Team for England 5th August

[Sandydragon]

WALES Tackles, Missed Tackles, Passes, Runs, Metres Run
L HalfpennyFB 4 0 3 7 12
L Rees-ZammitW 3 0 1 7 41
G NorthC 8 0 0 8 28
M LlewellynC 7 1 5 4 4
R DyerW 5 5 0 4 23
S CostelowFH 5 4 14 8 4
G DaviesSH 5 2 44 6 24
C DomachowskiP 13 0 2 8 9
R EliasH 0 0 1 1 0
K AssirattiP 9 0 2 0 0
D JenkinsL 15 0 4 5 1
W RowlandsL 8 0 1 6 10
C TshiunzaFL 13 2 3 1 5
J MorganFL 25 2 7 10 42
A WainwrightN8 10 1 4 12 40
E DeeR 15 0 5 10 15
N SmithR 4 0 0 2 0
H ThomasR 4 1 3 3 3
B CarterR 5 0 1 5 4
T PlumtreeR 4 0 0 2 4
T WilliamsR 2 0 31 4 22
D BiggarR 2 1 7 2 4
M GradyR 2 0 0 4 26

Generally Wales defended well - 90% tackle success rate. Morgan was a maniac - 25 made, 2 missed, Jenkins and Dee both made 15, missed 0. North was good for a back 8 made, 0 missed. Dyer had a bad defensive game 5 made, 5 missed, Costelow also - 5 made, 4 missed. Morgan, Wainwright and LRZ made about 40 metres each, North also a decent 28. Morgan was deservedly the MOTM even without that exceptional run/try assist.

For me Llewellyn didn't take his chance - not bad, just anonymous. I'm not sold on Tshiunza either, am interested to see Rhys Davies and Plumtree given more time. Lydiate probably deserves some time too. Dyer doesn't impress me - hope Adams is in form. Costelow was a bit shaky but promising. LRZ and North are nailed on.

I hope the successful lineouts - and lineout steals (I didn't know we did that!) - were not a fluke. It was great to see us outperforming England there.

I wish we had more players who were good under high ball - most of our 'chasers' were much more comfortable waiting for Steward to catch it then tackle him. Looking forward to Sanjay at FB (although Halfpenny was solid as ever).

Anyway, a great start to the warmups. Difficult to know what it means though because this England isn't in a very good place.

When England surround the player catchnig the ball with a wall of defenders in makes it quite difficult, one kick off Dyaer was waving his arms at the ref as there was no way through to the ball, unheeded of course, this is exactly what England did in the 6 Nations which also went unseen by the officials, there was also at least one instance of obstruction with the player catching and then running into the back of his own blocking player.

I know this is a warm up game but the reffing was poor for both teams.

You don’t have to move out of the way, but if a number of players are basically building a wall then that’s not right.

[Son of Mathonwy]

Much better second half. Sorted out the scrum and made it a weapon. Shame that third try was disallowed.

I'm glad the result didn't hinge on that. A real 50-50, ie the refs were actually split 50-50 on it. I thought home advantage should give us these decisions! Tough call though, the ball was slipping but there was no frame where a gap was visible between fingers and ball. It should have been given in the interest of rewarding brilliance IMO .

[Which Tyler]

They need to ref this more strictly. Commentators were actually calling them 'blockers', which IMO says things have gone too far. Preferably they need to tighten the laws up - say within 5m of the point where the ball lands, require players not competing for the ball to move out of the way of opposition players who are competing for it.

They also need to be tighter over players not giving up the ball when penalised (etc). There was one point on Saturday where the Irish were penalised in breakdown on the Italian try line. The Irish 9, disgusted that the ref could do this to them - and in Dublin too! - just walks off with the ball. They know what they're doing, it's easy to see and easy to deal with, it just needs to be stamped out.

On the one hand, every team does this. On the other, it's ruining one of the contests for the ball; and is f***ing annoying, whichever team is doing it - I fully agree that it's something WR needs tog et a gip on, and find a way of outlawing.

I also agree on that too - it's just niggle to annoy and slow things down. IMO, it's a professional foul (even if under the heading of "ungentlemanly conduct") and I wouldn't complain if a ref gave a yellow card.

[Sandydragon]

Much better second half. Sorted out the scrum and made it a weapon. Shame that third try was disallowed.

I'm glad the result didn't hinge on that. A real 50-50, ie the refs were actually split 50-50 on it. I thought home advantage should give us these decisions! Tough call though, the ball was slipping but there was no frame where a gap was visible between fingers and ball. It should have been given in the interest of rewarding brilliance IMO .

This is where tech doesn’t help. That try would have been awarded pre TMO. I agree that it wasn’t clear and provided the ref is consistent then I can live with the decision. If he had said that there was no evidence to not award a try and was giving benefit of the doubt to the attacking side then that’s fair provided both sides benefit.

[Puja]

WALES Tackles, Missed Tackles, Passes, Runs, Metres Run
L HalfpennyFB 4 0 3 7 12
L Rees-ZammitW 3 0 1 7 41
G NorthC 8 0 0 8 28
M LlewellynC 7 1 5 4 4
R DyerW 5 5 0 4 23
S CostelowFH 5 4 14 8 4
G DaviesSH 5 2 44 6 24
C DomachowskiP 13 0 2 8 9
R EliasH 0 0 1 1 0
K AssirattiP 9 0 2 0 0
D JenkinsL 15 0 4 5 1
W RowlandsL 8 0 1 6 10
C TshiunzaFL 13 2 3 1 5
J MorganFL 25 2 7 10 42
A WainwrightN8 10 1 4 12 40
E DeeR 15 0 5 10 15
N SmithR 4 0 0 2 0
H ThomasR 4 1 3 3 3
B CarterR 5 0 1 5 4
T PlumtreeR 4 0 0 2 4
T WilliamsR 2 0 31 4 22
D BiggarR 2 1 7 2 4
M GradyR 2 0 0 4 26

Generally Wales defended well - 90% tackle success rate. Morgan was a maniac - 25 made, 2 missed, Jenkins and Dee both made 15, missed 0. North was good for a back 8 made, 0 missed. Dyer had a bad defensive game 5 made, 5 missed, Costelow also - 5 made, 4 missed. Morgan, Wainwright and LRZ made about 40 metres each, North also a decent 28. Morgan was deservedly the MOTM even without that exceptional run/try assist.

For me Llewellyn didn't take his chance - not bad, just anonymous. I'm not sold on Tshiunza either, am interested to see Rhys Davies and Plumtree given more time. Lydiate probably deserves some time too. Dyer doesn't impress me - hope Adams is in form. Costelow was a bit shaky but promising. LRZ and North are nailed on.

I hope the successful lineouts - and lineout steals (I didn't know we did that!) - were not a fluke. It was great to see us outperforming England there.

I wish we had more players who were good under high ball - most of our 'chasers' were much more comfortable waiting for Steward to catch it then tackle him. Looking forward to Sanjay at FB (although Halfpenny was solid as ever).

Anyway, a great start to the warmups. Difficult to know what it means though because this England isn't in a very good place.

When England surround the player catchnig the ball with a wall of defenders in makes it quite difficult, one kick off Dyaer was waving his arms at the ref as there was no way through to the ball, unheeded of course, this is exactly what England did in the 6 Nations which also went unseen by the officials, there was also at least one instance of obstruction with the player catching and then running into the back of his own blocking player.

I know this is a warm up game but the reffing was poor for both teams.

You don’t have to move out of the way, but if a number of players are basically building a wall then that’s not right.

Agreed - both teams were at it on the weekend, in some cases going full Spartan on it. The only time someone was penalised was the one time where it was marginal.

In theory, I'd be in favour of a complete reversal of the law - you're ahead of the ball-carrier and offside if you're ahead of the person gathering the kick and it's your responsibility to clear the area - however, I'd be worried about the knock-one effects. Sides already box-kick and hope far too much for my liking - what happens if it suddenly becomes significantly easier to compete?

I'm still in favour of outright outlawing the box-kick. No kicks within 5m of a breakdown - make players pass backwards to the 10 and accept the loss of territory/additional defensive pressure/chance to change their mind and do *anything* else/chance to fumble if they want to boot the leather off it. At the moment, what we have is an ersatz set piece where the game stops, the scrum-half puts the ball into play and the game restarts with a catching competition 20m downfield.

Puja

[Sandydragon]

Outlawing the bloody caterpillar would be a start.

[Sourdust]

This is where tech doesn’t help. That try would have been awarded pre TMO. I agree that it wasn’t clear and provided the ref is consistent then I can live with the decision. If he had said that there was no evidence to not award a try and was giving benefit of the doubt to the attacking side then that’s fair provided both sides benefit.

To me this is where it becomes like the offside VAR decisions in soccer. This isn't improving the game or making anything fairer - it's just actively looking for ways to disallow tries.

The try was properly created, and expertly finished. The defender was fairly beaten. Yes, the ball bobbled fractionally so that a centimetre of separation could arguably be discerned in a single frame of slo-mo footage. So what? You watch that footage in real-time 100 times, you'll see 100 tries. No-one is being cheated by that try being awarded. No-one can claim it's unfair. There's probably more separation than that in 50% of all maul tries. Denying that superb piece of skill with a forensic technicality is negative, pointless, and stupid.

All that said, 27-9 would have been a very flattering scoreline and would have probably have gotten us far too excited... so maybe there's a bright side!

[Numbers]

This is where tech doesn’t help. That try would have been awarded pre TMO. I agree that it wasn’t clear and provided the ref is consistent then I can live with the decision. If he had said that there was no evidence to not award a try and was giving benefit of the doubt to the attacking side then that’s fair provided both sides benefit.

To me this is where it becomes like the offside VAR decisions in soccer. This isn't improving the game or making anything fairer - it's just actively looking for ways to disallow tries.

The try was properly created, and expertly finished. The defender was fairly beaten. Yes, the ball bobbled fractionally so that a centimetre of separation could arguably be discerned in a single frame of slo-mo footage. So what? You watch that footage in real-time 100 times, you'll see 100 tries. No-one is being cheated by that try being awarded. No-one can claim it's unfair. There's probably more separation than that in 50% of all maul tries. Denying that superb piece of skill with a forensic technicality is negative, pointless, and stupid.

All that said, 27-9 would have been a very flattering scoreline and would have probably have gotten us far too excited... so maybe there's a bright side!

I had no issue with the ref disallowing it as I thought he had lost it but the try given in the Scotland game was much more clearly an infringement and they gave that one..

[Sourdust]

I had no issue with the ref disallowing it as I thought he had lost it but the try given in the Scotland game was much more clearly an infringement and they gave that one..

Yeah no issue with Berry in particular; if he's SURE he sees separation, then fair enough. It's more of a general complaint. I'm not convinced we should be analysing these incidents forensically in the first place.

When there's a point of genuine contention; such as, if the defender claims to have grounded the ball first, or there's a possible fumble from which the scorer clearly gained an advantage, then by all means let's use the tech to get it right. But no-one on the England side was complaining about that score, even after the replays. Steward was beaten, and he knew it. The English defence had been breached. That the surface of the ball PROBABLY broke contact with LRZ's skin for 1/25 of a second had no material impact whatsoever on the play. It didn't make scoring easier for LRZ; it didn't offer (or deny) Steward an opportunity to intercede; it wasn't even perceptible to the consciousness of either party. As has been opined often before; with this level of deconstruction, you could probably disallow 50% of the tries that have ever been scored!

[Sandydragon]

I had no issue with the ref disallowing it as I thought he had lost it but the try given in the Scotland game was much more clearly an infringement and they gave that one..

Yeah no issue with Berry in particular; if he's SURE he sees separation, then fair enough. It's more of a general complaint. I'm not convinced we should be analysing these incidents forensically in the first place.

When there's a point of genuine contention; such as, if the defender claims to have grounded the ball first, or there's a possible fumble from which the scorer clearly gained an advantage, then by all means let's use the tech to get it right. But no-one on the England side was complaining about that score, even after the replays. Steward was beaten, and he knew it. The English defence had been breached. That the surface of the ball PROBABLY broke contact with LRZ's skin for 1/25 of a second had no material impact whatsoever on the play. It didn't make scoring easier for LRZ; it didn't offer (or deny) Steward an opportunity to intercede; it wasn't even perceptible to the consciousness of either party. As has been opined often before; with this level of deconstruction, you could probably disallow 50% of the tries that have ever been scored!

Exactly. Something will always be fractionally wrong.

On the other hand, I was questioning during the game if LRZ’s bulking up might have affected his speed. Very glad to be wrong on that one.

[Son of Mathonwy]

I think we need to improve technology to just to see LRZ, he moves so fecking fast.

[Sourdust]

I think we need to improve technology to just to see LRZ, he moves so fecking fast.

Indeed.

I just pray we can make the most (or at least, somewhere near the most!) of him in the 3-4 years that that will continue to be true.

Not that I'm not looking foward to LRZ the world-class defensive fullback, of course - just let that be in 2029, please!