Mobility of forwards in pre-professional and professional eras

[Spiffy]

If given a significant amount of time to adjust to all the areas the modern game has moved forwards I’m sure the 2003 team would be very good.

If they were simply transported 18 years into the future for a one off game they’d get steamrolled by pretty much every current tier 1 team. There’s only so much you can do up against much bigger, faster, better conditioned and powerful athletes. You can’t cope with that for 80 minutes. Kicking games and things like back field coverage & aerial skills are on a whole other level than they were back then, and they’d get absolutely munched up by modern blitz defences.

I don’t accept the premis that current England team are faster or better conditioned than the 2003 vintage - exhibit A : Dallagio v Billy V Exhibit B: Wilkinson v Farell Exhibit C: Dawson v Youngs Exhibit D: Lewsey v Daly ....I could go on I’d go further and say that English rugby and possibly world rugby has declined in quality over the intervening period between 2003 and now

The problem you have is reminiscent of Trump phoning Georgia asking for just 12k more votes because he won, which is the data doesn't remotely back you up. More if you were to speak to any of Dallaglio, Wilkinson, Dawson or Lewsey they're not going to back up the view you have. You might prefer the product that saw attack have more time going back 15 to 20 years, tbh I'd have a lot of sympathy for that view, but sport conditioning has moved forwards, it's a trend we see all the time and not just in rugby

Certainly conditioning has moved on. Usually, comparisons of teams from different eras allows for fitness differences . So the rider on this comparison is how the 2003 team would compare with the present one, given access to the advantages of modern training, diet etc. They would be a lot fitter and probably a few Kg heavier. In this case I'd just fancy the 2003 vintage over the current lot, with the key advantage at half back.

[morepork]

I'd love to get a pre-knee Michael Jones injury into a modern set up. And a Richard Lowe, just to see how quickly the dirty bastard would get sent off.

[jngf]

I'd love to get a pre-knee Michael Jones injury into a modern set up. And a Richard Lowe, just to see how quickly the dirty bastard would get sent off.

Imo Michael Jones vintage 1987 would own any back rower operating in the professional era including Mccaw, George Smith, Pocock and Richard Hill. He was that good.
Kronfeld was a great successor and Sam Cane is very ordinary indeed in this company and though a lot of England fans won’t like to hear this - that All Blacks side we beat so comprehensively in Japan in 2019 weren’t that great compared to a lot of their predecessors in all fairness.

[morepork]

I'd love to get a pre-knee Michael Jones injury into a modern set up. And a Richard Lowe, just to see how quickly the dirty bastard would get sent off.

Imo Michael Jones vintage 1987 would own any back rower operating in the professional era including Mccaw, George Smith, Pocock and Richard Hill. He was that good.
Kronfeld was a great successor and Sam Cane is very ordinary indeed in this company and though a lot of England fans won’t like to hear this - that All Blacks side we beat so comprehensively in Japan in 2019 weren’t that great compared to their predecessors.

Cane gout outplayed by Curry.

[Digby]

If put up against the likes of Jones and McCaw then yes Cane does look somewhat ordinary. But compared to normal test players Cane is still bloody good.

These days Michael Jones might not even be a back rower, might not have transferred well into the centres, but at least does seem to have overcome his aversion to working on a day rugby is played

[jngf]

I'd love to get a pre-knee Michael Jones injury into a modern set up. And a Richard Lowe, just to see how quickly the dirty bastard would get sent off.

Imo Michael Jones vintage 1987 would own any back rower operating in the professional era including Mccaw, George Smith, Pocock and Richard Hill. He was that good.
Kronfeld was a great successor and Sam Cane is very ordinary indeed in this company and though a lot of England fans won’t like to hear this - that All Blacks side we beat so comprehensively in Japan in 2019 weren’t that great compared to their predecessors.

Cane gout outplayed by Curry.

This is my point

[jngf]

If put up against the likes of Jones and McCaw then yes Cane does look somewhat ordinary. But compared to normal test players Cane is still bloody good.

These days Michael Jones might not even be a back rower, might not have transferred well into the centres, but at least does seem to have overcome his aversion to working on a day rugby is played

If a backrower like this was obliged to play centre in the modern game imo that’s an indictment of how stodgy modern flanker play has got (with a helping hand from Burt and more recently Eddie )

[Digby]

If put up against the likes of Jones and McCaw then yes Cane does look somewhat ordinary. But compared to normal test players Cane is still bloody good.

These days Michael Jones might not even be a back rower, might not have transferred well into the centres, but at least does seem to have overcome his aversion to working on a day rugby is played

If a backrower like this was obliged to play centre in the modern game imo that’s an indictment of how stodgy modern flanker play has got (with a helping hand from Burt and more recently Eddie )

Stodgy is an odd descriptor when really we're talking about power, but it sort of suffices. And you can still be interesting, George Smith was still into his mid to late 30s, perhaps it also says something that you need to be as good as Smith to be viable and more interesting. if you're looking around at who's responsible I don't think I'd be assigning blame to Burt and Eddie, certainly no more so than every other coach.

The driver is we have a game which is now less about contact and more about collisions, and then that the biggest indicator as to who wins a match comes from who will win those collisions. If you want to make the sort of player who'll win a collision less a reliable marker of who'll win a game then some (significant) changes are needed to how the game is reffed, indeed you may need continual revolution to stay ahead of a power game.