I went to the game but haven't seen a replay. I took some notes.
After the first half I was thinking that rugby was a dreadful game. I was seriously questioning the future of the game. It improved towards the end of the 1st half and in the 2nd half but it still wasn't a great game. Boring, kick oriented, there wasnt much atmosphere and what excitement there was felt manufactured (eg Swing Low). My other first half thoughts were: Giteau has nothing. He wasn't setting up his outside men, and all he has is the show and go. Based on that, I wouldn't pick Giteau next week. I'd play Dunning at 10 as a preference.
The locks were running it a bit though and seemed a bit more interested in the breakdown. I couldn't tell them apart from the stand. Particularly in the first half the Wallabies displayed no real urgency. There was a real contrast to the NZ v Wales game.
England had no imagination and who would bother watching when they play like this. Yes, Johnny made his tackles etc, but it was clear how much ambition he had in the first 5 minutes when he dropped the goal. At least oz played some rugby, particularly in the last 15mins of the first half and in the second half. Curious that Smith is being criticised for his game. At the ground I thought he did a lot of off the ball work. In the first half, I thought Palu, Robinson, Genia, Cooper and AAC (Adam Ashley-Cooper) all played well. I thought the refereeing was pedantic. I didn't realise a scrum could be penalised for the back 5 walking around.
In the second half, Ioane was good. He was attracting defenders when he ran the ball and made some good tackles. Cooper was playing 10 mostly and, curiously, Gits was often at 13 with Ioane crashing it at 12. Elsom had a better 2nd half which was lucky, because he did bugger all in the first half. He was very good at 2 in the lineout but not around the field except for, perhaps, a 20min period in the 2nd half.
Smith does a huge amount of filling in in defence. Often running from one breakdown to the far side of the next where we were short.
I didn't think Moore had a great game apart from as part of a good scrum. When the Poms were putting some pressure on, he was standing around doing a little too much watching for my liking. Our backrow was outplayed on the ground in the first 20mins. In fact, our forwards were outplayed for the first 20mins.
The scrum was good. The England front row were behomeths but looked a bit on the sloppy side. I think their fitness didn't last and, had it been better, we may not have gained the forward dominance we eventually did.
Lineout recovered from a very bad start to turn out ok but Ireland will have noticed that we use Rocky at 2 a lot and when we need good ball. I didn't notice how Mumm went when he came on but I really think a smart coach and decent lineout coach will be able to deconstruct our lineout big time. Chisolm and Horwill are not compatible together in the lineout. This is a particular worry against the Irish because their lineout is the second best behind the Boks. The problem is that we don't really have a back up lock. I don't think Chapman or Dennis are capable of playing lock in a test. We really are struggling at lock and have less options there than anywhere else (for example, 9, 10 or 15).
The most pleasing part of the game was our defence. Initially, our pillar post defence. Then, our wider defence improved too. However, I'm not taking too much out of that because the Poms couldn't score a try against the Maryborough Ladies XV on that performance.
