Yeah I find it a bit embarrassing, I would prefer the spin being Cole was smarter and did X and Y, unfortunately Sio couldn't adapt, but this is the type of things he should do next time
Wallabies v England in Melbourne, 18 June
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Yeah I find it a bit embarrassing, I would prefer the spin being Cole was smarter and did X and Y, unfortunately Sio couldn't adapt, but this is the type of things he should do next time
Scrubber2050
Mark Ella (57)
We are all taught to play to the whistle. Props have always played on the edge of legality. It's often not about strength but guile
No different to what Lord Ritchie of McCaw South Island did for about 10+ years amd WE asll used to whinge about him.
USARugger
John Thornett (49)
Based on my survey of the usual rugby forums earlier today there's still quite a few English fans who believe the reason Marler was blown up in the RWC was because of an organized smear campaign by GAGR and not because he (and all the other LHPs under Rowntree) had been scrummaging illegally for years and continued to do so after it was brought up in a wider public arena.
So I'm not sure that's the best question to ask
Cole got up to some shenanigans last weekend, without a doubt.. but Sio didn't adjust his game and was repeatedly caught out with his feet looking like Ben frickin' Alexander was in his shoes. That part is 100% on Australia and has nothing to do with what the English were up to.
That said, the wheeling in the scrum before Sio was taken off was fucking comical and it's actually a farce that Poite apparently thought that was a legal scrum at all.
Cole started getting really cute with his right shoulder after those scrums. Pretty hard for a guy to push through you when he's got nothing to push against!
Pfitzy
Nathan Sharpe (72)
Australian rugby media is shit at diplomacy, because they need to scream to be heard above the Loig.
Its all about the clicks.
hammertimethere
Trevor Allan (34)
What if the Refs could carry an iPhone thing that could give them the live Spider Cam view at the same time as looking from where they stand as the scrum engaged?
Pfitzy
Nathan Sharpe (72)
They'd be about as good as when they have to watch the ruck AND the offside line at the same time.
Being a ref is shit.
Brumby Runner
Jason Little (69)
Being a shit ref is easy apparently.
Quick Hands
David Wilson (68)
Why can't the TMO have the overhead shot going at every scrum? He can't be looking at much else when a scrum is in progress?
Quick Hands
David Wilson (68)
Referee
Craig Joubert (South Africa)
Assistant 1
Nigel Owens (Wales)
Assistant 2
Mike Fraser (New Zealand)
Scrubber2050
Mark Ella (57)
AND he should check all offside play during the game AND guys coming in from the side AND review every high ball taken in the air, AND every tackle's legality AND evrything else possible.
That way we can fuck off the Referee and 2 x Assistant Referees, thereby saving wages and ensuring a santitised game with no mistakes or errors on both sides.
Game will end up like NFL - about 3 hours duration, but with 80 minutes of playing time.
Quick Hands
David Wilson (68)
AND he should check all offside play during the game AND guys coming in from the side AND review every high ball taken in the air, AND every tackle's legality AND evrything else possible.
That way we can fuck off the Referee and 2 x Assistant Referees, thereby saving wages and ensuring a santitised game with no mistakes or errors on both sides.
Game will end up like NFL - about 3 hours duration, but with 80 minutes of playing time.
Who said anything about stopping the game?
No need to bring straw men into the discussion as a way to discredit an idea that you don't like.
If every second poster on G&GR can see it clearly in real time, it doesn't take any time for the TMO to whisper into his microphone - "White 1 boring in - penalty" Noting that these infringements are considered unsafe/dangerous.
And by the way, the TMO is supposed to monitor tackles and events occurring in general play, but only intervene in matters of foul play - not offside.
And I might add, that the scrum is one part of the game where it has already stopped, so again, a TMO involvement would not involve stopping play.
Groucho
Greg Davis (50)
Please forgive this tl;dr, but I thought I'd spend my ten cents worth of typing on Saturday's test in Brisbane. It's really about this week's test so I put it here.
The bottom line is that we lost. That's a bitter pill, especially after the momentous win in the World Cup encounter. Most of us were expecting more of the same: if not a big win, then at least some early-season progress towards the big advantage line we drew that day.
Alas, it wasn't to be. We got beat, and we deserved to lose. Nothing should be taken from the Poms.
But why did we lose? A lot is being written on the Internet, and some of it is people reaching into the well-worn grab-bag of easy answers to that old question. Beaten at the breakdown. Beaten in the scrum. The usual reasons we lose to the Poms.
The real answer is both simpler and more complex.
We got beaten in the scrums.
We certainly did. As Gagger's excellent analysis shows on the front page, Dan Cole and the England scrum did a number on us.
Sure, a lot of it was borderline illegal. So what? They scrummed beautifully. Sure, Romain Poite was complicit. But that's how it goes when a team scrums beautifully.
And sure, they got Scott Sio yellow carded. That's why they're called the dark arts, and not the obvious arts.
Does that mean we should be changing our front row? No. We could change the order of precedence, since we have the luxury of being able to do that, but the right answer is to respond in Melbourne with an improved performance. We don't suddenly have a bad front row, or a bad scrum. And Mario Ledesma's not suddenly a numpty. This is something we can expect to fix by Saturday.
We got beaten at the breakdown.
No, that simply isn't true. We won 94% of our rucks compared to England’s 88%. We conceded 12 turnovers to their 11. But, crucially, we won 73% of possession in the second half. And an avalanche of it was quick ball.
We don't need to start messing deeply with our forward selections to overcome this imaginary disadvantage. As Cheika said, more of the same.
We failed to convert our possession advantage into points.
That's both true and false. We scored four tries. If we'd won, people would've been saying how we'd successfully converted our possession advantage into points.
All things considered, given the big change of Lilo for Horne, our attack was fine. We mounted many sweeping attacks. England were continually stretched. And, at the end of the day, we crossed the line four times. That's pretty good for a fiercely-contested test. It's the same as we did on the famous day at Twickenham last year.
What we did fail to do was convert enough of our tries into seven-pointers.
Our discipline was poor.
Damn right. Now we're getting into why we did lose the game.
It's very hard to overcome a 15-8 penalty count, especially when Owen Farrell is in such excellent kicking form. Our discipline was awful. In my opinion, it's the main reason we lost.
Foley's goal kicking was poor.
Yes, absolutely. He has to do better than that, or we have to come up with a different kicking solution. Goal kickers, to their credit and debit, play a crucial role in winning and losing matches, and Foley just didn't step up on Saturday.
Our execution was poor.
Yes, it certainly was. We made many mistakes, and some of them were howlers. Not least Falau, Foley and Kerevi's ballet-on-LSD that resulted in Jonathon Joseph's gift try. Gah. That's schoolboy stuff.
Add England's tenacity and fine 'wolf pack' defence to our poor discipline, poor goal kicking and poor execution and we have a test loss.
But:
We don’t need to make wholesale changes to fix problems that don't exist.
And Michael Cheika won't. He'll replace Pocock with Palu, McCalman or Gill. Each of those players will do a job for him. He might swap Lilo in for Kerevi, purely because that's what he would have done had Lilo been more available in the run-up to Suncorp. He might juggle the order of precedence in the front row, because he can.
We certainly don't need to replace a failing game plan. Based on the run of the play at Suncorp, we should be all over this England team. An in-form Wallaby outfit should convert 73% of possession and 76% of territory in the second half of a test match into a solid win. We should have done so, and on last year's form, we would have.
Therefore we have to get in form, and fast. That's the real moral of the story.
Of course, long-term Wallaby tragics will nod sagely and say, this is how we start every year. And it's true. This year, instead of stumbling to an unconvincing first-up win against a tier-2 team, we came up against a good England side on the rise, and we lost.
But I don't think we'll lose again on Saturday.
The bottom line is that we lost. That's a bitter pill, especially after the momentous win in the World Cup encounter. Most of us were expecting more of the same: if not a big win, then at least some early-season progress towards the big advantage line we drew that day.
Alas, it wasn't to be. We got beat, and we deserved to lose. Nothing should be taken from the Poms.
But why did we lose? A lot is being written on the Internet, and some of it is people reaching into the well-worn grab-bag of easy answers to that old question. Beaten at the breakdown. Beaten in the scrum. The usual reasons we lose to the Poms.
The real answer is both simpler and more complex.
We got beaten in the scrums.
We certainly did. As Gagger's excellent analysis shows on the front page, Dan Cole and the England scrum did a number on us.
Sure, a lot of it was borderline illegal. So what? They scrummed beautifully. Sure, Romain Poite was complicit. But that's how it goes when a team scrums beautifully.
And sure, they got Scott Sio yellow carded. That's why they're called the dark arts, and not the obvious arts.
Does that mean we should be changing our front row? No. We could change the order of precedence, since we have the luxury of being able to do that, but the right answer is to respond in Melbourne with an improved performance. We don't suddenly have a bad front row, or a bad scrum. And Mario Ledesma's not suddenly a numpty. This is something we can expect to fix by Saturday.
We got beaten at the breakdown.
No, that simply isn't true. We won 94% of our rucks compared to England’s 88%. We conceded 12 turnovers to their 11. But, crucially, we won 73% of possession in the second half. And an avalanche of it was quick ball.
We don't need to start messing deeply with our forward selections to overcome this imaginary disadvantage. As Cheika said, more of the same.
We failed to convert our possession advantage into points.
That's both true and false. We scored four tries. If we'd won, people would've been saying how we'd successfully converted our possession advantage into points.
All things considered, given the big change of Lilo for Horne, our attack was fine. We mounted many sweeping attacks. England were continually stretched. And, at the end of the day, we crossed the line four times. That's pretty good for a fiercely-contested test. It's the same as we did on the famous day at Twickenham last year.
What we did fail to do was convert enough of our tries into seven-pointers.
Our discipline was poor.
Damn right. Now we're getting into why we did lose the game.
It's very hard to overcome a 15-8 penalty count, especially when Owen Farrell is in such excellent kicking form. Our discipline was awful. In my opinion, it's the main reason we lost.
Foley's goal kicking was poor.
Yes, absolutely. He has to do better than that, or we have to come up with a different kicking solution. Goal kickers, to their credit and debit, play a crucial role in winning and losing matches, and Foley just didn't step up on Saturday.
Our execution was poor.
Yes, it certainly was. We made many mistakes, and some of them were howlers. Not least Falau, Foley and Kerevi's ballet-on-LSD that resulted in Jonathon Joseph's gift try. Gah. That's schoolboy stuff.
Add England's tenacity and fine 'wolf pack' defence to our poor discipline, poor goal kicking and poor execution and we have a test loss.
But:
We don’t need to make wholesale changes to fix problems that don't exist.
And Michael Cheika won't. He'll replace Pocock with Palu, McCalman or Gill. Each of those players will do a job for him. He might swap Lilo in for Kerevi, purely because that's what he would have done had Lilo been more available in the run-up to Suncorp. He might juggle the order of precedence in the front row, because he can.
We certainly don't need to replace a failing game plan. Based on the run of the play at Suncorp, we should be all over this England team. An in-form Wallaby outfit should convert 73% of possession and 76% of territory in the second half of a test match into a solid win. We should have done so, and on last year's form, we would have.
Therefore we have to get in form, and fast. That's the real moral of the story.
Of course, long-term Wallaby tragics will nod sagely and say, this is how we start every year. And it's true. This year, instead of stumbling to an unconvincing first-up win against a tier-2 team, we came up against a good England side on the rise, and we lost.
But I don't think we'll lose again on Saturday.
Tex
Greg Davis (50)
Groucho
Greg Davis (50)
Nathan Grey if it's from the sideline?
Inside Shoulder
Nathan Sharpe (72)
hammertimethere
Trevor Allan (34)
Surely it has to be
1. Sio
2. Moore
3. Kepu
4. Horwill or Carter
5. Arnold
6. Fardy
7. Hooper
8. McCalman
9. Phipps
10. Foley
11. Horne
12. Lilo
13. TK
14. DHP
15. Folau
16. TPN
17. Slipper
18. Holmes
19. Skelton
20. Gill
21. Frisby
22. To'omua
23. Kerevi
The only contentious decision is Horwill vs Carter and I think there isn't a clear winner either way. Both call and jump in lineouts competently but not as good as simmo (though Horwill has the recent experience dealing with the Saracens boys Kruis and Itoje in that space). Horwill possibly has been recognised as stronger scrummager but Carter is very used to packing with Arnold, Moore and Sio in a strong brums scrum this season. Both can be relied on to tackle their hearts out. Both carry ok but not great (carter's poor hands and Horwills lack of speed are issues).
I think it would make good sense for us to have a bruiser on the bench, my preference would be to use Skelton in this role rather than Palu so we can include Gill's on ball presence on the bench while not needing to continue with the 6/2 bench. That said I think it's unlikely so we probably will see Palu or McMahon on the bench with Mumm there as well.
1. Sio
2. Moore
3. Kepu
4. Horwill or Carter
5. Arnold
6. Fardy
7. Hooper
8. McCalman
9. Phipps
10. Foley
11. Horne
12. Lilo
13. TK
14. DHP
15. Folau
16. TPN
17. Slipper
18. Holmes
19. Skelton
20. Gill
21. Frisby
22. To'omua
23. Kerevi
The only contentious decision is Horwill vs Carter and I think there isn't a clear winner either way. Both call and jump in lineouts competently but not as good as simmo (though Horwill has the recent experience dealing with the Saracens boys Kruis and Itoje in that space). Horwill possibly has been recognised as stronger scrummager but Carter is very used to packing with Arnold, Moore and Sio in a strong brums scrum this season. Both can be relied on to tackle their hearts out. Both carry ok but not great (carter's poor hands and Horwills lack of speed are issues).
I think it would make good sense for us to have a bruiser on the bench, my preference would be to use Skelton in this role rather than Palu so we can include Gill's on ball presence on the bench while not needing to continue with the 6/2 bench. That said I think it's unlikely so we probably will see Palu or McMahon on the bench with Mumm there as well.
Does anyone know if Gill is actually in Melbourne with the squad?
Edit: Liam Gill is definitely in Melbourne with the squad.
Edit: Liam Gill is definitely in Melbourne with the squad.
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