Son of Mathonwy wrote: ↑Sat Feb 25, 2023 8:12 pm
Just nowhere near good enough. Absolutely nothing in attack.
Our wingers were the worst, missing 3 each.
Recall Jonah Holmes and Rio Dyer now!
Hey hey, selectively edited quote!
Not saying get rid, just that they missed the most tackles. Obviously LRZ justified his place . . . especially since Gatland has no idea how to make tries happen.
Adams had a quiet day in attack, hardly touching the ball, but it would take quite a few more of those is succession to make me think of dropping him.
Son of Mathonwy wrote: ↑Sat Feb 25, 2023 8:12 pm
Just nowhere near good enough. Absolutely nothing in attack. Most of our points came from a huge error from England (even if I did enjoy that moment quite a bit).
No idea what Gatland is trying to do but he's making the most of the 'blame it on the last guy' period by losing a ton of matches.
Defence seemed better this time but England didn't test us anything like Ireland and Scotland did. Both teams missed 15 tackles.
WALES Successful tackles Missed tackles
L HalfpennyFB 2 1
J AdamsW 5 3
M GradyC 8 0
J HawkinsC 6 1
L Rees-ZammitW 4 3
O WilliamsFH 6 0
T WilliamsSH 3 0
G ThomasP 10 1
K OwensH 9 0
T FrancisP 12 0
A BeardL 15 2
A JonesL 10 0
C TshiunzaFL 15 0
J TipuricFL 17 0
T FaletauN8 10 2
B RobertsR 3 0
R CarréR 6 1
D LewisR 2 1
D JenkinsR 4 0
T ReffellR 3 0
K HardyR 5 0
D BiggarR 6 0
N TompkinsR 6 0
Our wingers were the worst, missing 3 each. Tips the best: 17 made, 0 missed. Grady wasn't the liability I feared (8 made, 0 missed) but didn't make much ground, 16m vs 42 by Hawkins.
I'd like to see Keiran Williams given a shot - he's someone who can carry. But much more, I'd like Gatland to remember how to coach.
Our wingers missed tackles chasing kickoffs so that didn’t help their tally.
Son of Mathonwy wrote: ↑Sat Feb 25, 2023 11:53 pm
We've scored only 27 points in total so far. That's the lowest score after 3 matches since 1993.
I think we're down to 10 in the world rankings, 1 below Japan.
Gatland is storming it.
I texted a mate during the game and said that this is starting to feel like the 90's again. Then, it felt like other teams were playing a different sport to us, such was the gap in quality at times,whereas now we look like playing the same sport but just a lot worse.
This has that 90s feel to things. But I don’t think it’s quite that bad. We are on the wrong side of the score line in every game but when you look at what’s going wrong it’s all fixable. In the 90s there was just no talent left and everyone had left for league. Now there is talent coming through, but it feels like we are struggling to do the basics well. Why can’t we secure quick ball? Regional problem as well as an international one.
Yesterday we persisted in an awful kicking strategy. Why? Did we not have the confidence to go through go the phases? Admittedly we got turned over and slowed down a lot, if we can fix that breakdown problem perhaps we can get some pace back into our game and pose other teams problems.
Sandydragon wrote: ↑Sun Feb 26, 2023 9:53 am
This has that 90s feel to things. But I don’t think it’s quite that bad. We are on the wrong side of the score line in every game but when you look at what’s going wrong it’s all fixable. In the 90s there was just no talent left and everyone had left for league. Now there is talent coming through, but it feels like we are struggling to do the basics well. Why can’t we secure quick ball? Regional problem as well as an international one.
Yesterday we persisted in an awful kicking strategy. Why? Did we not have the confidence to go through go the phases? Admittedly we got turned over and slowed down a lot, if we can fix that breakdown problem perhaps we can get some pace back into our game and pose other teams problems.
Imo Gatland not selecting Reffell to start was a glaring error you needed an out and out fetcher for that game.
Agreed. Reffell to start and either Tips or Morgan off the bench. A bit like picking Biggar to come off the bench when the game opens up. Seems the wrong way around to me.
Sandydragon wrote: ↑Sun Feb 26, 2023 9:53 am
This has that 90s feel to things. But I don’t think it’s quite that bad. We are on the wrong side of the score line in every game but when you look at what’s going wrong it’s all fixable. In the 90s there was just no talent left and everyone had left for league. Now there is talent coming through, but it feels like we are struggling to do the basics well. Why can’t we secure quick ball? Regional problem as well as an international one.
Yesterday we persisted in an awful kicking strategy. Why? Did we not have the confidence to go through go the phases? Admittedly we got turned over and slowed down a lot, if we can fix that breakdown problem perhaps we can get some pace back into our game and pose other teams problems.
Imo Gatland not selecting Reffell to start was a glaring error you needed an out and out fetcher for that game.
That sounds good in theory but did anything change when Reffell came on? Not that I could see. Arguably that could be because we had two sevens on the pitch then but he started alongside Tshiunza vs Scotland and that wasn't obviously effective either. Reffell is brilliant for Leicester but perhaps Wales don't know how to use him.
There is a case that we should have had Sanjay (ie Sanjay and Halfpenny) somewhere in the back line to compete with Steward (who should not have been a surprise to Wales - he was a nightmare for the Ospreys in January, totally dominating the high ball). But for the most part, selection is not making much difference. Owen Williams didn't make much impression but nothing changed when Biggar came on. Jenkins - neither here nor there. The props, similar. Of the subs, only Tompkins was noticeable.
Sandydragon wrote: ↑Sat Feb 25, 2023 10:40 pm
On a positive note, our centre partnership wasn’t a total disaster in defence and had a few reasonable moments in attack.
We are starting from a bad place and must suffer on the way to redemption.
Our centres are just being exposed to international standard rugby. It might have been a lot worse. I agree with sandydragons comments.
Son of Mathonwy wrote: ↑Sun Feb 26, 2023 11:11 am
.... but did anything change when Reffell came on? Not that I could see. Arguably that could be because we had two sevens on the pitch then but he started alongside Tshiunza vs Scotland and that wasn't obviously effective either. Reffell is brilliant for Leicester but perhaps Wales don't know how to use him.
I think there is some truth in these comments. We have the back row resources but are still working out how to use them. I thought Tshiunza was good but our slowness to clear out was very poor. Ball or Moriarty on the pitch would have made a difference, but then the whole balance of the team would have altered. What certainly did not work yesterday was thinking loads of tall guys in the lineout would solve all or problems there. How long until Dewi Lake gets over his knee injry?
Son of Mathonwy wrote: ↑Sun Feb 26, 2023 11:11 am
.... but did anything change when Reffell came on? Not that I could see. Arguably that could be because we had two sevens on the pitch then but he started alongside Tshiunza vs Scotland and that wasn't obviously effective either. Reffell is brilliant for Leicester but perhaps Wales don't know how to use him.
I think there is some truth in these comments. We have the back row resources but are still working out how to use them. I thought Tshiunza was good but our slowness to clear out was very poor. Ball or Moriarty on the pitch would have made a difference, but then the whole balance of the team would have altered. What certainly did not work yesterday was thinking loads of tall guys in the lineout would solve all or problems there. How long until Dewi Lake gets over his knee injry?
I can't wait for Lake to return either but I don't think his lineout work is any better than Owen's.
Interesting to see a lot of people taking the Jiffy line of why did we keep kicking it to Steward, well he was playing fullback and so it would be him to field the box kicks, you can't box kick it into midfield, the fact 3 England players were stood in front of him every time he caught it negating any contest for the ball seemed to go unnoticed which I thought was something the refs were supposed to be clamping down on.
We could have kicked cross-field more but to be honest the game plan is what failed us and an inability to adapt when it wasn't working.
Numbers wrote: ↑Mon Feb 27, 2023 9:48 am
Interesting to see a lot of people taking the Jiffy line of why did we keep kicking it to Steward, well he was playing fullback and so it would be him to field the box kicks, you can't box kick it into midfield, the fact 3 England players were stood in front of him every time he caught it negating any contest for the ball seemed to go unnoticed which I thought was something the refs were supposed to be clamping down on.
We could have kicked cross-field more but to be honest the game plan is what failed us and an inability to adapt when it wasn't working.
Steward is a very good player but he was also very well looked after. That strategy just didn't work in the first half, but we kept on plugging away at it. I just don't think we have confidence in our ability to keep the ball and tempo.
Numbers wrote: ↑Mon Feb 27, 2023 9:48 am
Interesting to see a lot of people taking the Jiffy line of why did we keep kicking it to Steward, well he was playing fullback and so it would be him to field the box kicks, you can't box kick it into midfield, the fact 3 England players were stood in front of him every time he caught it negating any contest for the ball seemed to go unnoticed which I thought was something the refs were supposed to be clamping down on.
We could have kicked cross-field more but to be honest the game plan is what failed us and an inability to adapt when it wasn't working.
Steward is a very good player but he was also very well looked after. That strategy just didn't work in the first half, but we kept on plugging away at it. I just don't think we have confidence in our ability to keep the ball and tempo.
We don't get any gainline sucess and that makes the box kicking inevitable as without gainline success we have no ruck speed, even when we did get some gainline success Tomos Williams would get to the ruck and then look both ways before deciding which way to pass, I thought the scanning should be done whilst moving towards the ruck to increase ball speed but there you go.
