RWC: England v New Zealand (SF1)
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I know that Beuden has a lot of pace. And Jordie isn't a slouch.
But does anyone have any insight to Scott Barrett's speed?There is a moment in the first half where Tuilagi intercepts and England get Johhny May into space out wide. Only cover defence is Scott Barrett. He has the angle to work with, but I would have bet the house that May takes him on the outside for a sure England try.
But Barrett shuts him down and forces him inside. England knock on. Try saved.
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@Billy-Webb it was an odd moment indeed. Barrett didn't look to have a headstart at all either so got to think May was just struggling to unwind. Red was putting his all out there I thought, a guy fighting the best he could knowing he only had 40 minutes. Desperation versing constriction.
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@Billy-Webb said in RWC: England v New Zealand (SF1):
I know that Beuden has a lot of pace. And Jordie isn't a slouch.
But does anyone have any insight to Scott Barrett's speed?There is a moment in the first half where Tuilagi intercepts and England get Johhny May into space out wide. Only cover defence is Scott Barrett. He has the angle to work with, but I would have bet the house that May takes him on the outside for a sure England try.
But Barrett shuts him down and forces him inside. England knock on. Try saved.
May was an injury doubt before the semi final. He clearly wasn't fully fit as he demonstrated in the moment you referenced. There's no way a 100% May couldn't outsprint Scott Barrett.
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It doesn't mean the ABs played THAT badly...as Reid and Hansen said..."we gave it everything we had but we couldn't play the game we wanted."The English had one plan: Get the first points and smash the opposition with a king hit in the opening minutes then smother them so they cannot breathe....nullify their attack for the rest of the game. The ABs and the Boks have the most dynamic attacking side in the world and all the POMS know how to beat them is to play total defensive rugby and block the attack.
They played like they had 20 players on the field...they were everywhere...not one on one... three on one. I can hear Eddie screaming this plan at them.
The ABs were stunned and rattled by this and played the game with every player handcuffed.
GO BOKKE!!!!! Get back to attacking these bastards and bring the cup back to the SH.
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@Billy-Webb said in RWC: England v New Zealand (SF1):
@ACT-Crusader said in RWC: England v New Zealand (SF1):
@Damo said in RWC: England v New Zealand (SF1):
@cgrant said in RWC: England v New Zealand (SF1):
Crucial moments :
- The missed tackle on Daly. It gave England a big momentum, they scored and then on, they never looked back. This first try gave them the confidence they needed.
- Retallick's missed pass. Had the ball reached Savea, NZ would have scored. At 7-all, this might have forced England to play a tighter game for which the All Blacks were prepared. Instead, the All Blacks lost their collective cohesion, with players trying to change the facet of the game on their own. Accordingly, England's confidence grew even higher.
The reversal of PK against Whitelock was the key moment for me.
We were just starting to get into the game. We could have had a lineout 10m out from the line, 9 points down and about 20 minutes to go. Instead we lost the ball and 30 metres. Honestly I feel we would have been a chance at a memorable comeback had we kept that PK.
I agree with that. We had moments and given the score hadn’t blown out, we just need to take those moments to build towards our end.
What makes that play worse was that Owens had blown the penalty and Whitelock went in after the whistle to get the ball out. Farrell was still into after the whistle. The rest is history as they say.
Unnecessary and dumb by Whitelock.
But geez Farrell milked it like he was a Premier League soccer player.
He is a really talented rugby player. But stuff like that just reinforces my intense dislike for him on a rugby pitch.He's the new Quade Cooper, but with talent
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@Blackheart said in RWC: England v New Zealand (SF1):
It doesn't mean the ABs played THAT badly...as Reid and Hansen said..."we gave it everything we had but we couldn't play the game we wanted."The English had one plan: Get the first points and smash the opposition with a king hit in the opening minutes then smother them so they cannot breathe....nullify their attack for the rest of the game. The ABs and the Boks have the most dynamic attacking side in the world and all the POMS know how to beat them is to play total defensive rugby and block the attack.
They played like they had 20 players on the field...they were everywhere...not one on one... three on one. I can hear Eddie screaming this plan at them.
The ABs were stunned and rattled by this and played the game with every player handcuffed.
GO BOKKE!!!!! Get back to attacking these bastards and bring the cup back to the SH.
Rubbish.
England attacked plenty. They scored one try and had two disallowed.
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@MiketheSnow You probably had the added advantage of being sober watching it...as the game wore on I attacked another bottle of red and tried to drown my sorrow and it all became a blurr...it felt like they were alot more defensive than attacking overall to me at the time...cheers...I'll watch the replay again with your observations in mind.
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@MiketheSnow and should have had a couple more...on another day that maul try would have been given with the accidental knock missed.
As I said in another thread, up there as one of the best English performances I ahve ever seen.
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@taniwharugby Well there haven't been that many. Now they have to show they can do it all the time if they want to maintain the number one slot that we've enjoyed for the past ten years.
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@Billy-Webb said in RWC: England v New Zealand (SF1):
I know that Beuden has a lot of pace. And Jordie isn't a slouch.
But does anyone have any insight to Scott Barrett's speed?There is a moment in the first half where Tuilagi intercepts and England get Johhny May into space out wide. Only cover defence is Scott Barrett. He has the angle to work with, but I would have bet the house that May takes him on the outside for a sure England try.
But Barrett shuts him down and forces him inside. England knock on. Try saved.
I think I read a little while ago that S. Barrett has the best medium-longer distance times in the squad.
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@Bones said in RWC: England v New Zealand (SF1):
@Victor-Meldrew have to disagree on the Coles break. He totally ran away from any support and didn't even look to come back inside to find his team mates.
to be fair to Coles he only knows one way head and shoulders down and storm forward. He would have been expecting the support to be there behind him but it wasnt
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I'm not hurting. It sucked but it was inevitable. We can not get better without failure.
The maul knock was bullshit and opens the door to yet more over-involvement from the TMO. Its the dark arts. What happens in the maul stays in the maul...
I was more disappointed with Barrett/Mounga than anyone else. They were completely ineffectual when having the 2 of them on the field was supposed to be a decided advantage. Richie is young. He can grow into that role. He seems like a thinker to me and that's a good thing. Barrett, however, is not a player that thinks things through as much as you hope he would. He's not a dumbshit but he's 90% playing what's in front of him rather than calculating how to get us back into it. Its the exact opposite of what's happening with A Smith.
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Two things bothered me at the time.
- Very passive defence and a lot of missed tackles. I think we were too concerned about possible cards rather than recognising the refs were terrified of continuing the same approach used the in pool fixtures.
- We created a lot of space and almost never sought to exploit it.
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@antipodean yeah the missed tackles was a huge thing, id say up there as one of our worst defensive performance...obviously the cohesion, lines, off-loads by England were superb, but we dont miss that many tackles.
Yeah last week showed the refs were either under directive or in themselves decided the finals were different to pools and needed to be reffed differently.
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@taniwharugby said in RWC: England v New Zealand (SF1):
@antipodean yeah the missed tackles was a huge thing, id say up there as one of our worst defensive performance...obviously the cohesion, lines, off-loads by England were superb, but simply don't miss that many tackles.
I don't think the defensive structure actually helps either - far too much movement and complication. This gave a smart analyst plenty of opportunity to identify where we wouldn't be able to fold if the direction of play was different to what we expected.
I can't help but think a lot of it was developed to have us in a position to counter attack. The problem being we've not been getting a lot of that type of ball.
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@antipodean yep, they were able to manipulate us into the areas they wanted (for attack or defence) while we were unable to disrupt anything for them to even get a foothold in the game.
Still a bit confused about our complete lack of pressure on thier lineout, that it appeared was one of the key areas we were wanting to pressure them, instead, they put more on us there.
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On the missed tackles, we actually missed more tackles in the SA game (28) than in this game (20). The tackle success rate was much better too.
The problem for me was that the ABs were passive and we didn't see many dominant tackles. That meant England was always on the front foot.