England vs New Zealand - minute-by-minute

[FKAS]

Splendid comprehensive explanation, thanks.

I speak as a hooker who regularly gets the yips myself, so screwing up lineouts is a specialist subject from experience!

Puja

How much credit would you give the NZ coaches? After all, it is George and Itoje working with SB - not exactly a novice crew.

Well the NZ coaches went with Parker at 6 and really attacked our lineout. Was quite interesting to see how often he suckered them into committing numbers by feigning a rolling maul and then spinning it out to the backline to play off Lawrence. Having three lock sized jumpers did allow them to go after us though.

[Puja]

Splendid comprehensive explanation, thanks.

I speak as a hooker who regularly gets the yips myself, so screwing up lineouts is a specialist subject from experience!

Puja

How much credit would you give the NZ coaches? After all, it is George and Itoje working with SB - not exactly a novice crew.

Hard to say - a lot of this is done on the pitch on the fly. There's gonna be video analysis and preparations pre-game of "they often pull this move, so watch out for it", but it's a game of chess between the attacking lineout caller and the defenders and some of it is just reaction time. The one that they pinched that I marked down as good defence was Newell pulling an unbelievable read and reaction as the lifter - could have been because he recognised it as a move England pull from video analysis and was prepared, could've been just experience and skill.

I have to say that I don't actually rate Itoje very highly as a lineout caller. He's not terrible, but I don't think he's got the natural skill and mindset of being able to outthink the defenders that someone like Kruis had - it's a learned skill for him, rather than something that he's actually good at. He only took over calling any lineouts after Kruis retired and it's noticeable, to me, that we make more bad calls and bad decisions in the lineout when he is the only senior lineout player. I don't actually know if Chessum calls the lineout when they are both playing (or if Lawes was in charge when he was around), or if it's always Maro all the way through, but if it is the latter, then Chessum at least has the experience and leadership to stick his oar in and I think we make noticeably better calls when he is on the pitch.

Not everyone's required to be the best at everything and overall I'd rather have Maro playing and accept slightly lower quality lineout management than not have him on the pitch, but if we want top performance, we ideally want to have a different player in charge of the calls, or at least another head in the brain trust who can help him on the pitch. The problem is that Martin/CCS are not lineout callers - I don't know whether Coles manages Saints' lineout at all? If he does, then he may be able to give more input (or more heavily weighted input) once he feels more confident and established as an England player?

It's possible I'm maligning Maro here, but it's the impression that I have.

Puja

[Stom]

Firstly, well done Puja, was a good read as always.

Now onto the game...

I love Alex Mitchell. He just gets the ball away perfectly, and I think he's the best attacking 9 we've had for a while. BUT...did he complete a single tackle? Jeez, he just falls off them all. Really needs to improve there, at least be a speed bump, but he's not even that right now.

I thought the pack did well, I loved the impact of the bench, and Ford was superb.

NZ just seemed completely out of ideas. It wasn't like a game against them before, where you always thought they were in it. Even when we were losing, it just seemed like they were getting all the calls, and that it would even out. And it did.

A note on that. The officiating was frankly not up to it. Not good enough in any way shape or form. Mistakes, wrong calls, and a game that lacked flow. And he seemed to ref in phases, giving the benefit of the doubt to the team on top. And not mildly. Just poor.