A weekend of glorious results

The All Blacks beat England. No surprises there, but the All Blacks were far from their best all round (if they'd played like this against Wales, they'd have lost) and England still got thumped 32-6. They still didn't concede a try against the home nations, and England gained the dubious honour of being the only side to score in the second half against them.

Bad as the ABs were, England were worse. The margin of defeat, on another day, would have been worse too - the ABs butchered a couple of tries, and Dan Carter left his kicking boots behind and missed about 4 penalties and 2 conversions. If he'd been on song, and if the squad as a whole had been, there could easily have been an extra 20+ points on the score line. The tried to play a disruptive, aggressive game. There's nothing wrong with that, and it did seem to disrupt the All Blacks' rhythm too, but it led to them giving up a horrible number of penalties, and to having no less than 4 players sin-binned (one possibly harshly, but 3 dead cert sin bins). The AB line out wobbled but held, the AB scrum, particularly in the last 20 minutes, was a thing of power, technique and beauty. My comments last week about the SH ELVs making players fitter seems to have been born out in this match too - in the last 20 the ABs just ran rings around England.

Is there anything positive to take from this performance? No, not really. Even when presented with the chance of points from a restart on a platter, they didn't manage it. They had a couple of other moves that looked OK but then fizzled to nothing as players went off their feet and the like, or just delivered slow ball. You would have to say that a decent side would have beaten the ABs on today's performance. South Africa or Australia would have stuffed them, Wales would have won. England whimpered.

Wales, on the other hand, were glorious. They too missed 3 penalties and butchered a couple of chances at tries, but they were still good enough to hold on, and to deserve the win. With about 3 minutes to go, I was wondering if they were good enough to run in another try and get the 15+ point margin of victory to raise them to world #4. It was the Aussies that scored that last minute try, but Wales were still sufficiently fit and sufficiently confident to defend for the next phase of play, and come away with the victory.

That's not to say Wales don't have room to improve. Their line out was poor (not quite shocking, but definitely poor) and actually gave away 7 points. Some of the individual players have areas of improvement... Andy Powell had a good game, but there is definitely room for improvement. Ryan Jones had a good game too it's worth saying. There was a lot of OMG he's lost it after the first match. But he played well last week and a blinder this week.

It would have been nice for Wales to win big and get into the top 4, but you would have to say that the ABs, SA, Australia and Wales are the 4 form sides of world rugby. What do they all have in common? They are creative. They go out to play and win, rather than grinding out a  "not losing." They are fluid and (mostly) smart in attack - making good decisions about when to pass, when to offload and when to go to ground. They are, by and large, ALL capable of all three skills too. In defence they are all skilled and smart too. All of their players know how to hit a ruck, defend the ball, steal the ball, and at least as importantly know when to do these things. Generally speaking they make their tackles, and when the don't complete the tackle, they slow the player down and a team mate adjusts to finish the job off. Their defences can be breached - they're human and make mistakes, and they can run out of numbers eventually as well, but their defences are fundamentally clean (unlike England's), fast and efficient.

I've mentioned this before, but I think the Guinness Premiership is to blame for England's woes, whilst the Magner's League and Super-14's are also to be credited with Wales' resurgence and the might of the Tri-Nations. The Magner's League should also help Ireland and Scotland - but Ireland is getting old and needs to rebuild, Scotland is coming out of a rebuilding phase and looked good against SA for example... so it might be helping them at last.

What's the difference? Relegation. Sure, relegation can manufacture excitement in a huge range of matches in the last week of the season (at least sometimes). But it encourages teams to make sure they don't lose rather than making sure they attack and try to win. Losing bears with it the spectre of relegation after all. Wasps may be the exception to this rule - they start badly, get to a position of having to win everything, and so when they get the last 4 and the other sides have to change mind-sets to winning, they're already there, used to playing that way, and so doing a great job of it. This year, it might not take, but it still might. In the Super-14s and the Magner's League there's no risk of relegation, so the players go out and attack. There are definitely matches that are rendered more or less meaningless thanks to this, but as a grounding for test matches, it's great. Test matches don't have relegation after all, they're one-off (even if they're part of a bigger tournament they're still really one-off matches for long term impact) and they're winner takes all.

There is another issue, I believe. If you were to look at the GP sides (and the Top-14 sides in France to a lesser extent) and write up a team sheet of the best players on current form - forget injury and nationality here - how far do you think you'd have to go to find a home player? I don't know the Top-14 well enough to be sure, but I think they'd have quite a few in the first team. In the GP? There are places (inside centre for example) where I'm not sure they'd make the THIRD choice team. I wonder how it feels taking the park for your country knowing, however deeply you bury it, you're not the best in your position in your domestic competition? There are players, for sure, that could go back home and compete for their national side (Jack, McAllister, James, Peel etc.) but there are enough players that are past it really (McDonnell, Hayman etc.) or never really challenged at the highest level (Braid, Hamilton) who are here now and would make either the first or second team in most people's eyes.

Should Jonno go?

The English press are starting to sniff blood in the water around the England Team manager and, unusually cautiously, starting to bite and snap at him.

Let's be honest - being hammered this weekend is well on the cards. New Zealand have a tighter defence and a better attack than South Africa, and England don't have obvious alternatives in most of the positions where they most need them (12 and 13 being a possible exceptions in the short term, and maybe the injury to Flutey will help make that decision).

If New Zealand do the business and win their grand slam (it is possible England will win, but I'd put my money on a hammering thanks, the bookies are giving unattractive odds (6/4 on England not scoring a try, and 10/1 on them not scoring a single point!) then that's too early, really, for the sharks to go into a feeding frenzy.

However, how about come March? Where do England have to finish to assuage the sharks? On this month's performances England will lose to Wales, France and probably Ireland. They stand a decent chance of losing to Scotland too. Could they lose to Italy? Yes, actually. I don't think they will, but they really could. Is 4th in the 6N enough to save Jonno? Is 5th enough to see him pushed? Last would almost certainly be enough to see him pushed or jump.

One thing that those who start this frenzy will have to consider is who will replace him? Jake White is a possible candidate, but there aren't many others out there. Then you have to wonder who would do better with the available tools. England were playing with inexperienced (at test level) players from 6-15. One of South Africa's not particular senior players came on as a replacement and had more caps on his own than ALL of England's back line. That makes it hard to judge what's going on and who is to blame. Yes, it's easy to say that Cipriani is as fault for the charge-downs, but he's getting service from a scrum-half that isn't used to the pace, and his outlet, whilst a club colleague and so there's some understanding there, is also new to the international stage. That puts extra pressure on the player.

The back-line has talent, but little or no chance of firing against the experienced, powerful, and well organised defences they've faced recently, nor against the better ones they'll face in the spring.

The tight-five should work better, they've got more experience, but they seem to have a model to play to - pods and standing shallow. A few of them have good running skills and good passing skills, but mostly they trundle and slow things down. Australia was defending rucks they couldn't win with one player to England's four (thanks to the pods) giving them three extra defenders, and they were STILL slowing the ball down. When you're playing sides that can think on their feet, where the forwards run good lines, can offload and pass (and that's all of them, or almost all of them) you're going to struggle.

English rugby might think they deserve to be the best in the world - but in the grand scheme of things English rugby just isn't good enough. It plays to a model that was tired in 2003 and has been swept aside in 2008. The defences and the attacks cope with England's style of play and chew it up and spit it out. Until England change and learn rather than look back at past glories, they're stuffed. If Jonno can't deliver that, and perhaps here his icon and RWC winner image is a hinderance, England either need someone that can, or to fall into mediocrity as, as a proud Welsh person, I think they should.

They're just better than us

The big three Southern Hemisphere sides that is.

Wales for 40 minutes of almost flawless rugby on their part, stayed even with an All Blacks side that didn't look quite settled - as many All Blacks sides haven't in first halves this year. But when the All Blacks stepped up from a rusty first gear to a comfortable second gear, and Wales fell back a little from their flawless best, the difference in class was obvious. The All Blacks said before hand that this would be their sternest test, and I think they were right - Wales looked like they were pushing them close for half the match and didn't really look out of sorts, just a poorer side, in the second.

England, on the other hand, were roundly, soundly and thoroughly beaten. They looked poor against a South African side that had stuttered against Wales and Scotland, and fell to their heaviest ever defeat at home. Oh dear. Perhaps they will end rather lower in the 6N than I expected if they don't turn it around soon.

But why? I think the ELVs, in particular the SH set of them, is making the difference more obvious. The SH-ELVs have lead to faster games, more running, fast taps instead of kicks at goal and the like. This is leading to fitter players, and so when you give the McCaws, Burgers and Smiths of the rugby world the time to catch their breath with the kicks they're even more dominant. It has led, too, to better defending. Because you might be out of place and alignment with a free kick, everyone has to play a stronger role in defence wherever they are. Sure, a winger will usually skin a prop for pace still, and you have you better and worse tacklers on the side, but all of the players on the SH sides understand the defensive patterns of the whole team and can adapt to it and they will attempt to defend, whether successful or not, and against the NH sides they usually manage it. On the back of this better defensive understanding comes two things - better ball retention and better understanding as well in attack. Now, in fairness, both of these elements have more or less been there for all of the time I've watched rugby, but when you watch the internationals it is basically only Wales that look inventive enough from the NH to trouble the SH sides (I think they might beat Australia on the basis of their first half), and that is due to their speed and running lines being better.

The SH sides are beatable of course - but it requires a speed of thought and action on both attack and defence that the SH-ELVs enhance and the NH-ELVs don't. They're making the gulf bigger, and unless someone realises it and changes the ELVs they won't get closer I suspect.

Worst test match ever?

It's hard to know what to say about the Ireland v New Zealand match. For most of the match it was error-strewn. There were times that the referee made some odd decisions - in particularly to deny Sivivatu a try - but mostly it was the players conspiring to not play well, the players on both sides.

In fairness most of the All Blacks only made one or two mistakes, but, most unusually, they all did, or almost all of them. The Irish were more error-prone, and largely because of that couldn't really mount serious pressure on the All Black try line - even when they got down there they didn't really threaten because they knocked-on, gave up penalties or gave up the ball.

The All Blacks only played well for about 15 minutes, but it was 15 minutes that gave them a penalty try and two more conventional tries. It also gave them a stupid piece of commentary about the penalty try. Would a try probably have been scored? Yes. Not certainly, but probably. Did a penalty offence prevent this? Yes. Is a penalty try therefore the right result? Yes, absolutely. The yellow card to go with it seemed harsh, but then for something between a punch and shove Lawrence was interested in whether a yellow card was harsh enough, so the yellow card wasn't that bad in that context.

The All Blacks deserved to win. They made fewer mistakes, they dominated the set piece, they kicked better, they received the kicks more accurately and with more intent. But OMG this was a bad, bad game.

If the All Blacks play this badly they're in risk of losing to Wales to next week. It sounds unlikely but good to say that.

England exposed

Australia beat England 28-14 a few minutes ago. Being Welsh, I'm happy, loving New Zealand as much as I do, I'm not delighted - the two teams I love to hate clashing is always hard to know what is going on emotionally.

But, England were really woeful. Allegedly England have an advantage at the break-down because of "lax" SH refereeing. Australia won the penalty count... England have an alleged advantage at the scrum. The scrums creaked and groaned and went a bit this way, a bit that, but in the 63rd minute Australia shoved England off their own put in in dramatic style and won a penalty that stretched it out to 21-14.

Australia always had the edge in experience, and it showed. They had a clear edge in class too - England did have highlights: Armitage had a good to excellent game at full back, Croft looked good at blind-side. But, that was about it. Cipriani and Flutey had moments of brilliance, but mostly looked average and in Cipriani's case moderately often looked poor, particularly when kicking at the posts. I wouldn't be surprised to see him dropped for next week, and that might just have Flutey dropped with him if the thinking is about combinations.

Australia dominated the lineout, their defence looked strong and organised most of the time, and they won the battle of the breakdown too.

Comparing this match to yesterday's is always hard. Australia are a much better team than Canada. But Wales looked disjointed with what was largely their second choice team, England looked only marginally better with their first choice team.

The final point: England only conceded 10 penalties. Australia conceded a similar number. However, England conceded 8 in kickable positions and all but 1 was kicked. Australia I think only conceded 5 in kickable positions, and only 2 were scored (one wasn't even kicked and trying to trick George Smith into giving them an extra 10 metres was always destined to fail).

Can England improve enough to challenge South Africa and New Zealand? No, to be brutally honest. Can they improve enough by February to challenge in the Six Nations? Unlikely. I can see them losing to Wales, France and Ireland on the basis of what we've seen so far.

Were Wales Wheelie Woeful? (With apologies for the terrible pun)

Wales beat Canada last night, but it was far from the polished, high-scoring, free-flowing match that many expected.

However, if you consider Wales had precisely 3 players from their first choice 15 last week starting (and James Hook who was probably unlucky not to have started last week) and had, I think, no less than 4 19-year old players in the 22 is it all bad?

Wales' second and third string players aren't as good as New Zealand's second and third string players. Well there's a shock. If you have a team that is completely disrupted, and formed of new players and players who have largely been out of international selection for a year or two (for various reasons) and you throw them all out together can you really expect them to gel and perform at their best? Maybe if they're All Blacks, but apparently not if they're Wales (or just about anyone else in the world). Did Wales see some positives? Yes. Halfpenny was good again. Daffydd James was good on the other wing - 3 good wingers is better than 2. Biggar stepped in far earlier than expected and played fairly well. Sometime Steve Jones is going to either step aside or be pushed - Biggar isn't quite the polished article yet, but he's getting there. Wales, with a rather baby-faced front row totally dominated at scrum time, and although there were hiccoughs in the line out, they overall won that battle too. OK, Canada aren't England, SA, NZ for that contest, but they're not a waste of space in those areas either. The key players for 5 years time have some experience now.

The breakdown started badly, but got better. There's clearly work to do there, but by the end of the game it was pretty one-sided.

One player, I'm afraid, picked out my particular opprobrium. That would be Stoddard, the full back. I never played at full back, but my understanding of the role is that, when they have the ball he hangs back as a last line of defence and to sweep up kicks through. Stoddard did that side OK. On attack the full back chooses times and lines to enter the back line to either create an overlap, exploit space, and usually create a different angle. On that he failed, dismally. I know he scored once, but he entered the line and promptly ran players out of space, then passed when they were already teetering on the side-line. Once or twice, of course, everyone will do that, but this was time after time after time. It was notable that Halfpenny's tries didn't include a touch from Stoddard for example... and the winger had the room to score.

Wales also have a play that needs to be written out of the play book - a big left-to-right move with a big gap between 10 and 12. South Africa poaching and intercepting is one thing. When Canada do it, to almost exactly the same play, you have to start thinking that it's rather too easy to read and disrupt don't you?

I'm not totally disheartened by this performance. I'd far rather Wales had won comfortably and looked good doing it of course. But they did win and there are positives in there as well as some experience for younger potential players of the next decade. Not really woeful then.

Wales disappointed, Scotland destroyed

After yesterday's matches Wales as a whole will be disappointed. South Africa, the world champions remember, were there for the taking. If Stephen Jones had kicked his goals, if James Hook hadn't thrown that pass, if any of the three/four chinks that Wales made in the South African defence had turned into tries (and at least two of them could have been on a different day) then Wales would have scored a historic second-ever win over South Africa, and you would have to say would have thoroughly deserved it - in most facets of the game (lineout being an obvious exception) Wales were better on the day. 20-15 the other way would have been a fairer score.

Whilst it is disappointing, it is also good news. Playing South Africa down there, albeit with a much weakened team, Wales were destroyed this summer. In a few months they turned that around and almost took the win. Being the number 6 team in the world and losing to the number 2 team is not a disgrace. Most of the new boys worked very well - in fact most commentators have Andy Powell winning his first cap as the man of the match: personally I would have put Lee Byrne there, but Andy Powell did play a blinder. Lee Halfpenny lined up against Habana and looked comfortable too.

Whilst Wales are disappointed, they have more than enough positives to move forwards. They have a reasonable chance to take Australia you'd have thought after this performance, particularly given how close Italy pushed the Australians.

Scotland on the other hand have no such positives to take out. They fielded probably their best team against what is probably the weakest All Black team (at least on paper) I've ever seen - including mid-week matches when they were played on tour. The back row had 5 caps or something stupid like that between them. One of the props was coming back off injury, the other was winning his first cap. Rockococo is hardly a bad player, but he was coming back off a long injury lay off. 13, 14, 15 were either debutantes or had a cap or two at most. Boric at 5 was winning his 5th (I think) cap, maybe fewer, but certainly less than 10. Even Stephen Donald at 10 is relatively new to the international stage.

Now, of course, being picked to play for New Zealand means they're pretty good. All Black teams might be, as this one was, weak on experience but they're not weak on talent. The players went out and looked like an All Black team. They hammered into the tackles, they hit the break-downs and stole ball when they could, disrupted the other side's ball most of the time when they couldn't steal. By and large they didn't really create that much direct scoring, but they were, in true New Zealand style, devastating off turn over ball, and they created the turn overs too. When running they ran in support and were there for the offloads, the pop-up passes and so on. Their new prop was really the only player that looked to struggle, and he didn't look bad really, just he was struggling against someone who is currently one of the better props in Europe on recent form.

What positives are there for Scotland? Well they scored first. They didn't concede 100 points which against the top-flight choices you would have to say they could have done.

There are times when you would have to say the best test rugby in the world is the NZ Probables v the NZ Possibles. Currently New Zealand aren't quite that dominant in depth - particularly at lock and prop. But that New Zealand B team looked good enough that I'd put a penny or two on them against any of the Northern Hemisphere sides.

I'd also like to comment, again, on Wayne Barnes. Is he the most unsympathetic referee in the world? He pinged people for not rolling away a lot. One of the more memorable occasions the tackler released the person he tackled and put his hands flat on the floor. It's true he didn't roll away. It's also the case that the tackled player was lying across his head and shoulders and he did as much as any reasonable person might expect to NOT interfere with the play of the ball - which is, explicitly, the reason they're expected to roll away. Stupid, stupid penalty to blow for. Apparently Mr. Barnes also interprets "must not go to ground" as "must not be driven to ground by the actions of another player" which seems really harsh. There are laws that say "if you're on the ground, you can't play the ball" and it says you must not fall on or dive over the ball or another player, but not that you can't be driven off your feet. Now, he penalised both sides for this, but for crying out loud, it's not in the rule book, it's a bizarre interpretation of the laws.

It would be fair, I think, to say, that despite the hand-rubbing glee of some commentators, New Zealand adjusted better than Scotland to the whistle-happy Mr. Barnes. South Africa actually adjusted badly to a much more reasonable referee and are likely to be in worse trouble when they have an English referee. But those same commentators saying "Oh, Northern Hemisphere referees are much tougher and will blow the SH teams off the park" need to remove their blinkers. English referees are being stupid about it. Referees from elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere are much closer to the Southern Hemisphere interpretation of the "off your feet" laws than the English referees are. The only difference is that what the NH still considers a penalty offence because of some bizarre belief they "earn" a kick at goal, the SH still gives as a free kick and encourages flowing play - and more tries as a consequence.