England vs Italy

[mol2]

Nothing wrong with Italy's tactics merely England taking more than half the game to exploit several of the Italians putting themselves behind the game line.

Pick & drive with offloading and it's all rather different.

Ford and Farrell had poor games.

[jgriffin]

Ford and Farrell had poor games.

Funny you should say that, halfway through the second half I said to Mrs G I wish we were keeping OW & FB.

PS she was knitting throughout and a couple of times when she said a player was rubbish I expected a tumbril to trundle on and remove the poor bloke for execution.

[tigerburnie]

It smacks of uncontested scrummaging debacle, that ain't rugby and I hope Italy regret doing it, if that's all they can come up with, bring on relegation. Laws change needs doing immediately if not sooner.

[Mark62]

In many ways it brings the relegation debate sharper into focus.
There was nothing illegal that Italy did, but it does the question that if that is the only way they feel they can compete should another nation be given the opportunity

[ellis9]

If Italy feel that's the only way they can compete (which I'm fine with) when there's no relegation, then they would still do it if there was relegation! Even more so now they have brought bonus points in!

Employ those tactics, lose 5 games within 7 points and get 5 points and hope another team loses 4 games with no bonus points and don't get a 5 point win against Italy, finishing on 4 points keeping Italy in the Six Nations. It might just work. The negative side to bringing in bonus points. (Funny how nothing has changed since bringing bonus points in. Teams are not trying any harder to score 4 tries- like I said months ago!)

[Snorbins]

I just worry that next season we will playing with 14 as someone will have to protect Ford who can't tackle and will be a liability. Just hope I am wrong!

[tigerburnie]

I just worry that next season we will playing with 14 as someone will have to protect Ford who can't tackle and will be a liability. Just hope I am wrong!

I thought that a couple of time too

[Mark62]

I just worry that next season we will playing with 14 as someone will have to protect Ford who can't tackle and will be a liability. Just hope I am wrong!

But against the Welsh he tackled really well. Mike Brown got done like a kipper too

[strawclearer]

Knock Knock
Who's there?
Venice.
Venice who?
Venice you gonna start playing proper rugby?

[4071]

I just worry that next season we will playing with 14 as someone will have to protect Ford who can't tackle and will be a liability. Just hope I am wrong!

But against the Welsh he tackled really well. Mike Brown got done like a kipper too

Quite.

He's defending well for England for some time. It would be strange indeed to discount the majority of games and judge on a single missed tackle instead.


Unless, of course, judgment has already been made and this is simply finding evidence retrospectively to support it?

[Scott1]

Shocking tactics! Completely legal but complete anti rugby,what have they got out of it apart from frustrating England and keeping the score down,would Georgia do this? Hell no!

[Soggypitch]

There weren't many that had good games yesterday, Launchbury, Lawes, Itoje, Nowell (when he came on) and Daly excepted.

However everyone misses the odd tackle and gets stepped occasionally. I'm not worried about the defence of Brown or Ford.

Remember we had a very successful side with Les Cusworth at 10, now there's someone that really couldn't tackle! Great player though...

[biffer]

Shocking tactics! Completely legal but complete anti rugby,what have they got out of it apart from frustrating England and keeping the score down,would Georgia do this? Hell no!

Well, they got Eddie Jones to make himself look like a petulant wee idiot on national TV. I take that as a win.

[Scott1]

Eddie is Eddie,I love him! Just daid what the vast majority of us were all feeling. I think it's lit a fire under us now for the Scotland game!

[Andy W]

Italy's tactics were legal, and O'Shea seemed chuffed to bits with himself about them. However, I do feel they were probably counter-productive. Reasons being:

i) They won't help Italy to become a better rugby team (which is presumably what he was employed to do)
ii) They didn't win the actual game in question, so failed
iii) They won't have won many friends, and at a time when arguably they need friends, i.e. talk of relegation, Georgia, Italy's "right" to a place in the tournament etc
iv) Fans won't be so keen to turn up, and certainly not keen to *pay up* to watch games of that type, and Italian rugby needs fans
v) It will simply encourage a change in the laws, if over-used.

So, yes, he managed to stitch up those who paid to attend, and may have prevented a larger scale defeat, but if that is the scale of one's ambition...? I would also argue that Italy actually played quite well, and might have done ok anyway, if they had just concentrated on their more traditional tactics - high kicks were good and well chased, defensive line speed was good (and motivated) etc.

Obviously none of this takes away from concerns that England may not be a terribly high IQ team (am not sure Haskell has ever been a candidate for Mastermind, I suppose), and the leadership on the field didn't adapt terribly well. Pick and go should be a key part of the England game anyway.

It does also shine a light on England's tendency to be a bit slow at recycling the breakdown. If this is clean and quick, then Italy wouldn't have had much of a chance for their shenanigans. If it is slow, and the scrum half wants to take a good look around, then, well maybe then you get what you deserve...

Never in my wildest dreams did I think that Owen F could perform so poorly - fingers crossed he puts in similar performances for Sarries between now and the end of the season.

Finally, I wonder how Parisse really feels about those tactics. He did stick to the plan, but occasionally looked marginally sheepish/half-hearted about it, and I suspect that this is not, ideally, how he wants to play the game.