Australia v England - 1st Test
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Curry out of the tour due to concussion. My apologies to Eddie as I assumed a tactical substitution was made as there were no mention of an injury by the comms.
This brings in a selection conundrum for Eddie. England were more competitive at the breakdown with Curry there. Ludlam had a good game. Lawes seems cemented at 6. However Lawes, Ludlam and Vunipola make for a glacial back row.
Here's hoping for Underhill, Ludlam and Vunipola to start, Lawes in the boiler room with Itoje and then Chessum and Willis on the bench.
Will. Not. Happen.
@Catogrande said in Australia v England - 1st Test:
Here's hoping for Underhill
Whatever happened to him? He was awesome in 2018 and then seemed to fall out of favour and seems to have had only sporadic appearances.
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@Catogrande said in Australia v England - 1st Test:
Here's hoping for Underhill
Whatever happened to him? He was awesome in 2018 and then seemed to fall out of favour and seems to have had only sporadic appearances.
@Victor-Meldrew said in Australia v England - 1st Test:
@Catogrande said in Australia v England - 1st Test:
Here's hoping for Underhill
Whatever happened to him? He was awesome in 2018 and then seemed to fall out of favour and seems to have had only sporadic appearances.
Multiple injuries and is playing (and not really standing out) in a bottom of the league club side.
He's the kind of player that could pull something out of the hat if selected, but he's on the tour based on credit in the bank imo.
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For what it's worth, I'd go with something like this:
1.Genge 2.George 3.Stuart 4.Itoje 5.Chessum 6.Lawes 7.Willis 8.Vunipola
9.Care 10.Smith 11.May 12.Farrell 13.Marchant 14.Arundell 15.Steward16.LCD 17.Vunipola 18.Heyes 19.Hill 20.Ludlum 21.JvP 22.Porter 23.Nowell
Lots of calls for Lawes at lock, but I'd be surprised if Eddie did go for it. He just doesn't play there any more. Back row is on the slow side, but it's slightly offset by having a more mobile guy like Chessum at lock.
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@Bovidae Only two press releases from WR about players having to attend an independent disciplinary hearing, a Romanian player and Swain, both for receiving a red card.
@Stargazer said in Australia v England - 1st Test:
@Bovidae Only two press releases from WR about players having to attend an independent disciplinary hearing, a Romanian player and Swain, both for receiving a red card.
Hill only did two things worth citing, so why even bother?
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@Catogrande said in Australia v England - 1st Test:
Here's hoping for Underhill
Whatever happened to him? He was awesome in 2018 and then seemed to fall out of favour and seems to have had only sporadic appearances.
As
@Margin_Walker says, injuries, playing for Bath, plus Curry’s good form and Lawes nailed on at 6. But all that aside, he’d be in the 23 regardless and has to start on Saturday. Otherwise hooper will have a field day. -
@Stargazer said in Australia v England - 1st Test:
@Bovidae Only two press releases from WR about players having to attend an independent disciplinary hearing, a Romanian player and Swain, both for receiving a red card.
Hill only did two things worth citing, so why even bother?
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For what it's worth, I'd go with something like this:
1.Genge 2.George 3.Stuart 4.Itoje 5.Chessum 6.Lawes 7.Willis 8.Vunipola
9.Care 10.Smith 11.May 12.Farrell 13.Marchant 14.Arundell 15.Steward16.LCD 17.Vunipola 18.Heyes 19.Hill 20.Ludlum 21.JvP 22.Porter 23.Nowell
Lots of calls for Lawes at lock, but I'd be surprised if Eddie did go for it. He just doesn't play there any more. Back row is on the slow side, but it's slightly offset by having a more mobile guy like Chessum at lock.
@Margin_Walker said in Australia v England - 1st Test:
For what it's worth, I'd go with something like this:
1.Genge 2.George 3.Stuart 4.Itoje 5.Chessum 6.Lawes 7.Willis 8.Vunipola
9.Care 10.Smith 11.May 12.Farrell 13.Marchant 14.Arundell 15.Steward16.LCD 17.Vunipola 18.Heyes 19.Hill 20.Ludlum 21.JvP 22.Porter 23.Nowell
Lots of calls for Lawes at lock, but I'd be surprised if Eddie did go for it. He just doesn't play there any more. Back row is on the slow side, but it's slightly offset by having a more mobile guy like Chessum at lock.
Can Ludlam not play 8? I find it hard to believe Vunipola has anything to offer on the field.
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@Margin_Walker said in Australia v England - 1st Test:
For what it's worth, I'd go with something like this:
1.Genge 2.George 3.Stuart 4.Itoje 5.Chessum 6.Lawes 7.Willis 8.Vunipola
9.Care 10.Smith 11.May 12.Farrell 13.Marchant 14.Arundell 15.Steward16.LCD 17.Vunipola 18.Heyes 19.Hill 20.Ludlum 21.JvP 22.Porter 23.Nowell
Lots of calls for Lawes at lock, but I'd be surprised if Eddie did go for it. He just doesn't play there any more. Back row is on the slow side, but it's slightly offset by having a more mobile guy like Chessum at lock.
Can Ludlam not play 8? I find it hard to believe Vunipola has anything to offer on the field.
@Bones said in Australia v England - 1st Test:
@Margin_Walker said in Australia v England - 1st Test:
For what it's worth, I'd go with something like this:
1.Genge 2.George 3.Stuart 4.Itoje 5.Chessum 6.Lawes 7.Willis 8.Vunipola
9.Care 10.Smith 11.May 12.Farrell 13.Marchant 14.Arundell 15.Steward16.LCD 17.Vunipola 18.Heyes 19.Hill 20.Ludlum 21.JvP 22.Porter 23.Nowell
Lots of calls for Lawes at lock, but I'd be surprised if Eddie did go for it. He just doesn't play there any more. Back row is on the slow side, but it's slightly offset by having a more mobile guy like Chessum at lock.
Can Ludlam not play 8? I find it hard to believe Vunipola has anything to offer on the field.
Vunipola's actually been going very well domestically. Had a great game in a losing cause in the Prem final the other week. With Dombrandt and Simmonds injured, it's one of the easier selections really at the moment.
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@Bones said in Australia v England - 1st Test:
@Margin_Walker said in Australia v England - 1st Test:
For what it's worth, I'd go with something like this:
1.Genge 2.George 3.Stuart 4.Itoje 5.Chessum 6.Lawes 7.Willis 8.Vunipola
9.Care 10.Smith 11.May 12.Farrell 13.Marchant 14.Arundell 15.Steward16.LCD 17.Vunipola 18.Heyes 19.Hill 20.Ludlum 21.JvP 22.Porter 23.Nowell
Lots of calls for Lawes at lock, but I'd be surprised if Eddie did go for it. He just doesn't play there any more. Back row is on the slow side, but it's slightly offset by having a more mobile guy like Chessum at lock.
Can Ludlam not play 8? I find it hard to believe Vunipola has anything to offer on the field.
Vunipola's actually been going very well domestically. Had a great game in a losing cause in the Prem final the other week. With Dombrandt and Simmonds injured, it's one of the easier selections really at the moment.
@Margin_Walker he seemed pretty average from what I saw of Saturday's game and I don't remember him doing much in quite a while - his size is now counting against him in terms of speed and agility.
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@mariner4life said in Australia v England - 1st Test:
@MajorRage said in Australia v England - 1st Test:
Eddie has done a cracking job making the team far less than the sum of their parts.
They really do have some cracking players.
But god they are awful.
this is standard Eddie Jones though isn't it? i feel like you hire him for 3 years maximum.
Yep. He's great at lifting a team up then working out a game plan for them to specialise on which yields strong results.
I think his downfall is not moving on quick enough from said game plan. I think he's one of the great rugby brains, but just doesn't seem to have the ability to adapt a team more than once.
@MajorRage Jones strikes me as a great coach but not a great manager/selector.
England’s current struggles also seem to highlight the critical importance of assistant coaches and the rest of the support staff. No coincidence that England’s battling when you look at the outstanding technical coaches that have moved on.
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@Margin_Walker he seemed pretty average from what I saw of Saturday's game and I don't remember him doing much in quite a while - his size is now counting against him in terms of speed and agility.
Fair comment, but most of the England team looked average at the weekend. He wasn't out on his own there. Strangely he's actually shown a bit more agility and speed this season than he has at times in the past when he's been a bit heavier. Here's him looking fairly sharp a few weeks back
https://twitter.com/bencoles_/status/1542840184563290113
He's always going to be a 'tight' 8 who won't be hanging out in the wide channels too much, but at the moment ha's probably the best option we have, given the injuries. Ludlum's a handy utility back row, but he's not really in the conversation as far as starting test match 8s go. Callum Chick was used in the Baa Baas game and he's military medium imo.
Tom Willis (Jack Willis' younger brother) was the other form 8 in the league this season. Certainly if you were only looking at stats (metres made, defenders beaten etc), but Eddie doesn't seem to fancy him.
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@mariner4life said in Australia v England - 1st Test:
@MajorRage said in Australia v England - 1st Test:
Eddie has done a cracking job making the team far less than the sum of their parts.
They really do have some cracking players.
But god they are awful.
this is standard Eddie Jones though isn't it? i feel like you hire him for 3 years maximum.
Yep. Good old "Shelf Life" Jones.
Everyone here remembers the RWC2003 semi-final. Nobody thinks about his almost religious determination to ignore or even devolve our scrum.
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I couldn’t give a flying fuck if you all think it was a bad game.
We haven’t beaten the Poms since 2015. More than that, we haven’t gotten close to beating the Pons since 2015.
We lost Quade in the warmup, then lost Banks, AAA and Swain inside the first half.
And we FUCKEN WON. By rolling straight over the top of them.
So it might have been ugly but I’m grinning from ear to ear today, no matter what all of you miserable Kiwi bastards think.
10/10 game. A classic for the ages.
@barbarian enjoy it. That was a great win. The kind of gutsy, nuts on the chopping block performance that can spur a team to greater heights.
So its time for Eddie to pull finger and squash it cold this week. Far prefer Hooper bravely battling away in a hopeless cause than this nonsense of inspiring his team to find inner resolve they did not know they had.
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@MajorRage Jones strikes me as a great coach but not a great manager/selector.
England’s current struggles also seem to highlight the critical importance of assistant coaches and the rest of the support staff. No coincidence that England’s battling when you look at the outstanding technical coaches that have moved on.
Yep, one constant in Eddie's tenure is that no one can stand working for him for too long. There's been a huge turnover in the rest of the coaching team and you get the feeling they aren't managing to recruit the best candidates because of it.
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Has anyone asked that squealy kid from reddit to update his hot take on England winning the RWC after that performance?
@antipodean said in Australia v England - 1st Test:
Has anyone asked that squealy kid from reddit to update his hot take on England winning the RWC after that performance?
Don't do reddit. Ploise exploin ?
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@antipodean said in Australia v England - 1st Test:
Has anyone asked that squealy kid from reddit to update his hot take on England winning the RWC after that performance?
Assume you mean Squidge? The Welsh guy. I quite like his analysis, he certainly makes me look at a game or a strategy with a different view. I also think he has a point about how Eddie is trying to fundamentally change England’s attacking strategy. If it turns out to be effective AND If our boys can implement it with sufficient accuracy and consistency then we’ll be in a much better place.
If.
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@Catogrande thank you Rudyard
I don’t make cakes.
