No sorry the only double standard here is from you. All of South Africa's points prior to the tries at the end came from 1 source, scrum penalties. We were knocking the ball on loads that game, often unforced. Their scrum was better than ours but that hurt us because we kept giving them scrum opportunities. Had we not been doing that, they were not scoring points through any other means. Ireland vs England may have been close score wise, in the same way England vs NZ was but there was no way Ireland were still in the game until Slade's try.
Ahahaha, come on... I'm shouldn't justfy that bollix with a response but... How the **** does the source of points matter? Ireland scored from a try and penalties against England, England only scored penalties against South Africa both games were won long before the 66th and 67th minute tries. This sums up how tunnel visioned this all is, England made unforced errors v SA when they were getting battered upfront, but Ireland's errors v England when they were battered were because England were so good, give me a break...
I'd say England are better though. Irish wins were also built off pack dominance. How often have Ireland won when their pack has been beaten? How often has any side?It's a ridiculous claim to make against England when it applies for all sides.
That's not a claim I'm making.
As for not having rugby IQ, Ireland have the worst record of England, Wales and Ireland of being able to win games after being behind at half time. How often have Ireland managed to turn games around once they started slipping away? That drop goal against France about the only example and even then it's dubious (and also would suggest Ireland actually aren't that great for being in that position in the first place).
Again, this isn't really my point, we're obsessed with plan bs and comebacks in this debate but it's not really about that. I'm more talking about games where teams more or less have parity up front, its rare but in this hypothetical game where two teams at their best play its likely. England lost those games in Cardiff last year and Dublin in 2017 with some horrendous half back play. The stupidity that you keep saying "if we can cut this out no one could beat us" isn't an attitude thing, it's a lack of ability and evident in every tight game England play. It'd be like me saying that if Ireland had the best backrow at the world cup rather than one of the worst we'd have reached a final, maybe but we didn't.
Ireland were saying they had the players to contain England in the 6N but didn't. They then said that was a 1 off before getting torn apart again. Ireland were almost scoreless against Wales and marched off the park by New Zealand. We have been contained on occasion but Ireland have been utterly destroyed repeatedly.
Ireland were bad last year, England were bad the year before. International form is fickle, don't know how many times I have to say it... Like before the game in Dublin last year people were saying that only a handful of England players would make the Ireland team and it wasn't contentious. (BOD saying none would was plain idiocy so don't throw that in my face!)
Also it's another double standard where you say England's demolition of New Zealand was more down to New Zealand not being at the races.
Lol, not when it's specifically confined to claims that England dominated NZ but just didn't turn up for the final so got beat.
Ok then, so what about the domination of Australia prior to that? The double domination of Ireland before that? Dominating France? That was 5 games England put in in 1 year that all followed the same pattern and all ended up being very 1 sided affairs. If it was 1 game then it would be a fair point but it was 5 games and for every one there was an excuse to explain away how it meant nothing to England.
Dude, relax, I'm not saying England are a bad side... Buuuuuut for all those wins they won no trophies, they're not unbeatable when they want to be or when they have the right mindset or whatever the narrative is this week. Give England an inch and they'll take a mile which is a very good thing but get into a scrap with them and they're there for the taking. All this said, they should be contenders in everything for the foreseeable future and win a few things and they shouldn't get beaten by anything other than a strong side, of which European will throw out a few.
I must admit I'm somewhat confused then by what you mean by smart generals. I thought we lost in Cardiff because we did stick to the gameplan. We just kept using attacking kicks when they clearly weren't working, so the criticism is we couldn't adjust on the fly. But you seem to be saying that sticking to the gameplan is what smart generals do.
Executing the gameplan is what smart generals do in my opinion, a gameplan is a somewhat malleable thing being able to place less emphasis on what isn't working and more on what is is what I'm talking about. Failing to adjust like England in Cardiff or trying the wrong things like Ireland v Japan are two sides of the same coin, it's doing the wrong thing to try to win a winnable game. It's rare this will make a difference in a game because their are so many moving parts but in the hypothetical game where two teams are perfect, it's something that I think would hurt England more than Ireland, Scotland or Wales. Obviously these three have other weaknesses.
I'm confused.
Ireland are currently riding a losing streak of 23 straight games when they have been behind at halftime by more than one point.
They won two games losing at HT last year.
I'm not sure that that says that sticking to the gameplan is a smart thing for the generals to do. In fact, it shows a complete lack of smart generalship to my mind.
The complexity of the systems these guys are involved in more or less makes it the only option, there's X amount of things any side can do to put points on the board, the challenge is figuring out which of these will work against your current opposition and which won't.
England have shown a lot more tactical flexibility than the other NH sides of late. Schmidt openly said after the WC that he should have had a Plan B (I'm paraphrasing).
Schmidt said Ireland needed to keep developing rather than just trying to perfect what worked in 2018. If you can point out the match where a team completely changed the core of what they were doing, did things they'd never exhibited before and won my opinion might change here but I doubt you can.
Last year, England played a very different style of game against Oz in the quarters (kick the ball away, defend, defend, force mistakes, pounce), to the one they played against NZ in the semis (keep the ball in hand, pass, offload, attack, attack, attack). They are tactically flexible, but they didn't adjust in-game against Wales when they needed to. They will have learned from that experience and I don't see why they can't improve as a team as a result.
Yeah, it's definitely a strength of England's that they can play with or without the ball most of the time. Again, I've never said England won't or can't improve, I've never tried to claim that they're anything worse than one of the best sides in the world in fact.
Again, it was a learning experience and they should improve for it. We'd won our previous two games against SA, so it's not like they were on another strata.
I've no argument that England can be beaten by the other sides, of course they can, any Tier One team can be beaten by any other on their day. Even NZ at their peak 2012-15 still lost some games.
More or less in agreement here.
