6 Nations 2019
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@taniwharugby said in 6 Nations 2019:
@MN5 good to see you have moved off from Charlie Ngatai as your goto
Who?
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also, we have an early front runner for softest yellow of the year, that's going to take some beating. Especially because he was told it was for a late shoulder charge, which it very clearly was not.
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@Victor-Meldrew said in 6 Nations 2019:
@Derm-McCrum said in 6 Nations 2019:
In other news, all the losers will play the winners in Round Two.
Scot v Irl
Could be a cracking game.The Jocks are a tough proposition at Murrayfield, play attacking Rugby and you wonder how much Ireland's confidence (esp. Sexton) has been dented after yesterday's mauling
Yep. Murray has been off the boil since he came back from his neck injury. Sexton at least had the excuse that he hadn’t played since December before going into the England test. The early possible injury report has Earls, Toner, Ringrose, and definitely Stander out of next week, which added to the absence of Henderson, Beirne, Marmion, Luke McGrath is going to test the depth a fair bit.
Either Dillane or Roux partnering Ryan and the other on the bench. POM is also carrying a rib injury that he looks like he hasn’t got over yet, but he’ll soldier on.
So Schmidt has a fair bit to do to get them back on the horse for next weekend with the Scots licking their lips.
My early guess (assuming the above injuries) for next week’s lineup would be:
McGrath, Best*, Furlong
Ryan, Roux
POM, SOB, Murphy
Murray, Sexton*
Henshaw/Aki, C Farrell
Conway, Stockdale, R Kearney
Reps: Scannell, Healy, Porter, Dillane, vdF, Cooney, Carbery, AddisonWe’ll see how the week goes.
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@mariner4life said in 6 Nations 2019:
Endless kicking bores me.
That start be England was awesome and I actually clapped the TV
The first Irish try was held up for all money
Ireland are still great at holding the ball but don't know what to do with it
Youngs is stopping England being a better attacking team be being too slow.
The whole tournament was turned on its head this morning
On the whole, I think he did a good job of holding up the English defence with what (at fist glance) seemed to be hesitancy, but as the game wore on was clearly a plan. A couple of steps looking at what options he had close to the ruck to dart himself, or use a crash runner, seemed to open up more space for subsequent phases. I think it was part of the game plan and worked quite well (something I think the ABs should have tried to do more of last November).
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Right, I've finished watching all the 6N from this weekend.
Gawd Italy are shit. Like, seriously shit. For 70 minutes. Then suddenly they come alive and the Sweaties look like they're falling apart.
Not that Scotland were much better before that, mind. It was overall a fairly ordinary game lit up by foreign players like the 2 Aussies playing for Scotland and the Saffers playing for Italy.
Both sides lucky not to lose.
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Ireland had that loss coming. They hardly play unbeatable rugby and although they thoroughly deserved their two wins over the ABs a cold look back shows that the first one was them at maximum effort while the ABs were still playing tourists in Chicago. Last year's win was also maximum effort against an out of sorts NZ.
Don't get me wrong, they are a very good rugby team with the ability to take a game from a stronger team, but they cannot hope to play at maximum every game or hope their opposition implode (eg France and England last 6N).
England have finally realised that they need to play to their strength which is to out muscle other teams. They have the personnel to do that but their achilles heel is that they need to be in the lead or close behind to play that gameplan. Get them behind by 10 and they need a plan B (Ireland are similar).
I hope the ABs are planning a blitz approach in the first 20 rather than hoping to sail home strong in the last 20.
RWC will be interesting to watch the contrast of styles. England are looking to do a Patriots and, as mentioned above, it could be 2007 all over again. -
@NTA said in 6 Nations 2019:
Right, I've finished watching all the 6N from this weekend.
Gawd Italy are shit. Like, seriously shit. For 70 minutes. Then suddenly they come alive and the Sweaties look like they're falling apart.
Not that Scotland were much better before that, mind. It was overall a fairly ordinary game lit up by foreign players like the 2 Aussies playing for Scotland and the Saffers playing for Italy.
Both sides lucky not to lose.
I didn't know Edinburgh was part of Australia. Fancy that. Cos that's where hat trick hero Blair Kinghorn was born.
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@NTA said in 6 Nations 2019:
Right, I've finished watching all the 6N from this weekend.
Gawd Italy are shit. Like, seriously shit. For 70 minutes. Then suddenly they come alive and the Sweaties look like they're falling apart.
Not that Scotland were much better before that, mind. It was overall a fairly ordinary game lit up by foreign players like the 2 Aussies playing for Scotland and the Saffers playing for Italy.
Both sides lucky not to lose.
Sadly Italy only have one class player and they rarely have more than that. France are France. Scotland need to watch the tapes of their game against the ABs in 2017 and take close note of the clock to see that they were still playing rugby at the 80 minute mark.
Wales are the Luke Whitelock of the 6N. -
@Nevorian said in 6 Nations 2019:
@junior Obviously John Mitchell is no longer on the coaching team or if he is we will sit back and watch England implode come September
Don't worry about us, we'll be well on the way on our journey by then.
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@Catogrande said in 6 Nations 2019:
@Nevorian said in 6 Nations 2019:
@junior Obviously John Mitchell is no longer on the coaching team or if he is we will sit back and watch England implode come September
Don't worry about us, we'll be well on the way on our journey by then.
And your fullback will be playing centre.
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@Crucial said in 6 Nations 2019:
@Catogrande said in 6 Nations 2019:
@Nevorian said in 6 Nations 2019:
@junior Obviously John Mitchell is no longer on the coaching team or if he is we will sit back and watch England implode come September
Don't worry about us, we'll be well on the way on our journey by then.
And your fullback will be playing centre.
Well we did have a centre playing full back on Saturday, so you could well be right.
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@Crucial said in 6 Nations 2019:
Ireland had that loss coming. They hardly play unbeatable rugby and although they thoroughly deserved their two wins over the ABs a cold look back shows that the first one was them at maximum effort while the ABs were still playing tourists in Chicago. Last year's win was also maximum effort against an out of sorts NZ.
Don't get me wrong, they are a very good rugby team with the ability to take a game from a stronger team, but they cannot hope to play at maximum every game or hope their opposition implode (eg France and England last 6N).
England have finally realised that they need to play to their strength which is to out muscle other teams. They have the personnel to do that but their achilles heel is that they need to be in the lead or close behind to play that gameplan. Get them behind by 10 and they need a plan B (Ireland are similar).
I hope the ABs are planning a blitz approach in the first 20 rather than hoping to sail home strong in the last 20.
RWC will be interesting to watch the contrast of styles. England are looking to do a Patriots and, as mentioned above, it could be 2007 all over again.Pains me to say it, but I think that game was pure Eddie Jones.
Ireland hadn't moved on at all from last years (incredibly successful) game plan. For all of Eddie' faults, he is arguably one of the best tacticians in the game with his ability to put together a plan to beat any specific team in a one-off game.
Ireland didn't just get beaten by England, they got hammered. Physically, and tactically.
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@MajorRage said in 6 Nations 2019:
@Crucial said in 6 Nations 2019:
Ireland had that loss coming. They hardly play unbeatable rugby and although they thoroughly deserved their two wins over the ABs a cold look back shows that the first one was them at maximum effort while the ABs were still playing tourists in Chicago. Last year's win was also maximum effort against an out of sorts NZ.
Don't get me wrong, they are a very good rugby team with the ability to take a game from a stronger team, but they cannot hope to play at maximum every game or hope their opposition implode (eg France and England last 6N).
England have finally realised that they need to play to their strength which is to out muscle other teams. They have the personnel to do that but their achilles heel is that they need to be in the lead or close behind to play that gameplan. Get them behind by 10 and they need a plan B (Ireland are similar).
I hope the ABs are planning a blitz approach in the first 20 rather than hoping to sail home strong in the last 20.
RWC will be interesting to watch the contrast of styles. England are looking to do a Patriots and, as mentioned above, it could be 2007 all over again.Pains me to say it, but I think that game was pure Eddie Jones.
Ireland hadn't moved on at all from last years (incredibly successful) game plan. For all of Eddie' faults, he is arguably one of the best tacticians in the game with his ability to put together a plan to beat any specific team in a one-off game.
Ireland didn't just get beaten by England, they got hammered. Physically, and tactically.
It was crushing. I will be really interested to see if Schmidt can reinvent the wheel, because his gameplan has basically remained unchanged since he took charge. TBH, it's a very successful gameplan - the only way really to beat it, is to outmuscle Ireland such as England did in the weekend or else they have been vulnerable to attacking out wide, most notably Argentina in 2015. I think the whole Irish gameplan falls down though if their halves are out of sorts - everything goes thru Murray and to a lesser extent Sexton. A Scottish win this weekend would really put a cat among the pigeons, borderline panic I would say.
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@Crucial said in 6 Nations 2019:
@sparky said in 6 Nations 2019:
@mariner4life said in 6 Nations 2019:
Barnes has done the Welsh a couple of pretty big favours too.
??? Barnes disallowed two Welsh tries and let the French live offside for a lot of that second half. I'm no fan at all of how he attempts to control and game and make himself the centre of attention, but the French can't blame Calamity Barnes for their defeat last night.
Offside was the same both ways. The sooner WR work out how to police such a key facet of the game the better. Barnes is one of the supposed top refs yet if his management of the offside line is a portent of this RWC year we will see every team taking the piss.
Hi Gregor, welcome to the Fern. I suspect you have been getting article ideas here for awhile. The generous person would say “great minds think alike “ but I m not sure you fit that description
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I watched the game and I really think Gregor is clutching at straws. I don’t think there were persistent offsides.
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@Billy-Tell said in 6 Nations 2019:
I watched the game and I really think Gregor is clutching at straws. I don’t think there were persistent offsides.
It’s more the consistent pushing at the offside line that makes the call “obviously” offside rather not “not onside”.
I would be fairly certain that with accurate technology you would notice persistent offside but I also wouldn’t want to go down that path.
In the modern game it really is the main thing that is curtailing attacking play.
Although most decisions in the game are ‘obvious infringement’ I really think that offside has to go to ‘obvious adherence”. If the ref team can’t observe an obvious gap then players are deemed offside -
I only watched the first 60 minutes of Ireland/England before being whisked away to wedding so I perhaps have a skewed view but I wouldn't be too demoralised if I was Ireland. They just looked like a team who were having an off day early (and without a bit of luck would have been a lot worse) and did a pretty good job to keep it together to try and pinch it at the end.
It will be troubling they couldn't get it together and find another gear to turn things a round in the second half, but I've seen the ABs play that exact 60 minutes of rugby at least 5 times in the last cycle including the Ire and Eng tests last season.
Ireland's undoing IMO will be much like the 2011 Boks who got the rub of the green with referees for so long that when they finally get a game where the calls are going 60/40 against them they get frazzled and lose structure.
