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.
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