Six Nations 2017
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It's a shame, France was trying to play positive for ages, but they were forced to go penalties and time-wasting, and as soon as they did, they won.
How will they play next time?With brute force against Ireland. Keep th sick bay open for the next round.
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I've had the calculator all afternoon trying to figure out where the 7% comes from and I figured it out. Eddie thinks we have one better player than England.
1/15 is approx. 7%
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I've had the calculator all afternoon trying to figure out where the 7% comes from and I figured it out. Eddie thinks we have one better player than England.
1/15 is approx. 7%
He sactually might have a valid point
The bit he was refering to was time it takes players to get up & be ready again after making a tackle. Said that when he started England were far to slow & they are now a lot better, but still 7% slower than the ABs.
I wouldn't put it past them to have starts saying exactly how long each player takes to get up & it being 7% behind the AB's team number. Unlike most of his numbers, that one actually has backup
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Yeah, stuff cut that transcript to make him sound like Rain Man. They left out the bit that made it clear he was talking about a specific metric.
@Margin_Walker said in Six Nations 2017:
Yeah, stuff cut that transcript to make him sound like Rain Man. They left out the bit that made it clear he was talking about a specific metric.
Do you have a link to a less cut version?
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@Margin_Walker said in Six Nations 2017:
Yeah, stuff cut that transcript to make him sound like Rain Man. They left out the bit that made it clear he was talking about a specific metric.
Do you have a link to a less cut version?
From the Times -
A stunning victory thanks to stat that obsesses Jones
Wales 16 England 21 Credit: MARC ASPLAND/THE TIMES
Daly sprinted 29 metres at 20.8 miles an hour to score the winning try Owen Slot, Chief Rugby Correspondent | 1202 words
While Eddie Jones continues to serve up cliff-hangers with such breathless, pinch-yourself plotlines, he has the public feeding from the palms of his hands. Yet he does not get everything he wants. Long before the fireworks and flares had been lit at the epic encounter in the Principality Stadium on an extraordinary Saturday evening, Jones challenged his starting XV: go out and win this one.
The previous week, they had leant on the “finishers” from the bench to come in and clean up the mess the starters had left behind; this time, Jones said, he wanted the starters to have it all tidied up before the finishers came on. So, no, he does not always get what he wants. He did not want it left until there were four minutes to go. When England played their “get-out-of-jail card”, as he described it, their execution was exquisite.
The pass from Owen Farrell, putting Elliot Daly on a line around the poor Alex Cuthbert, was immaculate. Yet this was not how he envisioned it. Nevertheless, he has a team hurtling towards a second grand slam under him, in Ireland in five weeks’ time. And following the comeback in Cardiff he has further evidence of one of their stand-out qualities: their resilience. When nerves are shredding, his England remain extraordinarily cool — yes, even in that stadium. They are not impervious; it was not a team of automatons out there on the Cardiff turf. After half-time Mike Brown mis-hit a clearance kick straight into touch; Jonathan Joseph spiralled a long pass way over Jack Nowell’s head.
This was not a steady ship; the mark of resilience is to ride the waves and balance it out. After the game, pulses still racing, Jones was asked: Was that all about character? “Yes,” he replied. “And grit. And belief. And we’re fit. How many games out of our last 15 wins have we won in the last 20 minutes?” The answer to his question is seven. In some of the seven they were already ahead but in need of a cushion. In all four games against Australia last year they outscored them in the crucial closing periods. In Jones’s two games against France they have won in the last 10 minutes. Even against Fiji they were only five points ahead with a quarter to go (they won by 13). And now they plucked this one from the jaws of the dragon.
This is a team built in the spirit of Farrell: never accept defeat. There is science in this, as well as spirit. One of the key measurements of a player’s fitness that Jones employs is speed off the floor after a collision. More than three seconds is unacceptable. When he started a year ago, he says, “it was terrible. Some of the blokes had a cup of tea and a scone with jam and cream before they got off the ground.” Now? They are hugely improved but “still not where we need to be”. That is because they do not yet meet the eternal benchmark by which he measures every aspect of performance: the All Blacks. “We are 7 per cent below New Zealand,” he explained.
He still expects to catch them. The methodology is fascinating — and it comes via José Mourinho, one of Jones’s heroes, and a Spanish scientist in Qatar. The Spanish sports scientist is Alberto Mendez-Villanueva and he works at the Aspire Academy, an elite, bountifully funded centre of excellence in Qatar. Jones heard that Mendez- Villanueva had worked with the Portuguese; he has been described as “Mourinho’s best-kept secret”. The secret is now out. Jones visited him while he was the Japan coach and learnt about his theory of “tactical periodisation”. “Every day we train a specific parameter of the game,” Jones explains. “We have one day where we have a physical session and do more contacts than we would do in a game. Then we have a fast day where we try to train for at least 60 per cent of the session above game speed. We don’t do any extra fitness. It’s all done within those training sessions. Because of that we’ve improved our fitness enormously.” The players are not allowed to drop off between England campaigns.
Six weeks before they go into each England camp, they are given specific sessions to work on so they are equal to the demands of the periodisation training. Jones certainly swears by it and, as he stood in the bowels of the Principality Stadium on Saturday evening, he said that he believed he had just seen its benefits proven again. He acknowledged that Wales had done enough to beat England, just as France had the week before.No, his starters had not won the game; they had not fulfilled their instructions, though that was largely because Wales had just played their best game since the 2015 World Cup. Wales dominated the middle hour of the game, yet the accuracy of their attack was matched by that of the England defence. That was why this unfolded into a rare epic. England, outgunned by the Wales back row, had to hang in and wait. Only because of this resilience, this self-belief and their fitness were they able to do so. And, also, only because of a wayward clearance kick by Jonathan Davies. It was Davies’s kick that went to George Ford, Ford passed to Farrell and the Daly denouement was played out. When New Zealand are behind late in a Test match you know what is coming.
There is little that will cheer Jones more than the fact that you can now say that about England too. “When you have got a good team,” Jones said, smiling, “sometimes you get beaten but you don’t get beaten. That’s when you know you have got a good team. Today we were never going to get beaten.” Pick your way through that quote. Jones wants England to rival the All Blacks; it tells you they have just got a little closer. Itoje in the back row?
Not when it came to the scrums Maro Itoje was named at blind-side flanker and he wore the No 6 jersey in Cardiff — but Eddie Jones sprang a tactical surprise on Wales by switching him back to the second row in the scrum. Itoje packed down alongside Joe Launchbury, with Courtney Lawes on the blind side. “George Kruis is the best scrummaging lock in England so we’re missing him [through injury] and Maro’s probably the next best,” Jones said. “I thought we were silly not using his scrummaging as that was going to be important. You want your best people scrummaging and there’s a massive difference in people’s ability to scrum. Courtney can defend at six.” -
Wales announce team to face Scotland
Wales: Leigh Halfpenny; George North, Jonathan Davies, Scott Williams, Liam Williams; Dan Biggar, Rhys Webb; Rob Evans, Ken Owens, Tomas Francis; Jake Ball, Alun Wyn Jones; Sam Warburton, Justin Tipuric, Ross Moriarty.
Reps: Scott Baldwin, Nicky Smith, Samson Lee, Luke Charteris, Taulupe Faletau, Gareth Davies, Sam Davies, Jamie Roberts.
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Toby Falatau is going to have to have a huge game off the bench to get past Moriaty. And the longer he is on the bench the more interesting the Lions gets, tho' obviously Gatland will take him. You'd bet the house on Vunipola & Toby being the Lions 8's but not playing makes it a bit more open
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Toby Falatau is going to have to have a huge game off the bench to get past Moriaty. And the longer he is on the bench the more interesting the Lions gets, tho' obviously Gatland will take him. You'd bet the house on Vunipola & Toby being the Lions 8's but not playing makes it a bit more open
@gollum I was thinking the same, Gatland is a huge Faletau fan and I can not see him missing the plane except in the event of a dire injury. No 8 is now a position of strength for the Lions, with Vunipola and Faletau the likely contenders but waiting in the wings are Heaslip who is having a resurgence of form, Hughes who is beginning to show what he's made of and Moriarty tearing it up for Wales.
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Jonathan Jospeh out of the match day squad altogether for England. Didn't see that coming. He must be England's top try scorer over the last year as well as the defence co-ordinator. Big call from Eddie, albeit against Italy.
Centre picks are Daly, Slade and Teo with Farrell being a 10/12. Apparently they have been training with a 10. 12,13 combo of Farrell, Teo and Daly.
Hmmmm
