Rob’s 6 Nations Round Up Weekend 4

Finally, a weekend of some semi compelling Rugby! Huzzah!

One. A question I often struggle with was at the fore this weekend. Namely, how do you judge two performances relative to each other in the same game. England were good but for an hour Wales were as abject a team as we’ve seen this year. Does this dimisnish from England’s performance, or enhance it? How much were Wales’ failings caused by English pressure or their own malaise? I often err on the side of the negative — it’s very easy to play against a poor team, but England were exceptional in several facets of play and I don’t want to undermine their performance too much.

That said as good as Ireland were, the result almost needs an asterisk next to it. Italy were a disaster, a complete regression to the bad days of their early efforts in this competition.

Two. Wales’ first sixty minutes. I feel like this was the product of something behind the scenes we don’t know about. It’s one thing when it’s not your day, your opponents are in the ascendency. But when there was such lethargy and general low physicality and energy levels for a Wales team playing England there are serious questions to be asked. I mean what kind of Welshman doesn’t get himself up for at the very least trying to smash a couple of English lads?

Warrenball is built on a platform of aggressive defence, but the Welsh line cede yards to England’s attacks with startling frequency,with the even casual carries from the home team seeing yards rack up. I actually can’t remember the last time I saw Wales so passive in the tackle.

Wales missed more tackles in the first half than in the entire tournament, which was devastating when coupled with their poor discipline. Joubert is not a ref I rate, but he was clear from the off how he would adjudicate the game on the floor, and Wales were so lazy they concedes a series of sloppy penalties that killed them. Pinged four times for not rolling away should not be happening to a test team.

It permeated throughout the whole forward pack. Regularly we saw players just leaning on to mauls, the aerial camera at Twickenham regularly showing Dan Lydiate contributing nary an inkling of a push to the scrum. Fascinating I thought that Gatland removed Wyn-Jones one of his prime lieutenants. Clearly something is amiss.

Three. “What we need is a really flukey try, against the run of play, and I think we can get a respectable score”. This was how far confidence had sunk amongst the Welshies I watched game with, and yet it came to pass. Biggar’s charge down try wasn’t the turning point (I’d say it was the 2 avoidable penalties Wales conceded afterwards which gave England an uncatchable lead) but it certainly sparked Wales into life.

It was a thrilling end to a middling game once Wales finally cut loose and started playing a bit more heads up, running the ball and, y’know, rucking. Now I would say England’s substitutions helped a great deal. Tuilagi, who was clearly ring rusty, coming on Ford seemed to cause panic in England’s midfield defensive line — 2 of Wales tries came from a hitherto shackled Jonathan Davies suddenly finding space to get North free out wide. However facts are — unless you are New Zealand, you will not beat a team if you give them a 19 point headstart. It was quite fun watching England shit their pants though. While they’ve held off Ireland and Wales, they will need to get their love of having a massive flake out of their system before playing better teams (i.e Southern Hemisphere ones).

Four. English forward aggression. England champions, and deservedly so. Deserving in sport is always a concept I struggle with — the team that deserves to win is the one that scores the most points. But England have been the best team, the most consistent and should probably win the grand slam in Paris against an abject French team. The media went into overdrive — it took 3 seconds for Inverdale to start talking about England being champions post Scotland (could we have like maybe a single minute savouring an enjoyable test match we’ve just witnessed?) and The Guardian’s headline for Scotland’s result was “ENGLAND WIN”. The narrative has been overheating — Itoje is now the best player ever and England are probably going to win the World Cup.

The truth is perhaps a little more prosaic, but England’s recent success has been built on a platform of strong and hard breakdown performance. Regular readers are probably bored to the back teeth of me going on about rucking, but it is basically the most important part of the entire game. For whatever reason, Jones hasn’t altered his backrow, which confuses me slightly, mainly because Haskell has been their weak link the entire tournament. However, England’s competition on the deck has been excellent, which has countered their weakness against ground hog 7s.

Against Ireland I mentioned the strength of their counter rucking, but against Wales, England were in complete control. They were ferocious on their own ball, sending red shirts flying, which gave them twofold advantage. First, they had no end of quick ball to attack with and secondly the breakdown became a magnet for Welsh forwards who were so far off England’s aggression levels they over committed constantly in an effort to be competitive.

This was exacerbated further in England’s defence, where their technique in jackaling was *on point emoji*. Interestingly it was rarely the backrow, but Kruis, Itoje and Cole the main protagonists, getting in great body positions and Kruis getting a turnover that Pocock himself would be proud of. Though I would say that Robshaw is worthy of praise and has had a good tournament. Funnily enough if you play players in their correct positions, they tend to play well. That’s the kind of rocket science Eddie Jones is bringing to the table.

Five. Maro Itoje. Yeah as much as I’m a hipster and I don’t like being told what is good or not, he’s pretty good isn’t he. And seems a nice bloke too — there was a scuffle involving Robshaw at one point and he stepped in to calm it down and tell Robshaw to leave it. That’s pretty big character for such a young man.

Six. Cuthbert.I actually just feel sorry for him at this point. 4 missed tackles, shocking in defence and attack. It actually made me miserable watching him.

Seven. Sad to have to talk about discipline issue, but wanted to explore the Francis incident, which I still haven’t made my mind up on. On the one hand, I thought it was pretty soft refereeing by Joubert who allowed himself to be talked into a decision by the TMO. His first reaction was “Was that it?” — 2 minutes later he’s telling Francis he’ll probably be cited. And if I was a Wales fan I’d be super disappointed that England’s repeated infringements and yellow card would muted by a stray hand honking a nose. Amplified of course by the TMO having one of the most snivelling voices going, giving it a real air of the snitch kid at school. “Please sir! The bigger boys are smoking in the toilet!”

However, however minimal and briefly and accidentally, he did make contact with Cole’s eye and the laws are pretty pretty clear on that one, so a citing has been forthcoming. Interesting to see Haskell has also had a formal warning. He really is a brain dead player.

It was further though terrifically disappointing to hear of Joe Marler trying to mock Samson Lee for his gypsy heritage. Travellers and gypsy communities are amongst the most marginalised groups in the UK, and I would say the last community in the country where people can openly be ostentatiously racist against. An apology doesn’t really cut it for me — it’s pure bullshit to be throwing stuff like that around on the pitch, and Marler should take a long hard look at himself #bleedingheartliberal.

Eight. I called Scotland beating France, in probably the only thing I’ve gotten right all tournament (I was ridiculed in my work team meeting today as I am 5th of 7 in our office fantasy rugby tournament — I had to stop sending the blog round to avoid further mirth at my alleged “expert status”). I really enjoyed the game, and was rooting for Scotland all the way. Seeing Hogg cry at the end man, I’ve got something in my throat *croaking noise*.

England, Ireland and Scotland showed that if you control the breakdown, they you control the game, Much like England, the Scottish tight five were just brutal. They made France compete for everything. This meant France has terrific success with their offloading game, which Scotland looked to have little answer to, but when they reverted to boshing it up, Scotland relished it.

In attack, the accuracy of their rucking made all the difference. Scotland have struggled when going into the opposition 22, but the speed and power of their rucking gave them clean ball that meant they didn’t over think their attacks and ran into space — the Hogg try being case in point.

I’d highlight for particular praise the two Scottish centres Dunbar and Taylor who were at the heart of everything good for Scotland. Their strike running constantly got Scotland on the front foot, over the gainline and gave them the platform to play off. They created the first try, and had great thinking for the second. Lovely stuff all round.

Nine. Hogg’s assist for Visser’s try. Oooooof. O’Driscoll esque. He’s had a great tournament, and is really starting to deliver consistently to his potential.

Ten. Speaking of the woof factor, Ireland’s fourth try. Woof wooof woof. It felt like a real pressure reliever for all the criticism of the team for being too conservative. Other than that, not really that much to report. Sean Cronin even fell asleep mid game (stolen with no regret from Fergus McFadden’s twitter)

Eleven. A brief note to say how much I enjoyed Glen Jackson’s refereeing of the Scotland France game. Really intuitive, made good calls, player focused and consistent. Big thumbs up here