England vs Wales - 12/08/23

[TopTen2003]

Still not sure Steward is quite the nailed on 15 either. Very good at catching a good box kick, but outside of that? Not seeing an impressive speed burst or boot to supplement his superb aerial work.

I think he's fortunate that right now no one has necessarily put him under great pressure for his place.

Not for this RWC obviously but anyone think Smith could be moulded in a similar way to Beauden Barrett as a 15 option? Smith has the wheels for it but defensively perhaps not ready?

 

[TRF_Olyy]

Still not sure Steward is quite the nailed on 15 either. Very good at catching a good box kick, but outside of that? Not seeing an impressive speed burst or boot to supplement his superb aerial work.

I think he's fortunate that right now no one has necessarily put him under great pressure for his place.

Not for this RWC obviously but anyone think Smith could be moulded in a similar way to Beauden Barrett as a 15 option? Smith has the wheels for it but defensively perhaps not ready?

Carpenter should be looked at in the 6N (training squad, minimum, if not some game time) if he doesn't get second season syndrome,
Debut season and he was excellent from his first game onwards

 

[Jimbo]

Still not sure Steward is quite the nailed on 15 either. Very good at catching a good box kick, but outside of that? Not seeing an impressive speed burst or boot to supplement his superb aerial work.

I think he's fortunate that right now no one has necessarily put him under great pressure for his place.

Not for this RWC obviously but anyone think Smith could be moulded in a similar way to Beauden Barrett as a 15 option? Smith has the wheels for it but defensively perhaps not ready?

I think your over estimating smiths speed he's not slow, very good acceleration but average/poor top end if compared to other FBs and wingers with genuine gas, not to counter the point that Stewart is lacking in that department or should remain with England just don't think Smiths the answer.

 

[Geordie]

Ah, I don't think Arundell is the future though tbh
I'm not on the hype train yet

Nor am I yet.....however I do think if he's brought through right he can be the future. He'll get some good training at Racing aswell.

 

[Ronaway67]

I know it's a world Cup....you dont mess about but in this squad we have a host of youngsters who are the future as opposed to a few old guys who are on the wane.

We may be forced to actually just give the kids the exposure this wc to start rebuilding for the next 6n etc.

Arundell was OK. His defence looks solid, and we know he can attack. He just needs games now.

And some passes in attacking positions.

 

[Geordie]

I think your over estimating smiths speed he's not slow, very good acceleration but average/poor top end if compared to other FBs and wingers with genuine gas, not to counter the point that Stewart is lacking in that department or should remain with England just don't think Smiths the answer.

Hopefully Steward is working with the Loughborough sprint coaches to work on his sprint speed

 

[Smurfy]

Did Billy Vunipola make any yardage? I appreciate that he's coming back from surgery, but even early on in the match when he showed some inclination to be involved he was stopped embarrassingly easily on the gainline. And then he just disappeared. I was impressed with Earls, and when he went to 9 he was excellent, even making a huge carry off a retreating scrum.

 

[Rugbyfan564]

Slade, IMO

Don't think they'd trust another 10 enough to actually get game time, so bring in Slade and have him or Malins as backup 10 vs Chile

Not sure Slade will be wanted back going by the whispers of how he reacted to being left out.

 

[AngloScotsHybrid]

If Owen was in fact removed from the squad, who would be next in line to replace him in the squad?

Henry Slade?

 

[Geordie]

Not sure Slade will be wanted back going by the whispers of how he reacted to being left out.

Really? What did he do?

 

[BPM]

Did Billy Vunipola make any yardage? I appreciate that he's coming back from surgery, but even early on in the match when he showed some inclination to be involved he was stopped embarrassingly easily on the gainline. And then he just disappeared. I was impressed with Earls, and when he went to 9 he was excellent, even making a huge carry off a retreating scrum.

I kind of agree although in Billy's defence, his carries we're quite often off a kick off or a set defence where he was immediately tackled by two or three players. Earl (Ben not Keith Earls) was better at 8 (not 9) though,

 

[BPM]

Really? What did he do?

I don't know, but I'd almost rather the dropped players reacted with some passion and anger than just limply accepting it.

 

[AlRums]

Did Billy Vunipola make any yardage? I appreciate that he's coming back from surgery, but even early on in the match when he showed some inclination to be involved he was stopped embarrassingly easily on the gainline. And then he just disappeared. I was impressed with Earls, and when he went to 9 he was excellent, even making a huge carry off a retreating scrum.

8 carries for 22m

 

[Rugbyfan564]

Really? What did he do?

We don't know but the papers all said he was surprised and his reaction showed his surprise. Just screams he had a meltdown.

 

[Crash Hamster]

* red card...

No-one could have predicted that...

 

[AlRums]

Great try

Oops wrong thread

 

[Welsh Exile]

I've been saying for a while we're both as **** as each other but if our line out even semi functioned today we win that game by 10 plus points. It's a joke. I would say embarrassing but to be fair we've had worse results in the last couple of years. The biggest joke is that Wales and England still have a great chance of getting to a semi final. Neither of us deserve a look in and we wouldn't if we were playing NZ,SA,FRA or IRE

 

[Jimbo]

Mostly fair not entirely sure where a definitive ten point gap comes from when the lineout did function in Englands 22 there wasn't exactly a dominant try scoring line out to pin that on, equally on the evidence we saw if OF was red carded earlier on England might have won by more.

 

[Welsh Exile]

Mostly fair not entirely sure where a definitive ten point gap comes from when the lineout did function in Englands 22 there wasn't exactly a dominant try scoring line out to pin that on, equally on the evidence we saw if OF was red carded earlier on England might have won by more.

I wouldn't put my balls on it so maybe I was being a bit OTT with the certainty of it and 1000% there was a load of other things that could've happened that would've resulted in a worse loss but generally speaking our line out stifled a lot of our play and was amateur at best. I need to watch the game back as was watching in the woods on my phone to be honest.

 

[TRF_Olyy]

Depends if you're on about strictly the lineout or the lineout/maul combined
Cause one of Englands few plus points was how they contained Wales' maul - if you mean strictly the lineout throwing/gathering I think that no matter how many lineouts you retained we'd have kept the maul out
Everything as a unit? Then who knows, I feel like that's too big of a what if as it requires large changes throughout the whole pack rather than just a better hooker