The Six Nations 2016

AstiSpumante wrote:

Depressing. Non contact, Sport without winners or losers, PE optional in schools. And they wonder why obesity and diabetes is rampant. We are breeding a generation of World champions in smartphonery.

I blame Balamory.

An easy tourny win in the death after what can only be described as a Jekyll and Hyde performance against the Welsh, fantastic up front for 60 minutes when we should have put 30 points on the sheep shaggers only to then allow a Ford fook up to let them back in with a bang.

I hate to be proved right, no, I don't really, but the Youngs/Ford thing is the root of the problem, I just can't see how Eddie Jones can stick with such a set up, Youngs has terminally slow pass and Ford is totally out of sorts as well as being too small for the modern game, he might be fine if he were either a great game controller or had blinding pace, he isn't either, he a competent little guy at Prem level who can't step up, Farrell is the form 10 and is wasted at centre. Tbf another weakness is Nowell who had a great game but also lacks the searing pace to deal with wingers at international level.

The way we fell to pieces after Ford gave up seven with that schoolboy error was a disgrace, I am no fan of Robshaw or Hartley but Clifford and LCD were culpable for much of the collapse, of course penalty machine Cole dropping us to 14 didn't help, it would have helped if Tom Francis had got the yellow he richly deserved, he will get a long ban for gouging, he was instrumental in two of the Welsh tries after the incident.

The slam would be nice but I feel the quality of this tears 6Ns devalues the whole thing, I am much more now looking forward to the Aussie tour, that will be a chance to step up, in order to do that we need to play form players with pace, like Kvesic who it seems is destined to be ignored, a shame because in spite of the drawbacks of being a Blundells boy, I took a few slaps there back in the day, and being German, he is the best English 7 by far and is still only 23.

I hope Eddie takes the opportunity to try some stuff out in Paris, we need to get a proper centre partnership together, Manu/JJ, Burrell/Daly, I know I railed against Burrell in the RWC but he has played himself back into some serious form and I just don't think Devoto has trained on, I would take Sam James in front of him.

Bottom line we played a good hour and more of proper rugby despite the weakness at half back, a good powerful pack can get you most of the way there and then the Sweaties did us a favour.

I think we will win next week against a woeful French side, but I can't help but feel that this doesn't feel like a grand slam team. The Carling and Johnson teams were great sides. But the "Hartley team"?

But I won't be complaining.

Frank Bullitt wrote:

I think we will win next week against a woeful French side, but I can't help but feel that this doesn't feel like a grand slam team. The Carling and Johnson teams were great sides. But the "Hartley team"?

But I won't be complaining.

All you can ever do is beat what is put in front of you Frank, the All Black team which struggled to beat the French by a single point in the final were still the 2011 RWC winners.

I'll take a win over a gallant loss every time.