Wales -vs- France

[bruce]

Dog 5hite from Wales. France should have won that but only have themselves/trin duc to blame.
Quality of officiating was pretty poor throughout today, with the away team in general getting the rub of the green.

[Sourdust]

Awful stuff. Classic Warrenball & clearly the new exciting way of playing is just PR fluff. Extremely lucky to win that.

Really took the gloss off England finishing 5th.

TBF the situation pretty clearly called for Warrenball.

But that wasn't Warrenball.

To play Warrenball... you need a ball.

[Sandydragon]

Awful stuff. Classic Warrenball & clearly the new exciting way of playing is just PR fluff. Extremely lucky to win that.

Really took the gloss off England finishing 5th.

TBF the situation pretty clearly called for Warrenball.

But that wasn't Warrenball.

To play Warrenball... you need a ball.

And wh n we had the ball, we either kicked it away or lost it in contact.

Just dreadful.

Why do we have one good game each championship? This year started so promisingly against Scotland and it’s been downhill ever since.

[Graigwen]

It was a good win. OK not a great one, but that French side is not bad (apart from T-D).

We actually had a development tournament and learned some things. Considering how we started the tournament with so many players missing it could have been a lot worse.

Ireland were very good and deserved the grand slam.

[Sourdust]

It was bloody horrible to watch, in all honesty.

But you just know if that had been England out there, they'd be getting praise for "finding a way to win" / "winning ugly" etc.

You could argue that we didn't deserve to win, but no-one else seems to care about that when they beat us. And anyway, whatever we deserved, France surely deserved to lose? I still don't fully understand how they managed to blow it, but maybe we had a bit to do with that after all. Maybe a win really IS a win.

[Son of Mathonwy]

That was winning, Gatland style. He said pre-match, essentially we'll defend our way to victory. And he was right. Well, this time. Another time, we'd have (deservedly) lost, only Trinh-Duc prevented that from happening.

As long as Gatland is here he'll revert to type for crunch matches, and this will happen. Sometimes we'll be lucky and edge it, sometimes we won't. Thank goodness the end is in sight.

On a positive note, great result. And, cunningly, by allowing France such a narrow defeat, they remained above England on the table. Nice to see that lovely guy, Eddie, down in 5th place.

[kk67]

Quality of officiating was pretty poor throughout today.

Nope. Opposite.
New laws have been fantastic. We should be particularly proud because Nigel has made the game good fun, safe and playable by everyone. The man is a fecking star , like Berners-Lee.

[Sourdust]

That was winning, Gatland style. He said pre-match, essentially we'll defend our way to victory. And he was right. Well, this time. Another time, we'd have (deservedly) lost, only Trinh-Duc prevented that from happening.

As long as Gatland is here he'll revert to type for crunch matches, and this will happen. Sometimes we'll be lucky and edge it, sometimes we won't. Thank goodness the end is in sight.

On a positive note, great result. And, cunningly, by allowing France such a narrow defeat, they remained above England on the table. Nice to see that lovely guy, Eddie, down in 5th place.

Given that our entire season came down to that result, I don't really have an issue with prioritizing the win at all costs for the one match. What I do have an issue with is that we were very, very lucky to get away with it. Had we dominated France and kicked them to death 21-6, I'd be unreservedly satisfied. The problem is that we were boring AND rubbish (last-ditch defence aside) and never looked like winning, even when we did.

[Son of Mathonwy]

That was winning, Gatland style. He said pre-match, essentially we'll defend our way to victory. And he was right. Well, this time. Another time, we'd have (deservedly) lost, only Trinh-Duc prevented that from happening.

As long as Gatland is here he'll revert to type for crunch matches, and this will happen. Sometimes we'll be lucky and edge it, sometimes we won't. Thank goodness the end is in sight.

On a positive note, great result. And, cunningly, by allowing France such a narrow defeat, they remained above England on the table. Nice to see that lovely guy, Eddie, down in 5th place.

Given that our entire season came down to that result, I don't really have an issue with prioritizing the win at all costs for the one match. What I do have an issue with is that we were very, very lucky to get away with it. Had we dominated France and kicked them to death 21-6, I'd be unreservedly satisfied. The problem is that we were boring AND rubbish (last-ditch defence aside) and never looked like winning, even when we did.

I totally agree. Gatland seems to think reverting to old-style is less risky. But it's not - it's more - we were incredibly lucky to win on Saturday, as we often are in these close games where one slip in our defence spells disaster (and NZ and AUS always find a way through before 80 minutes is up). We need to actually score tries to win and we need positive tactics which will actually achieve this, not fluke it occasionally (eg the last couple of times we beat England at Twickenham, late tries stealing the match).

[Sourdust]

I concur that we do often seem to actually WANT a close scoreline; which might be explicable, if we didn't lose so many matches by single score.

Even against Italy, 14-0 up after about twenty seconds, you just KNEW that we'd grind to a halt the moment Italy put three passes together, and so it proved. Our running game has certainly improved, but it seems our confidence in it has not.

[kk67]

Quality of officiating was pretty poor throughout today.

Nope. Opposite.
New laws have been fantastic. We should be particularly proud because Nigel has made the game good fun, safe and playable by everyone. The man is a fecking star , like Berners-Lee.

Just gonna post this now after a few beers. Feck it.
You are a bunch of tryers,

[Son of Mathonwy]

Quality of officiating was pretty poor throughout today.

Nope. Opposite.
New laws have been fantastic. We should be particularly proud because Nigel has made the game good fun, safe and playable by everyone. The man is a fecking star , like Berners-Lee.

Just gonna post this now after a few beers. Feck it.
You are a bunch of tryers,

Tell us more!

[kk67]

Just between us, and I doubt this is anything of a surprise,... but Nige' has changed the game quite substantially.