Oakboy wrote: ↑Tue Sep 26, 2023 10:51 am
All fair enough. Out of interest, at this point (I realise it is not 'on the day'), which countries are better teams? Ireland, SA and NZ? Wales? Scotland? How about Fiji, on the day?
At this stage, having posted that ugly wins are OK, I don't know how to measure honourable defeat looking at SB's future. Might we always feel that we could have played better no matter which team beats us? Performance v result!
Generally very subjective. Sometimes a lesser team just clicks and has one of those days where they deserve the win against a "better" team - I'd say that they're better "on the day", even if that day is only going to happen once in every 4 or 5 replays of the same match and same circumstances.
If you want an objective measure - I guess if the result swaps position in the rankings, then that'd count, but it's not really what I mean by the phrase.
I can't currently think of an England match in the last few years where we couldn't have played better; whether we won or lost. Playing at your absolute peak, no real room for improvement is a pretty rare thing in sport. Off the top of my head, 2019SF is the last time England actually achieved that.
Elsewise, it's all about my probable feelings on the matter, circumstances on the day, and leading up to it will also affect all of the above in ways I can't predict in advance.
As it stands, we have failed to perform well, and... despite the victories, I'm ready to call for his head if he doesn't turn things around. It's probably too late for him to win me over (short term) based on performance, but he may yet based on results.