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[2020 Six Nations] England Squad

I know haha and after mitchell went off the game slowed down but its what happens when you learn your SH trade from Youngs. Just like im pretty sure Hughes learnt his breakdown skills from Hask.

I suppose the problem I have with SHs is that you can't always play at 100 miles an hour like Care, sometimes you need to slow the game down, but equally well, you can't play as slow as a three-legged donkey like Laidlaw all the time. Youngs has had some absolutely deserved MOM games for England (mostly against Oz for some reason), and actually has quite a lot of gas (EJ speak for speed! :)). Youngs should be an outstanding SH. But he rarely seems to put all his talent to work at the same time. I don't always buy this 'slow delivery is a problem', because sometimes it works to change the game in your favour, but Youngs just doesn't seem to know when to slow it down and when to speed it up. He has all the ability in the world, but I think he lacks the rugby brain. We need a smart operator, and I'm looking forward to finding out what Heinz does on Saturday.
 
"He's been training well, and if he has a good game tonight who knows - maybe they'll start him at flyhalf for England next week" - Dimes on Mark Wilson
 
Diamond is on board the Eddie Jones hate train.

Come on people, join up. I've your favourite player has been played out of position, or not even made the squad or even played for 10 seconds and then subbed off straight away this club is for you!!!

We also accept those who dislike the constant picking of poor players like Youngs or the refusal to pick in form players.

Roll up roll up.....
 
My train is less hate and more He's not the Messiah, he's a very stubborn and irrational boy.

It's clear that with him at the helm we're going to get big highs and lows but never the consistent performance that marks out top teams. We've got a wise cracking, left field Aussie, but probably need a hard headed, dour, limelight shunning, pragmatic Kiwi....
 
Simple fact is that you are judged on results and for me last week's performance was almost entirely down to selection. EJ got it wrong. Now if he sticks to his guns and in 18 months time Curry is the number one 8 in the world then I'll admit I was wrong. However the decision to put an inexperienced player at 8 cost us at least 2 penalties last week if not more. The ridiculousness over the number 9 shirt will lead to a genuine crisis when Heinz keeps getting older and Youngs keeps getting worse. EJ likes to nail his colours to the mast, but he needs to accept the criticism that comes with making such controversial decisions.
 
Honestly I wish we did more of those things.
But clubs won't because too much risk really.


1 thing I would hope ring fencing could do is bring more clubs to look at loaning players to other countries instead of just loaning them down the league.

I know teams do it at U19 level sometimes Tigers have a partnership with Sydney uni.

But would be cool to see it at a older age.
Like maybe have some U20 backs play a season in Japan etc.
 
You still do that?
Aye,
Weirdly they don't announce it though - it'll just be randomly mentioned the following season in a match report like "blah blah, who spent the summer playing with the border bulldogs in the u19 Currie cup"
 
They do? We'll have to wait til he's gone and they've retired to find that one out. Publicly I'd love anyone who had the power to cap me for Eng even if I thought they were the biggest plank of all time.

Jones has done some good things and some less good things. He's not a bad coach, but he's no guru either. Our consistent inability to think our way out of problems suggests he's too prescriptive.

I like people who think outside the box and he's definitely one of those. I don't like irrational and he's definitely prone to that - on no planet was last weekend's back row a good idea, and Dombrandt's exclusion from the EPS when many of our big carriers were out or doubtful was plain barmy. His biggest weakness has been a failure to correct some long running sores - mental flakiness, SH and Daly at 15 being blindingly obvious ones.
Hask and robshaw sing eddies praise good enough for me
 
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