England v Ireland, August 27th 2011

Five things we learned about England

My first post on this blog is going to follow the time-honoured and admittedly rather boring 'five things' format.

1. We finally have a centre partnership that might work

Tindall had one of his best games in an England shirt with Tuilagi outside him, and they seemed to be on the same wavelength in both attack and defence. Tuilagi brings energy to the game, his defence looked solid throughout and while the try resulted from Earls' poor defence he looked sharp in taking it. Definitely an improvement on Hape, and Tindall at 12 looked good too.


2. Quick ball can make any scrum-half look good

Bit of a cliche, but we definitely saw this in the Ireland match. Wigglesworth had a reasonable game, but this was mostly because the forwards had a better idea of how to play the breakdown, they got numbers in and managed to secure some quick ball. With the forwards that we have, we should be aiming to secure quick ball more often, and more efficiently, than we seem to be able to do at the moment.


3. Heads-up rugby is not yet out of fashion in England

Both England tries were scored not from planned moves but from players (Tindall mainly) actually looking up at what was in front of them and responding accordingly. Tuilagi exploited the space well for his try, while Tindall's grubber kick for Armitage's try was gloriously unexpected (I do wonder if it worked purely because it took everyone by surprise, including the Irish players on the field). England are often accused of playing boring, 10-man, up the jumper rugby and all too often that accusation is justified, but it's so clear from the tries against Ireland that behind that stereotype is a creative side desperate to be unleashed. Let's hope MJ and coaches don't coach that out of the players completely.

4. Play the ref!!!

England were abysmal at playing the ref... constant infringements at the breakdown, particularly coming in from the side of the ruck and not rolling away in the tackle. It's another time-honoured cliche, but England are liable to throw away perfectly good winning positions by giving away soft penalties. Ireland didn't take full advantage of this, particularly in the sin-bin period, so we got away with it. Against the SH sides, we won't.

5. Cut the error count

Along with the penalty count, England's error count was a serious cause for concern. I lost count of the number of times we turned the ball over in contact, knocked on or threw dodgy passes. Sadly, Wilkinson was to blame for some of the most glaring errors, especially in the tactical kicking. I'm hoping that this can still be attributed to rustiness, and luckily we weren't punished for many of them, but that won't be the case in the World Cup.

Still, it was a thoroughly enjoyable match after the despair and frustration of the Wales match, and gave me some hope that we're not going to crash and burn horribly in the World Cup.

Comments and constructive criticism much appreciated!!!