I thought it was a strange game – I didn’t think it was of great quality. England was the better team and therefore probably deserved their win, but their 14 points in the second half should never have been allowed. I thought that referee and his assistants were way off the pace.
Had they officiated accurately I believe that England may not have scored those 14 points, although we’ll never know. They played better than we did and could have constructed other opportunities to score; but you can only talk about what we did see.
Pretty much every part of our game was ordinary. Some of it was OK – if you were being kind. We did nothing that had any class about it.
A lot of our defence was ordinary. ALL of our attack was ordinary. We have no collective attack whatsoever – it relies on the brilliance of a particular player at the time. That shouldn’t be sneezed at, but when you also have collective brilliance then you have something to go on with.
Our scrum was hard done by, but it wasn’t good. When you’ve got an ex-fullback commentating about our back row leaving the scrum early you know something is wrong.
But Mako Vunipola must have a special licence allowing him to never scrum straight, as per the British Lions tour. Even when he was at 90 degrees he won penalties. Chris Robshaw was in the front row striking the ball in the tunnel right in front of the referee and not being penalized!
How the assistant referee didn’t see that Mike Brown had his foot in touch when he took Matt Toomua’s kick I’ll never know – he was looking straight at it. If they had a royal commission into it he would find it hard to escape censure. He had BOTH FEET well on the line in fact he had his toes OVER the line.
And the television match official in saying there wasn’t ‘enough’ obstruction was just wrong. Stephen Moore was blocked – maybe even intentionally by Dylan Hartley. He had to change his angle to run into Stephen Moore – this is what left the gap. Has he never made a tackle before and seen what being impeded means? The try should never have been awarded.
Our best performances were satisfactory but our No.9 and 10 were poor again. Will was just plain poor again. Quade ran across field so much that at times when he delivered the ball he was outside the inside centre. At other times he was so deep it was absolutely impossible to attack.
At one time at the end of the game when we needed to score a try and England had four men in the defensive line and then a winger. Quade was so deep when he threw a huge, long pass that the four guys just ran across and tackled the winger.
You could say our two centres, wingers and fullback were satisfactory, but those inside them wouldn’t let you know.
Israel Folau is touted as our savior and he may well be, but he wasn’t as good as Mike Brown.
You can say James Horwill played much better, but that’s better than abominable last week. Sitaleki Timani – if you said he was OK you’d be doing him a favour. Our props were both not up to standard. Our back rowers were probably OK but not outstanding – at least they had some enthusiasm and urgency about them.
Our whole game just seem decidedly ordinary to me. England’s catch and pass skills are infinitely better than ours. The entire catch and pass skills in our game is missing.
Our support play – as it has been for a few years now – is dreadful. The damning statistic of the game is that England got five offloads and we got none. Add to that another five to ten short passes on the tackle line and they outnumbered us hugely in this facet of the game.
Our catch skills, and our pass skills separately are also poor. The number of times we had some opportunity and the ball was delivered half behind a man or to his shoulder was astounding.
Even though we all know Israel Folau is a talent, someone should tell him he can pass the ball occasionally. There were at least two occasions when the winger outside him was in the clear.
As for the breakdown – our cleanout is still not really a cleanout. Remember when Will Genia came around the side and pinched a ball that was out, but he was ruled offside? What happened was he was behind the offside line, but when the England cleanout came through, they drove the offside line backwards, making him offside. We just go to the ball and to the ground. Whereas the definition of a ruck engagement is to leave the ball where it is and drive the opposition back.
The reason we don’t – or can’t – do it is we don’t have the men there. If you watch the tape you’ll see five to six England forwards always within a five- to six-metre circle. If they need to disperse they can.
But we still go to the next play rather than the one that’s taking place at the moment. I don’t think we took a ball out of an England tackle – that speaks for itself.
Add to that the five offloads to nil, I’d say that the England breakaways can catch and pass more fluidly then our midfield. This has nothing to do with the players, it has to do with us making it a focus. Seeing Robshaw cruising down the left wing and transferring the ball as easy as pie – no problem at all. He’s not seen as a great ball player – just a big guy who puts himself about, and yet I didn’t see us do this once!
As I said before this wasn’t a great quality game, England won it with the help of some super ordinary officiating. That said, they were the ones running at the defence and causing defenders to miss tackles. They weren’t great though and I don’t think they’ll have the All Blacks, South Africa or even Wales quaking in their boots.
Ewen has made a couple of great and brave decisions. He dropped the ‘world’s best’ (not currently in the top five) halfback; an obvious but brave decision. He then made the obvious but brave decision to demote the captain. They’re two positive steps.
However, I see no evidence of improvement in our attack or defence. We’ve got a long way to go and to get there we need to head in the right direction. I’m not seeing any evidence of that right now.
