England vs New Zealand - Saturday

[Mellsblue]

NZ changed their bind there.

[Stom]

That was frankly ridiculous from Gardner.

[Mellsblue]

Late hit on Furbank as well?

[Mellsblue]

That was frankly ridiculous from Gardner.

Play on and then go back. Great refereeing.

[Which Tyler]

I can see why no penalty try, there's 1 defender covering the 3 attackers.
But surely a yellow

[Which Tyler]

Did anyone spot which England player was injured?


We've used all our backs on the bench

[Stom]

We’ve stopped playing and it’s costing us. Again

[Mellsblue]

There’s no I in team but there is in Ioane.

[Which Tyler]

Yup, a definite sense of inevitability.

ETA, and the inevitable happens

[Mellsblue]

Ffs

[Stom]

Yeah, we screwed this up badly. It was our game to lose and Scant Bedclothes threw it away with the timing of the subs

[Stom]

I was just about to post angrily about Gardner missing that, but then he came back

[Which Tyler]

Well, TMO hauled his arse out of the fire

[Mellsblue]

Genius from the Kiwi player. Knew he was going off for the head contact so threw himself on his sword.

[Which Tyler]

Of course we're taking the kick 15m further forward

[Mellsblue]

High tackle on Ford

[Mellsblue]

Terrible pass from Randall. Shit 2 mins from him tbh.

[Epaminondas Pules]

Bench made a huge difference in the wrong direction. And we stopped playing! Bring Randall on and totally negate his game with the tactics! Terrible game management from the coaches. We just shat ourselves. But to be fair they were far superior largely, certainly ball in hand.

[Epaminondas Pules]

Also thought Jamie George was ropey. Lineout a mess.

[Puja]

Pedant would point out that New Zealand were cheating like bastards at that last scrum - the 18 was boring so hard that he was like me on the Politics board - or that Angus Gardener was looking to obviate any controversy over 20 minute red cards by declaring any and all head contact legal, but we managed to not be quite good enough all match and realistically deserved what we got.

Am just very depressed and flattened after that. Third match in a row where it was in our hands and we managed to throw it away.

Puja

[fivepointer]

Ultimately we werent good enough. Didnt create enough in attack, barely made a break and didnt get into scoring positions regularly.
Some good bits and some good individual performances but overall we were second best.
The subs made a largely negative impact. Our scrum got worse which proved key. Ford had an appearance to forget.

[Oakboy]

SB has questions to answer. His suspect bench lost us that match.

SA will murder that 23 should he pick it again.

[Stom]

I feel like we were the better team, but that NZ had the better individual moments.

Gardner was crap, but I don't think he was unfairly crap.

I'm sorry to say that, as much as I like him, I just feel like Furbank isn't quite good enough for this level. He just makes mistakes constantly. The first try, the knock on, some positioning errors. He needs to be on it all the time.

Also felt that Earl is just not good enough in contact to continue to be our 8. He just gets stopped dead way too often. And that no arms tackle was sheer stupidity.

Itoje is an absolute mountain. Probably my MoM, was immense.

This loss is all on the coaching team. The tactics for the final quarter were all wrong. Trying to hang on to an eight point lead when we've shown that NZ can easily slide through for a try was stupid.

The lack of impact for the subs felt less about the subs themselves and more about the change in tactics. BCurry was effective, I thought. But we were hamstrung by our sudden decision to not play any rugby. If we decide to play with intensity, we need to keep it up a bit longer, imo, otherwise we just let the other side regroup.

It's no good going hard early if we don't build a lead...only to take our foot off later and allow the opposition to get into the game.

In this one, we never built a convincing lead, and our decision to take our foot off the gas was the wrong one.

[Stom]

SB has questions to answer. His suspect bench lost us that match.

SA will murder that 23 should he pick it again.

Wasn't the players' fault, imo.

[Epaminondas Pules]

I don’t think we were better at all. We were energetic and hassled then well but they looked massively more dangerous than us. Our lineout was wobbly. Scrum ok. Attack sketchy. Take the intercept away and we’ve likely lost by 10+