100% thatâs why youâd fancy em
.they can creep into it with no pressure and still be fresh as daisyâs
Not the first though. Of course McCall has âdominatedâ but there always should be a shiny English coach who is flavour of the week. I think itâs strange given his relationship to the Eddie Jones era. It seems a bit like Scott Johnson, no?
Yeah it was a shit appointment but not a surprising one IMO
Who else could they have hired really at that short notice?
Might prove to be a wise decision but their recruitment policy has looked fairly stupid considering they fired Lancaster Farrell and catt after last RWC
Best outhalf I ever saw play in the flesh.
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He was very good when he came on but I clearly have an agenda. Big talent, I think the temperament is questionable but maybe he he is gonepast that. Brilliant rugby player.
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I donât know, which is rather the point.
There doesnât appear to be many innovative English coaches out there. Maybe they shot their load in the early 2010s with Farrell/Lancaster.
They should have a conveyor belt of coaches given the opportunities there.
To me itâs a problem in English rugby generally. Thereâs an argument to be made that you are an image of your premier club side. They had that with Leicester and arguably havenât since. The Wasps era basically passed them by as Edwards went to Wales (absolutely batshit mental that the RFU could not pay him to coach them). The Sarries era converted to England was so so and arguably the problem.
England just donât appear to have ever really had a proper vision for professional rugby. Steve B is like Martin Corry being appointed captain after Martin Johnson. It firs a self image, not a real philosophy.
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Had.it.allâŚprobably too good looking really
A cracking player but he is as much to blame for his own failures as anyone else. He spent some of his prime years arsing about Melbourne with Beale and OâConnor partying.
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South Africa will win the World Cup, quite comfortably
Met him.once. He had that aura of a lad you could drink with all evening until at some point he smashed you over the head. What a player though. Took the ball flatter than any outhalf Iâve ever seen.
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Fantastic.
If he was Irish it would not have gone the direction it did with England.
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A pleasure to watch. His talent was never really valued. I saw a picture of him during the week with Willie le roux they played with wasps together and if you were an attacking full back like WLR then you fairly appreciated cipriani
Good post. You ignored probably their most consistent side after sarries though and that was Exeter. Donât know why Baxter was never really in the mix.
He had a great vision for Exeter and coached it and stuck to it for a decade and eventually won the leagueâŚget it wide early and get big runners in wide channels and let the front 3 buy you time thenâŚhe did it with all sorts of players, mainly unfashionable sorts who bought in wholeheartedly to the systemâŚmaybe the fact he did it mainly with lesser players was a sign that âstarsâ wouldnât buy into such a rigid (even if it looked and felt exciting) system âŚmaybe they wrote not selfless enough to play the plan he had
Either wayâŚhe had a vision and took a decade to make it work. Thatâs what england need âŚbaxters plan has run out of legs now because he didnât adapt in time and too many teams have copied it âŚid say his face does not fit at all tho
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One of my bestiesâŚa fella I played football hurling rugby and liqueur with , got royally shafted in the premiership merry go round this season. A great lad who would add value in any environmentâŚhe got picked up by the Fijians a few weeks ago and had a great day today and added his bit to that I have no doubtâŚa turk from KanâŚgood luck and thanks
The 2007 build up was horrifically bad. Scotland dished out a good 10 point beating in Murrayfield too. Namibia and Gerogia then had us on the wrack come the tournament. There were fears we were in for a repeat in 2011 when we lost all 4 warm-up games and stumbled over USA. But thankfully we clicked the following weekend against the Aussies and made it to aâŚâŚâŚquarter-final.
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Fair. I probably ignored them because of the biases generally there.
Itâs like Chris Robshaw. A good player who deserved a lot of England caps. Was he a captain though? He looked a lot like what England wanted from their captain or coach. Baxter and others donât fit the image.
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The most wasted opportunity in the history of Irish rugby. That performance in the QF was a disgrace.
Kidney did a lot of great things for Irish rugby generally but that was almost unforgivable.
Look at the squad that was available and fit.
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Wales were very good on the day too. You could sense towards the end of the pool stages that they actually had a really good young team coming. Kidneys reign was effectively over after that defeat. The 2012 and 2013 6 nations were poor. 2013 was a disaster in fact. We had about two promising performances in 2012/13 when Zebo and Gilroy lit it up against Argentina and Wales. That all culminated in losing to Italy though.
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Defeat will always be okay if the performance/ingredients were reasonable. Thatâs why I donât really have an issue with 2015- we lost the core of the first XV.
If we had lost to Wales in 2011 by giving it a proper game then I wouldnât have been as disappointed. The squad available that day was top class and we didnât turn up.
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Jeez Iâm still fucking pissed off about 2011
2015 was bad but we were beaten by a team who just hit their straps in an unreal way