Australia Tour Squad

[Epaminondas Pules]

Mitchells problem last season and early this was consistency and then trying to do too much himself. Ran quite a few blind alleys and negated his team mates. That seems to have improved greatly in the latter part of the season.

Don’t get the fitness thing at all.

[twitchy]

I do remember the bt commentary team discussing his fitness during a game. It's not just a rumour.

[fivepointer]

I recall Healey talking about it during a game. Now Healey does come out with some nonsense but as a former SH his views on Mitchell's apparent fitness shortfall carry some weight. Mitchell has looked a bit knackered in games, but i accept Saints play at a high tempo and that possibly any SH might find it a challenge.
The fitness issue seems to me to be about the only one I can think of why he isnt already capped and isnt going to Australia.
Is there any other reason he's being overlooked?

[Banyans]

Maybe Eddie feels he has picked his scrum halves In Youngs, Randall, Quirke and Robson and doesn't think there is time to get anyone else into the systems and mindset he wants as a coach before the WC. He's obviously picked JVP for potential and maybe he thinks JVP has a higher ceiling etc...

[Timbo]

It was the Quins game where Healy had a good dig at Mitchell’s fitness. In fairness Mitchell did drop off significantly late in the first half and after about 55 minutes. Outside of that game I don’t recall anyone really mentioning it though. Mitchell and Saints did play the first 30 minutes of the Quins game at an absurd pace, so could have just been a one off.

Also worth mentioning that other teams who play at pace don’t have their scrum halfs at every ruck. I’m thinking JGP at Leinster and especially Dupont. Watch Dupont and you can often have sequences of 2-3 rucks on the bounce that he’s nowhere near. So maybe the issue at Saints is that they’re expecting too much of Mitchell in a high tempo team and they don’t have other players with the skills to step in at 9 if needed for a ruck or two.

[Peej]

So of the league game, plus playoff loss to Tigers, Mitchell started 23 of 27 games, missing 4 altogether. He played the full 80 minutes 6 times, abd only played less than 60 minutes twice (both big wins). By the end of the season he may just have been tired, especially given last season he was splitting time much more.

Interestingly the only scrum-half to do more minutes than him was Care.

That plus his minutes per game suggests that Saints just really didn't trust James (or at the very least thought he was a significant downgrade on even a tired Mitchell), which seems bizarre as I quite like him as a player.

Puja

agreed on that.

Or that Saints - his club that accumulates all the data - don't see a problem with keeping him on that long and don't think his performance level drops off until later and then makes a change when required?

[SDHoneymonster]

It was the Quins game where Healy had a good dig at Mitchell’s fitness. In fairness Mitchell did drop off significantly late in the first half and after about 55 minutes. Outside of that game I don’t recall anyone really mentioning it though. Mitchell and Saints did play the first 30 minutes of the Quins game at an absurd pace, so could have just been a one off.

Also worth mentioning that other teams who play at pace don’t have their scrum halfs at every ruck. I’m thinking JGP at Leinster and especially Dupont. Watch Dupont and you can often have sequences of 2-3 rucks on the bounce that he’s nowhere near. So maybe the issue at Saints is that they’re expecting too much of Mitchell in a high tempo team and they don’t have other players with the skills to step in at 9 if needed for a ruck or two.

France, for all their flair, kick a lot too, so they don't actually build as many rucks a game as a side like Saints or Quins do.

[twitchy]

[Mikey Brown]

So May has Covid. Off to a promising start.

[Mikey Brown]

Perhaps a bit off topic, but having read Charlie Morgan's interview with Luther Burrell about 2016, and seeing this video of the 1st test pop up, I thought I'd have a watch back and just watch Burrell. I don't remember really being aware of his mistakes at the time, and you really have to feel for him when you read what it was like to go out in that fashion.



Harrison also seemed to completely disappear as a player after his brief appearance. Good to see Isiekwe has made his way back in after a couple of years. I'd think Collier is too old and experienced for that, but still trying to work out what happened there. Seen several props commenting they didn't think it was anything to do with the scrum, so I guess his GPS stats weren't up to it.

[FKAS]

If May is out or missing training I'd rather hope we'd go with Freeman on the wing and Steward at 15. Accomplishes the same twin fullback aim as they contact swap but also Freeman looks a real talent and if he and Steward can build a partnership in the back three it'll make England a lot stronger going forwards.

Furbank at 15 was a failure in Paris.

[Raggs]

Harrison was completely headless in his test. I suspect if backrow wasn't such a position of strength he may have got back in like isiekwe.

[Mikey Brown]

Harrison was completely headless in his test. I suspect if backrow wasn't such a position of strength he may have got back in like isiekwe.

Yeah I wasn't particularly arguing the case for Harrison's performance. Just found the Collier incident so bizarre and the Burrell article had me thinking about the long-term effects of man-management fuck ups like that. While Jones has made a very vocal point of his long-term planning for England, giving up squad spots/depth for the sake of youngsters/apprentices, it seems odd to practically end careers in that way. Maybe it's just one his mental fortitude tests, and if you fail it I guess you can just fuck off.

“Can I be honest?” he asks. “That had a long-lasting effect on me like people will never, ever understand.”

“Still, to this day, people mention that,” Burrell continues. “It’s seven years later. Jim Mallinder and the guys at Northampton were fantastic. But not one single person from the RFU or England ever reached out to me to see how I was. I dropped off the face of the Earth because I was in a really, really bad place.

“I can remember Jonathan Joseph asking ‘Are you going off?’ Apparently, I was. As I sat on the bench, I could have cried. I was heartbroken. My heart was in my stomach because I knew what was going to follow and how it was going to be portrayed.

“I had no real idea why at that point while I was sat on the bench. And it set me off again, mentally. It was like ‘Wow, the whole of rugby has seen this’. I couldn’t remember whether I’d missed a tackle or not.”

“He said ‘make sure you get around Luther’,” says Burrell, who was told that his prompt removal was due to a poor defensive read. “I was like: ‘I don’t need that. That’s even worse!’ It drew more attention to me. I’m sure he was trying to make sure I was OK, but I wasn’t OK – especially after what I’d come out of over the past 18 months.

Maybe it was just a matter of needing Ford on the field, but not having any contact with a player after a moment like that seems really poor. Just letting them stew on it for years.

Not that anybody cares in the slightest at this point, but just rewatched Burrell's 28 minutes. He is the next man alongside a number of defensive lapses that lead to breaks or tries, but I wouldn't consider him responsible for any of them. Maybe he leaves Mako a touch too much space to cover early on, maybe Watson comes in off his wing because he doesn't trust Burrell coming across, not sure? He gets hooked immediately after being blocked for the Foley non-try, which the ref sees and rules out. Actually thought he did well to navigate round the other runners in that play.

He carries the ball twice I think. Both times makes solid ground, once has Pocock fall on top of him for an England scrum, and the second is retained. Ball doesn't ever really come in his direction other than that. He maybe looks a bit slow around the field, but that surely couldn't have been a surprise to Jones.

Yes, it's another slow day at work today.

[Spiffy]

Never mind Burrell - I still have not figured how Joseph got himself on the wrong side of Eddie Jones, and axed from the England squad. A pretty good all-round 13, I don't recall him doing much wrong, and a lot that was good.

[Danno]

Never mind Burrell - I still have not figured how Joseph got himself on the wrong side of Eddie Jones, and axed from the England squad. A pretty good all-round 13, I don't recall him doing much wrong, and a lot that was good.

Joseph was excellent, but had a combination of injury seasons and (2019) Tuilagi fit seasons, along with lots and lots and lots of 13s, or potential 13s, being called up

[Scrumhead]

Yeah. Initially, Joseph’s absences were injury-related and then he lost his place to Slade. He did come back briefly to play on the wing a couple of times (he did quite well IIRC). I proabably wouldn’t have him in the squad now though.

[32nd Man]

Perhaps a bit off topic, but having read Charlie Morgan's interview with Luther Burrell about 2016, and seeing this video of the 1st test pop up, I thought I'd have a watch back and just watch Burrell. I don't remember really being aware of his mistakes at the time, and you really have to feel for him when you read what it was like to go out in that fashion.



Harrison also seemed to completely disappear as a player after his brief appearance. Good to see Isiekwe has made his way back in after a couple of years. I'd think Collier is too old and experienced for that, but still trying to work out what happened there. Seen several props commenting they didn't think it was anything to do with the scrum, so I guess his GPS stats weren't up to it.

Started watching this back and almost immediately it's shown that we're now at least 6 years into the use of the aimless box kick from good possesion.

For the first Ozzie try it would be incredibly harsh to try to pin on Burrell, unless you're going to say he should have risked going offside to get a jump on his man. By the time the balls out to his guy, he's lined up but Watson (who has already made on try saver) has jumped in in front of him.

2nd try he's slow on the blitz up, though he's got a lot of ground to cover, which creates the dog leg which exposes Farrell (though it could be the latter has gone too fast, but either way, at that point there's a lot of men with space running onto fast ball, so even a perfect alignment may well have been cut open.

It's pretty hilarious just how unsubtle the blocks are for the disallowed try. Three of them all run straight into their defenders miles ahead of the ball.

[FKAS]

First try Burrell jumps out the line and Watson follows. It's a three on two and the Australians just pick the English defenders off easily. There's a carry shortly after that where Burrell carries reasonably well but the move completely does because his ball placement is shockingly bad and Australia spoil. I doubt that endeared him to Eddie so soon after jumping out the line.

Second try he's walking in defence expecting a carry by the forwards. It goes wide to Foley, Burrell is flat footed and gets rounded causing Farrell to bite in and it's try time.

At club level he probably gets away with those things.

[Oakboy]

Logically, yanking a player off early like that should lead to the head coach apologising - either for a selection error or a playing style error.

[Scrumhead]

Yes, but you can’t absolve the players of all responsibility.

I know you want any and every situation to be Eddie Jones’ fault, but that clouds your judgment.

We know how harsh Eddie is in training so I can only assume Burrell had to be playing well all week and then had a bit of a shocker on the day.

I think it’s harsh to blame the coach in that scenario.

I guarantee if Burrell had been left on you’d have said that was wrong too.

I don’t like that there was no communication with him afterwards, but from a playing POV, yanking him was probably the right decision.

[Oakboy]

Well, to be fair, I'd never have picked Burrell in the first place and nor would most RR posters at the time. Based on Jones's judgement only, the guy was picked to start. We can wax eloquent with our opinions but only Jones's judgement is on the line. Either Burrell was good enough in terms of physicality, mental application and skill or he wasn't. Jones decided he was, started him and then decided he wasn't.

[Timbo]

Who is he going to apologise to and what purpose would it serve?

[Banquo]

Who is he going to apologise to and what purpose would it serve?

quite.

[fivepointer]

It is incredibly harsh to take a player off early. After all, the coach picks the team and expects most of them to last the course, or at least stay for most of the game. If the player isnt up to it, its legitimate to ask why was he picked to start with?
The Isiekwe early sub in SA really peeved me. Isiekwe shouldnt have been on that tour, he simply wasnt ready to play international rugby. Jones got that selection badly wrong.

[Banquo]

It is incredibly harsh to take a player off early. After all, the coach picks the team and expects most of them to last the course, or at least stay for most of the game. If the player isnt up to it, its legitimate to ask why was he picked to start with?
The Isiekwe early sub in SA really peeved me. Isiekwe shouldnt have been on that tour, he simply wasnt ready to play international rugby. Jones got that selection badly wrong.

Pro rugby and esp intl rugby is/are harsh. How you respond is what counts, both as coach and player.