Out thought, out fought and out played

Well the England grand Slam dream crashed and burned yesterday as Wales totally dominated the match to run away at 30 : 3.
It was a match where the Welsh showed that passion combined with experience is a very potent mix as they completely destroyed the England side in all aspects of the game. They also 'gamed' the referee beautifully over the scrum decisions and left England with an awful lot of questions to answer.
In the end I believe England will learn from this, that they will come back and that this is a lesson they badly needed in what it's like to play in a partisan atmosphere with a team carried on a wave of enthusiasm. They failed to close down the Welsh attack and their own initiatives looked clumsy and predictable. Gone were the last few matches of brilliant, competent defence as the Welsh were able to punch through with ease particularly in the second half.
Was there anything England could have done to turn things around?
Well they could have changed things around in the rucks and mauls when it became obvious that the Welsh had their lack of numbers sussed and were getting their in strength to keep the ball moving forward in a straight line. A little more disciple in the line outs (again we lost far too many)  and a lot more savvy in the scrum. Still that's what coaches are for and experience will bring. So long as the lessons really are learned...

Viva Italia!

Well if England ever needed proof that there are no easy games in international Rugby nor that they are destined to win at the Millennium Stadium Cardiff because they beat the team that beat Wales previously then yesterdays match hopefully will have knocked that out of them. That's not to say England were awful, they weren't, they produced some very good play at times, though looked terribly flat in their lines and lacked ruthlessness at critical moments. A series of unforced errors in kicking and a lack of discipline in tackling and marking didn't help either as they allowed Italy to dominate play at various times. Indeed the only try of the match came from Italy, all England's points came from penalties harking back to the days of Johnny Wilkinson and the grinding tactics of the past.
Even so, as I alluded too, this may have been a good thing for England giving them pause for thought and improvement. It may (though this is more unlikely) make Wales more complacent at Cardiff as they will look at England's performance and think 'well they can be beaten easily'
That said, the England starting line up will not be the one that walked out against Italy and I think that this is the year of an English Grand Slam. I just hope yesterdays poor performance will have knocked the arrogance out of England, because if they go into Cardiff with the belief that they can beat anyone, they'll lose and probably lose badly.

♫ When Irish eyes are crying ♪

Another day another England victory, though this was a far harder test than Scotland at home. England had not won in Dublin for ten years and our record against the Irish in recent years has not been that great, though the Welsh still can be considered our hoodoo team in the Six Nations. Still this was a (relatively) inexperienced England side (250 caps) vs a more experienced Irish one (500 caps) yet it didn't show at all in a scrappy first half not helped by the weather which led to a lot of handling errors though mostly on the Irish side of things. One major area of failing though for England was the line up throws, for some reason or other the communication skills were not so great yesterday and there were a lot of unforced errors though the Irish were unable to capitalise on them. Still England led at half time by 0 to 6 courtesy of some well taken penalties.
The second half started badly as a series of unforced errors led to Ireland getting three points back on the board followed up by equalising the score after James Haskell was given a yellow card for hitting the ball with his foot when attempting to leave a ruck. At this point with Haskell off the pitch for ten minutes you'd suspect a game change opportunity for Ireland and indeed they got one with England suddenly putting the lock down with two more penalties and an almost try for Tuilagi leaving the score at Ireland 6 : 12 England. It was a scrappy match and Ireland can complain about key injuries on the pitch, though they certainly could consider themselves lucky that Cian Healy remained on the pitch after a vicious stamp on an England players ankle during a first half ruck.
So a good victory for England, grinding out a result against an Irish side which dominated the possession, though did not look like scoring any tries and indeed very rarely looked threatening or able to gain ball possession in England's 22'. A mark of a good side is its ability to grind out results when the conditions or opposition make it necessary. This England side are not a great side yet, but it looks quite promising.