the Curbishley of rugby.
England score 5 tries and comfortably win against Italy and yet the pundits and others moan....
To be fair I do understand it as the expectations for the England Rugby Union team are higher than for Charlton in the Premiership but surely any moaning should take place after a defeat rather than a victory?
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Indeed I saw plenty of unconvincing displays under AC at the Valley too. Especially in the period of Feb-May in his last 4 seasons -FACT. LOCKED ON FACT.
To be world beaters you need at least 5 or 6 players that would make it into that imaginery team/squad.......Sadly Johnston has (as would any England coach right now) a thankless task because at this moment in time we have a very average/poor pool of players to choose from....it will change at some point but I honestly can't see much joy on the horizon for a few years to be honest.
and yet when viewed over the bigger picture which was a whole season rather than a couple of weeks here and there,sir alan had charlton overachieving massively. oh,and we have a first class stadium too all with a ridiculously small budget.
Granted in 2003 we had some brilliant brilliant individual players in the likes of Hill, Greenwood, Woodman, Lewsey and Back who have all retired now but
Last years England U20 side won the six nations grand slam at age group level and finished runners up in the world cup, two of Englands more average sides made the semi finals of the European cup there is a huge pool of talent, in fact England have never had such a high quality player pool.
The problem is and always has been is the RFU who make the FA look positively modern thinking. Martin Johnson was a wonderful England Captain but has never coached a side ever yet he's given a role of being head of the England side... it's messed up thinking, players are admitting that they recieve better coaching at their clubs than they do playing for the national side. Is it any wonder that performaces look totally disjointed as players are being wasted and not best utilised on the field while the best English coach whose had years of success in Edwards is coaching Wales!
Johnson already looks like he doesn't have a clue, Borthwick is a feeble captain and the coaching must come straight out of the Big Merv playbook - because the way they played certainly didn't make any sense yesterday.
England score 5 tries and comfortably win against Italy and yet the pundits and others moan....
To be fair I do understand it as the expectations for the England Rugby Union team are higher than for Charlton in the Premiership but surely any moaning should take place after a defeat rather than a victory?[/quote]
'' We just got to get on wiv it ''
Egg chasers
Very impressed with Ireland - France weren't bad but that was the best Irish performance in a number of years - great to see O'Driscoll looking like the player of old. esp, with the Lions to come in the summer.
Wales were good - they should beat England comfortably this Sat.
I agree with T's comments, England looked conservative and played ok, but no better, the scoreline flattered them and owed a lot to Italian mistakes which led to the first three tries, and perhaps not forced topick up their game England were content to sit on a lead. In particular the Italian fly half had a nightmare.
England's performance was better than the autumn internationals but I can't see them beating either Ireland or Wales, and most likely they'll lose to France. That leaves the Scotland match to salvage any pride. To be fair to Martin Johnson he's rebuilding his squad and that will take time, but there looks to be very few players of any quality in either the team or squad and that is going to be his major problem.
On the plus side Andy Goode and Harry Ellis both had good games, neither were first choice for their respective positions but came in late and didn't let anyone down.
Take Steffon Armitage as a great example, he's been tearing up trees in the League as his club side have found a way to use his unique skills in various ways, Ie not packing down in the scrum but defending place the stand off would normally, attacking in the centres rather than being used in the lineout - England have asked him to play a more tradtional role on his debut. It's like picking David Beckham for England and asking him not to take the set pieces or picking Kevin Pieterson in the cricket and asking him to play defensively, there would be no point in having players in the sides in that role.
You are right about Armitage S.
That guy is seriously good yet we saw little or nothing of it on saturday.
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None of the backs got past the gain line except on the occasions that Italy made mistakes. I can't think of one decent run made by Sackey, or Cueto when he came on.