Scotland, ha, ha, yawn

I didn't get to watch all of Scotland v England. I did record it, but having caught the game over my shoulder whilst presenting at a conference in Second Life, I don't intend to catch it all.

Scotland seem to have given up on even trying to score tries. This is a sad, but accurate, reflection on their level of ability at the moment, and further proof that there are many ways in which you can play and even win at rugby. England seemed to get sucked in to playing the kind of game that Scotland wanted. If you plan to win games by kicking penalties, that's actually easier to do when you have the ball and can be somewhere in the opponent's half. Whilst there are an equal number of ways for attackers to be penalised, it certainly seems far more common for defenders to handle in the ruck, enter from the side and so on - that would be because the attacking side are usually going forward so entering from the back is a shorter journey than going round to enter from the side, and the ball will usually be placed so it is accessible without a sneaky hand.

So, why did England kick the ball away so much? Given the wind and the rain, it's an understandable tactic a few times, to try out the back three, but when the ball is well handled time after time after time surely you change something? Since you can't change the fact that Southwell is having a great game in lousy conditions, and you can't change the weather, you change the fact that you kick the ball to him. It's not rocket science.

My post last week now looks prophetic. Scotland not only could beat England (leaving them out of the running for the championship as well, despite the stupidly enthusiastic pundits of a fortnight ago) they did. So, kudos to Scotland.

For my next prophecy... Ashton will go. I think it's a shame, he strikes me as a nice man surrounded by a team that doesn't really believe in him. Rugby needs more nice men at the top, although both sides of the Tasman will have one come the Tri-Nations (this is all based on what I see of them on TV etc. never having met any of them btw). But, Gatland (who doesn't come across as all that nice: passionate, dedicated, very skillful, but not nice) must surely be the model to look at? The nice, or not, is more or less irrelevant: a good coach nudges, suggests, cajoles, brow-beats, whatever, his team into being a team and playing together, and playing to execute (in broad terms at least) the plan he puts out for their defeat of the opposition.

Some of that is about looking at your best tools and using them. Some of it is about teaching them your way of doing it. All of it is about empowering the players to go and execute the plan with their full understanding. Whether the players don't trust Ashton, or he doesn't communicate to them well... doesn't really matter. England have done the opposite of Wales. Their self-belief, belief in the coach and their cohesiveness as a team have gone poof. Ashton must either find a new crop of players who believe in him, or he will have to go.