Oakboy wrote: ↑Tue Nov 29, 2022 4:11 pm
Banquo wrote: ↑Tue Nov 29, 2022 3:46 pm
Mellsblue wrote: ↑Tue Nov 29, 2022 2:40 pm
Watson is only just back from another long term injury and Daly hasn’t, to the best of knowledge, played wing this season. Not that I wouldn’t pick both over Nowell.
That said, no use having world class wingers if everything inside them isn’t up to the required standard.
No one’s saying it is no fault of Jones, but only you’re saying it’s all Jones’s fault.
Completely disagree with your last sentence.
I'd pick both over Nowell, but neither have shown any thing like the form internationally you'd call world class for.....at least ages. But as you said, you could have Campese and Gerald Davies on the wings and it'd make little difference .....even peak Lomu (the sort of player this side needs) wouldn't have helped too much with today's defences.
On the Jones thing- its combo of quality of players, the quality of individual contributions from players who should do better, especially the unforced mental errors, and something awry in the prep (which is down to Jones) that leads to these patches of terrible substandard performance. Sure you could argue on a change or two here or there, but generally he's picking the teams that have a consensus on them. But I think he has run out of road- ironically, because I'm not sure many would do well against the Boks in that mode- ruthless and relentless; no surprises there tbh.
Banquo, I don't really disagree with any of that but I'd add one remark about SA. Before the game several of us suggested that with all the players they were missing they were not invincible (at least). Now, with hindsight they were/are?
Or, were they made to look better than they really are because our performance - from selection, to preparation, to game plan, to mistake frequency, to ill-discipline, etc. - was so bad?
Where it is all so hard to measure is in that conflict of assessment opinion. My own, for what it is worth, is that England do not have the players to be fantastic world beaters BUT they do have the playing quality such that (on the back of a decent 6N showing) they should have won all four AIs. Against top-strength, fully-firing NZ and SA teams, maybe winning those two games was wishful thinking but against those actual teams there was no acceptable excuse for not winning both.
Their big players all stepped up and the fringe guys all did well- much easier on the front foot. Similar to the RWC the physicality just overwhelmed us, and any momentum we managed to gain was chucked away carelessly tbh. But make no mistake, that was a statement performance from them. As said we compounded it, but their pack, and esp front five did a number on any combo we put out.
I agree we aren't world beaters, and we should have beaten Argentina; we played well going forward but didn't score enough points from visits to their 22, and gifted them a try and points through discipline and iffy concentration in defence. NZ again we were ok with the ball, again gifted them a try and did well to come back frankly, and I do think that was a game that we could have won. But we were never in it v SA- sometimes you have to say...well done to them (whilst giving Hill and others an absolute rocket for minimising our chances)- this has happened a lot against SA as well. So I don't agree there was 'no excuse for not beating SA'.....
But I do, and have accepted, that the recurrent mistakes are not being sorted, and that ultimately has to be at Eddie's feet. We are less than the sum of our parts, and have been too many times.
