poyntonshark wrote:Except, for a change, plan A was a decent plan, just the tiny matter of having the wrong part at the beginning of the chain. I don't actually think Youngs was terrible, but he can no longer play the game with the pace that England needed, that much was obvious after 20 minutes. Yes it would be a big deal to bring Randall on, but if you are not going to trust him you may as well pick Danny Care on the bench. I also thought Simmonds and Ludlam put in a decent shift, but England needed a big bulldozing unit somewhere. Again obvious early on. (As has been said, obvious before kick-off). Scotlands defence was superb, we shouldn't be surprised, they had the best defence last year too. England needed someone to challenge them physically with ball in hand.
Not all dom and gloom, I liked England's intent to use the backs much more than of late, unfortunately for Sale Manu is the player that will make a difference there and EJ will surely waste no time bringing him back in.
It worries me that Jones thinks the line can only be broken with a big runner, and so England are treading water until Manu's fit. The ball was kicked away by the outside backs far too often, which can only have been a directive from the top, as they're not the sort of players to do that instinctively, and "kick the pill to the opposition" has been one of his genius tactics for away games for a long time, he's just had to move it further down the line since Captain fantastic got injured.
Two things struck me yesterday. Firstly Our England returnees fared better than the Quins ones. Lynagh has been out of form for a while, but Northmore was much lesser a player than when he went into camp (and was also hoofing the ball away needlessly at times). By contrast Raffi and Bevan looked like they had a point to prove.
The other thing was the speed of service from all the 9s was vastly superior to Youngs' ponderous delivery, and their vision was far better, including Care, for all his messing about at the back of the scrum. He wouldn't make the bench for Sale, and wouldn't be first choice at a lot of other clubs, but for Jones he's indispensable. That's indicative of a pretty sizeable problem for England.