Eng v SA Match thread

[Peej]

Yet again, when England need leadership, Owen Farrell fails to deliver.

This is a key point. Zero evidence of leadership, no taking control. When we were camped in their 22 he took the easy option of ruck inspection rather than do his job of direct play and take responsibility to find a way through.

The Bokke were relentlessly physical, but they were always going to be.

[Beasties]

Sinckler was a big loss but absolutely not responsible for that performance.

[Mr Mwenda]

Definate choking for me. Took 20 minutes to stop throwing into touch every second pass.

[Spiffy]

Fair play to the Boks. Their defence was superb the whole game and never gave England a sniff. England well beaten both up front and behind the scrum. The SA midfield showed more flair than expected, and their wings are deadly.

[Adam_P]

I will be mighty peeved if that is not Ben Youngs' final game for England. We really need a complete refresh at scrum half, been putting up with his passing for far too long now.

[Mellsblue]

Definate choking for me. Took 20 minutes to stop throwing into touch every second pass.

Any ideas when we will stop knocking on?

[Beasties]

I'm still struggling to inderstand what Youngs was doing when we were 13 points behind and he tapped that pen instead of kicking to the corner. There was still plenty of time left on the clock, 7 points and we would've still been in the game surprisingly.

[Mellsblue]

I will be mighty peeved if that is not Ben Youngs' final game for England. We really need a complete refresh at scrum half, been putting up with his passing for far too long now.

You could’ve posted this two years ago and still been spot on.

[jngf]

Well done to South Africa - they thoroughly deserved their victory and there was only one team in it for most of the match - almost reverse of situation against All Blacks.

South Africa’s pack outmuscled ours particularly in back 5 - England have relied on athletic but relatively light weight locks - I said this on many more than one occasion but we need to find one or two players with the shear size and physicality of Ezebeth, de Jäger and Snyman - plus look at the mismatch in blindside flankers - du Toit 6’ 7” 18 stone plus - compared to Curry 6’1” and barely 16 stone. I’ll make an exception here for Underhill whose been immense. this tournament - he may not be England’s new Neil Back but he’s certainly our new Peter Winterbottom!

[Danno]

Well done to South Africa - they thoroughly deserved their victory and their was only one team in it for most of the match.

South Africa’s pack outmuscled ours particularly in back 5 - England have relied on athletic but relatively light weight locks - I said this on more than one occasion but we need to find one of two players with the shear size and physicality of Ezebeth, de Jäger and Snyman - plus look at the mismatch in blindside flankers - du Toit 6’ 7” 18 stone plus - compared to Curry 6’1” and barely 16 stone. I’ll make an exception here for Underhill whose been immense. this tournament - he may not be England’s new Neil Back but he’s certainly our new Peter Winterbottom!

Are you seriously implying Curry isn't good enough? Because he isn't built like a lock?

[Banquo]

Puts Wales loss by three points in the semi into perspective. We even scored a smart try against them.

Did you choke or was the loss of Sinckler the biggest blow to the game plan?

Commiserations, see you in the 6N.

Choke and were choked.

[Lizard]

Bit rough making Richie hand it over personally.

[Spiffy]

Well done to South Africa - they thoroughly deserved their victory and their was only one team in it for most of the match.

South Africa’s pack outmuscled ours particularly in back 5 - England have relied on athletic but relatively light weight locks - I said this on more than one occasion but we need to find one of two players with the shear size and physicality of Ezebeth, de Jäger and Snyman - plus look at the mismatch in blindside flankers - du Toit 6’ 7” 18 stone plus - compared to Curry 6’1” and barely 16 stone. I’ll make an exception here for Underhill whose been immense. this tournament - he may not be England’s new Neil Back but he’s certainly our new Peter Winterbottom!

Much is made of the massive SA pack and their physicality, but the England pack outweighed them by 20 Kg (maybe most of down to Billy). So it not just a matter of bulk, it's how the players use it.

[Peej]

But NZ outmuscled SA, and we outmuscled NZ. Size isn't everything, and the Boks are always huge. We just didn't play well

[Lizard]

Wow. Japan’s crown prince looks like an ever bigger wet than yours.

[Scrumhead]

Can we make this the last time we see Ben Youngs’ awful passing in an England shirt please?

[jngf]

Well done to South Africa - they thoroughly deserved their victory and their was only one team in it for most of the match.

South Africa’s pack outmuscled ours particularly in back 5 - England have relied on athletic but relatively light weight locks - I said this on more than one occasion but we need to find one of two players with the shear size and physicality of Ezebeth, de Jäger and Snyman - plus look at the mismatch in blindside flankers - du Toit 6’ 7” 18 stone plus - compared to Curry 6’1” and barely 16 stone. I’ll make an exception here for Underhill whose been immense. this tournament - he may not be England’s new Neil Back but he’s certainly our new Peter Winterbottom!

Much is made of the massive SA pack and their physicality, but the England pack outweighed them by 20 Kg (maybe most of down to Billy). So it not just a matter of bulk, it's how the players use it.

That’s just it - I think Billy and the props account for a lot of that bulk and the our second rows are comparatively short and lightweight (only Lawes is the height of SA blindside ) - In this match we needed a bigger blindside than Curry in retrospect.

[Banquo]

Well done to South Africa - they thoroughly deserved their victory and their was only one team in it for most of the match.

South Africa’s pack outmuscled ours particularly in back 5 - England have relied on athletic but relatively light weight locks - I said this on more than one occasion but we need to find one of two players with the shear size and physicality of Ezebeth, de Jäger and Snyman - plus look at the mismatch in blindside flankers - du Toit 6’ 7” 18 stone plus - compared to Curry 6’1” and barely 16 stone. I’ll make an exception here for Underhill whose been immense. this tournament - he may not be England’s new Neil Back but he’s certainly our new Peter Winterbottom!

Are you seriously implying Curry isn't good enough? Because he isn't built like a lock?

I think his point about being out muscled is spot on, and it also told in the scrums. If you want to play SA with a lighter pack, you have to move them around, make no mistakes, and be absolutely nailed on with your tackling and intensity; with the ball that passage of play near their line showed what you can do with some quick feet and good hands. However, we weren’t accurate, we didn’t tackle with fervour consistently, and we made momentum giving mistakes; SA by contrast were relatively error free. Nerves played a big part.

[Oakboy]

To beat the best, we need to start well but we started badly by conceding a penalty in front of the posts. After that, not for one second during the match, did we look like taking the lead. We have had that in matches previously where it was as if we were still in the car park and never in the groove to compete. Most disappointing is that we lost playing well below our best. Obviously, SA stopped us playing as we wished to a large extent but we conceded penalties, made multiple mistakes and never looked ready for the match - all our own fault.

I hope we now accept that we need something different in the management set-up and don't try to talk up our SF win. When it came to the crunch we were not good enough. On the day, we under-performed and lost. Let's learn and move on.

[fivepointer]

Disappointed we never really got into the game and failed to make any kind of dent in attack. A few too many of our players were below their best and I thought some of our execution left a lot to be desired. SA deserve credit for their tremendous defending and unremitting physicality, which simply wore us down. Having a dominant scrum helped, but SA played to their strengths, won the aerial and gainline battles and were very good winners.

[Beasties]

Well done to South Africa - they thoroughly deserved their victory and their was only one team in it for most of the match.

South Africa’s pack outmuscled ours particularly in back 5 - England have relied on athletic but relatively light weight locks - I said this on more than one occasion but we need to find one of two players with the shear size and physicality of Ezebeth, de Jäger and Snyman - plus look at the mismatch in blindside flankers - du Toit 6’ 7” 18 stone plus - compared to Curry 6’1” and barely 16 stone. I’ll make an exception here for Underhill whose been immense. this tournament - he may not be England’s new Neil Back but he’s certainly our new Peter Winterbottom!

Much is made of the massive SA pack and their physicality, but the England pack outweighed them by 20 Kg (maybe most of down to Billy). So it not just a matter of bulk, it's how the players use it.

That’s just it - I think Billy and the props account for a lot of that bulk and the our second rows are comparatively short and lightweight (only Lawes is the height of SA blindside ) - In this match we need a bigger blindside than Curry in retrospect.

I simply don't get this SA are bigger than us theme, especially when it's not true. They were just better than us today.

As Puja said a couple of days ago, our team prob beats them more than 5 times out of 10. Today wasn't one of those days. We were terrible and didn't turn up, not at any point. They did and played their limited gameplan to perfection. Even WLR didn't have a shocker.

[Oakboy]

Disappointed we never really got into the game and failed to make any kind of dent in attack. A few too many of our players were below their best and I thought some of our execution left a lot to be desired. SA deserve credit for their tremendous defending and unremitting physicality, which simply wore us down. Having a dominant scrum helped, but SA played to their strengths, won the aerial and gainline battles and were very good winners.

Exactly. I lost count, yet again, of the number of times I was shouting, 'Don't just kick it down their throats.' We started doing it and never stopped. How many kicks put them under pressure? 2 or 3 in 80 minutes, perhaps? Conversely, every other kick of theirs had us in trouble.

[Mellsblue]

Well done to South Africa - they thoroughly deserved their victory and their was only one team in it for most of the match.

South Africa’s pack outmuscled ours particularly in back 5 - England have relied on athletic but relatively light weight locks - I said this on more than one occasion but we need to find one of two players with the shear size and physicality of Ezebeth, de Jäger and Snyman - plus look at the mismatch in blindside flankers - du Toit 6’ 7” 18 stone plus - compared to Curry 6’1” and barely 16 stone. I’ll make an exception here for Underhill whose been immense. this tournament - he may not be England’s new Neil Back but he’s certainly our new Peter Winterbottom!

Much is made of the massive SA pack and their physicality, but the England pack outweighed them by 20 Kg (maybe most of down to Billy). So it not just a matter of bulk, it's how the players use it.

That’s just it - I think Billy and the props account for a lot of that bulk and the our second rows are comparatively short and lightweight (only Lawes is the height of SA blindside ) - In this match we needed a bigger blindside than Curry in retrospect.

And yet we lost the scrum battle. And yet the lighter Marler did better than the heavier Mako at scrum time. Maybe it’s not all about his heavy you are.

[Banquo]

Much is made of the massive SA pack and their physicality, but the England pack outweighed them by 20 Kg (maybe most of down to Billy). So it not just a matter of bulk, it's how the players use it.

That’s just it - I think Billy and the props account for a lot of that bulk and the our second rows are comparatively short and lightweight (only Lawes is the height of SA blindside ) - In this match we need a bigger blindside than Curry in retrospect.

I simply don't get this SA are bigger than us theme, especially when it's not true. They were just better than us today.

As Puja said a couple of days ago, our team prob beats them more than 5 times out of 10. Today wasn't one of those days. We were terrible and didn't turn up, not at any point. They did and played their limited gameplan to perfection. Even WLR didn't have a shocker.

Not so much bigger, but certainly out muscled. Mass x intensity maybe

[Oakboy]

Much is made of the massive SA pack and their physicality, but the England pack outweighed them by 20 Kg (maybe most of down to Billy). So it not just a matter of bulk, it's how the players use it.

That’s just it - I think Billy and the props account for a lot of that bulk and the our second rows are comparatively short and lightweight (only Lawes is the height of SA blindside ) - In this match we need a bigger blindside than Curry in retrospect.

I simply don't get this SA are bigger than us theme, especially when it's not true. They were just better than us today.

As Puja said a couple of days ago, our team prob beats them more than 5 times out of 10. Today wasn't one of those days. We were terrible and didn't turn up, not at any point. They did and played their limited gameplan to perfection. Even WLR didn't have a shocker.

He only got clattered once, I think - by Lawes.