He was fucking offside. There is no argument.

Back from my corporate jolly to game...some thoughts having not seen any replays or TV. Long-ish post. (Skip to he last 2 paras for the incisive bit)

Twickenham a pain to get to...and into. Ticket entry barriers weren't working, RFU needs to get its act together - pretty crap really. The crowd was far more respectful to the opposition and the kickers. First time I'd been to Twickenham for a test in about 10 years, so credit to the RFU. Atmosphere was great.

Pom tactics and decision making were excellent in the first 30 minutes - crap after that. Thought Farrell had a poor game - zero variation in his game. Underhill was astonishingly good for England and was my MoM.

AB backline was poor until Crotty came on and he seemed to give a lot of solidity. Thought SBW was poor and you wonder how long he'll be in the team. England targeted DMac with the high ball but he did OK and as well as anyone else - he certainly doesn't lack guts, thats for sure. On attack he was probably the most dangerous AB back. Thought our kicking game (inc. DMac) was shite. We looked way more dangerous when keeping the ball in hand.

Retallick & Savea were immense. BBBR utterly owned the Pom lineout, ruck, maul and, well, the whole pitch. Ardie seemed to be everywhere.

Ben Kay and Ugo Monye hosted a post match analysis for the corporate clients which was excellent. No argument that Lawes was offside from them. We then had a Q&A with Itoje and Danny Care.

Itoje & Care seemed good blokes but I was surprised by the complacency in their attitude. They thought that as they had only lost by 1 point they had scored a famous victory. Astonishing attitude in many ways. Hope I never hear an AB talk like that.

All in all, a mistake-strewn game. But we dogged a win - which I sense Hansen will be happy with

Just stuff them.

Please

@majorrage said in England vs All Blacks:

England robbed.

Shit decison. Reverse it and This forum tops porn hub for bandwidth.

Hollow victory for me, Twickenham felt confused

What a load of bullshit. I think you've out marshalled Justin Marshall there. Pretty sad for you.

@no-quarter said in England vs All Blacks:

Bloody French refs

Awesome Saffer TMOs.

Always liked them

@sparky said in England vs All Blacks:

Take the win. Flush the dunny and move on.

Nah. Celebrate fellas. Plenty of young guys in our team that haven’t played England at Twickers and won before.

What I enjoyed was that this test was unlike anything we’ve dealt with this year - conditions, opposition tactics etc - so a great learning for the team.

Crotty on the bench is a waste of a spot

@kiwimurph said in England vs All Blacks:

This will be a proper test of how DMac handles 15.

Yes, Ironically. All those games at 15 he played against Sth Africa, Wales, the Wobbles, Argentina. France and Scotland were a walk in the park....

No more starts for SBW, please.

The last two posts are doing a good job of eroding my confidence

I thought that the whole offside thing was justice for them being offside many other times during the match. They only got called on it because it led to a try. It should have happened several times earlier.

@jc said in England vs All Blacks:

thems some bitter, bitter tears!

@billy-webb said in England vs All Blacks:

Good to see Retallick back in action. You guys missed him in the Rugby Championship (yeah, yeah, I know you still bloody won but still..).
Will be interesting to see how match fit he is. Has he played much since missing TRC?

BRODIE RETALLICK

I’ll take that. Terrible conditions that suited England’s style of game.

Then we dominated their line out and scrum! Amazing comeback from 15-0 down.

Brodie was immense in the line out, had England panicking there. When was the last time you saw a baulk called?

And how good was Ofa at loosehead? Done his WC squad chances to harm there.

Was expecting the TMO to bottle the offside call, glad the right call was made there. Offside all day.

Proper Test match and the good guys won.

My worry is that England have this weird ability to drag other teams down to their shitty game so they can compete.
Hopefully we have learned the lessons from the Lions tour of not getting sucked into their style.
Even Australia playing in their usual manner would have been all over that England side (although they probably would have fucked up the chances just like SA).
One big lesson the Boks learned for everyone else is not to keep pushing the same thing at them even if you think you have dominance in that facet. One thing the attritional club rugby in the UK teaches players is to work out solutions if given time.
Yes, SA had been drawing penalties from the maul and England were on a warning but they switched up the line out to make it difficult to even create the maul instead of putting themselves in the hands of the ref. Was smart.
SA should have changed up to the scrum with Itoje gone and created a new problem for England to solve.