Townsend and we will not improve till he goes.

Wow, no equivocation there! I always thought you were a fan of his.
How much of a downward path do people see Wales undergoing in the near future? Am I right in the belief that Scotland and Wales don’t have the number of players or teams required to develop a squad that can consistently compete at the World level? What is the solution? Josh Adams has developed well at Worcester (?) do we need to allow Wales players to play in England?
How do Ireland go forward from here?

Townsend was parachuted in as the favourite son and this WC and last 6N shows that he is simply too inexperienced and makes too many mistakes in selection. the scots team has gone backwards a long way in two years

How much of a downward path do people see Wales undergoing in the near future?

Four years ago, people were asking how England and South Africa could recover from disastrous WC campaigns. Twelve months ago, Ireland were looking like solid contenders for best in the world alongside NZ. My guess is that Wales, Ireland, and Scotland will look at what England and SA did to climb back and will be ruthless in implementing reforms. NZ and Australia too.

Wales had so many injuries its difficult to judge them going forward. Just seen this quote from Matt Dawson:

England were taken apart in many, many areas today. They looked, for the first time in long time, rattled from very early on when they tried to break the line or score a bit too early rather than staying patient.
You need to go through your patterns and stay on script. There were a lot of players who didn’t stay on script and tried to play their own game rather than the team game.

I listened to ENG vs NZ on the radio and post match Dawson said ENG are unbeatable and the WC was theirs to lose. He was really trying to not say it but he couldn’t help it, I wonder if the ENG players also felt like this.

I think Wales had a great tournament, but that was in large part down to the excellent coaching. From a very experienced coaching team. It feels inevitable that we will lose some ground in the near future. England and SA have 15x the population of Wales, for every World class player Wales can provide they should have a team full.
It would be nice for the game to be tweaked so that players weren’t broken so often.

3 subs per match would be a good move imo. It will never happen but I think it would shrink the size of player (less injuries) and close the distance between top and second tier teams.

3 subs per match would be a good move imo.

Used to be 3 subs when I played in Nat 1, it was horrible, you had a prop, a hooker and a back. Props at flanker, hookers at centre, it was a nightmare 😀

Sounds good to me! You could have 5/6/7 subs but only 3 could come on.

No good enough England.

You have to win it and Not talk yourself into winning.

Too much hype as usual.

Can’t complain at the result and 2nd best team on the planet isn’t too shabby. I worry slightly for the home nations potential, I fear englands light will fade and the remainder aren’t in great shape. Unless France can pull their finger out, we will be in for more SH dominance.

England and SA have 15x the population of Wales

NZ don’t, yet they seem to be able to keep finding excellent players.

Edit. And exporting coaches too.

Dissapointed in the game today – watched a recording and FF through quite a bit as we never got into the game. Probably better to say SA did not let us get into our game. I guess this is how NZ felt last week. No complaints and some nice scenes at the end.

NZ don’t, yet they seem to be able to keep finding excellent players.

And of course it’s utterly irrelevant. China have more people and soccer players than any other nation. People can’t seem to get their hear around the fact that it’s about far more than numbers. It’s a sad, tired old rationale.

Bingo!! There’s always one poster who turns up to blame the half backs when the pack has been man shamed

True but if you scrum half throws his passes anywhere except where they’re supposed to go it doesn’t help. Youngs never fails to go missing in big games.

England’s forwards got owned. No doubt. But having Youngs at 9 and Farrell as your “leader” doesn’t help when you need to find a plan B.

SA were very smart the whole RWC but the smartest thing they did was let someone else beat the ABs for them.

Farrell is well loved on here isnt he, is it coz hes northern? He wasn’t responsible for today’s poor show today, the team was.

It was fortunate not smart. They had no control over it.

The issue with Farrell is although a fine player he is no where near as good as the english pundits claim and in the opinion of many actually holds england back

Its as much a reaction to the press as to the person the dislike for him.

The wealth of the RFU might be relevant, but the number of registered players in England is a complete red herring. For 80% of them a rugby match is a bit of fresh air to justify an afternoon of refreshments. Nothing wrong with that of course.

Just been out for a wet an windy solo road ride and collected my thoughts, now stick with me on this..England were really not helped today by losing their play maker after 3 mins. V NZ Sinkler was the guy carrying hard but also a load of the good stuff went through him, little passes before contact to confuse defenders, passes to wider forwrds, passes out behind the forwards to the backs, he has great hands and is a carrying threat himself which means defences cant over commit.

Also England have gone horses for courses in selection v Aus and NZ so why not here and put Itoje at 6 with Kruis and Lawes at lock, match them early. I think England underestimated them tbh.

Youngs. Ford / Farrell

That’s balls though isn’t it? Seemed to work pretty damn well last week.

However, Youngs was lucky to be there given his form has been a bit squiffy for a while. His passing today was shit today and Ford cracked under the pressure.

So how did South Africa come from a very low ebb not that many months ago to winning the world cup? I know they have always been a power in world rugby but what changed? did they try to play a more free flowing game that didn’t agree with them and went back to the power game,is their coach a genius? As a casual rugby watcher in interested,what gives? i’m guess its because they have always been pretty good,ebbs and flows and all that.

True but if you scrum half throws his passes anywhere except where they’re supposed to go it doesn’t help

100% agree. Youngs is not a great passer and rarely hits the receiver in the bread basket. He’s either too high/low or too low or in front/behind. Faf on the other hand was hitting his man very accurately.

So how did South Africa come from a very low ebb not that many months ago to winning the world cup?

A large part has been picking overseas based players. That and a back to basics gameplan.

Ford always cracks under pressure. I’d have a big old clear out before the 6N.

So who will England pick next? Daly at full back doesnt work for me.

Wales:

McNicol/Patch assuming Liam broke
North
Davies
Halaholo
Adams
Anscombe/Patch/Biggar
Williams/Davies
Faletau
Tips/Navidi
Wainwright/Moriarty/Jenkins
AWJ
Ball/Beard/Seb Davies
Francis/Lewis/Lee
Dee/Owens
Evans/Wyn Jones/Carre

Maybe SA are a little like the German National football team. They can be beaten in friendlies and qualifiers but their mentality is geared towards getting to the final and usually winning.

Eddie jones said in his interview that they will be kicking stones for four years now,thats an interesting thing to say,does it mean he only really values the world cup and games against the southern hemisphere? I guess in reality you could substitute NZ/AUS/S.A into the six nations and they would be right up there,just thought it was an interesting thing to say,maybe a window on the aussie mindset.

“We will be kicking stones” I guess he’s staying then.

I think there was too pressure and waffle from the press about England being unbeatable after the NZ game and too much about SA being boring, one dimensional etc.

England just didn’t expect the SA side that turned up and they had nothing left after NZ.

Personally I don’t think Sinclar would have made a big difference but we’ll never know.

The right result as far as I’m concerned.

Also not sure about the hatred on this thread for Wales. They played OK in the tournament but never looked like winning. I considered them lucky to get past France.

Also not sure about the hatred on this thread for Wales. They played OK in the tournament but never looked like winning. I considered them lucky to get past France.

Using the form guide France would have battered England!!!!