Quote:
Originally Posted by JonnyBGood
It's not in the pack that England have problems though. It's the shockingly poor kicking and appalling back-line that means England are a substandard rugby team. Also as much as I disliked Woodward he was a coach who knew his team, Andy Robinson doesn't know his arse from his elbow.
|
Well their rucking and mauling are nowhere near as good and doesn't provide quick and secure ball like before. Admittedly this can't be put down to losing half of our pack as it can be worked on in training but it certainly created the initial problems with it. The lineout is hit and miss as Thompson's throwing is appalling and you definitely can't count 100% on winning the ball let alone getting quick, clean ball from it.
Hodgson's kicking out of hand is good, his goal kicking on the other hand is awful. I thought the Hodgson Berkley pairing worked well today, but the sooner Jonny is back the better. The backs are berift of any sort of imagination whatsoever right now, the first try today was because the French defence fell asleep and wasn't drifting across, and the second because Liebenberg got involved when he didn't have to and didn't wrap the tackler up so he couldn't release.
With Andy Robinson i just hope he's not still coach come the World Cup in 2007. With us playing how we are now, we won't be successfully defending our crown that's for sure. Still think your description of being substandard is wrong, another day Hodgson and Berkley would've kicked all of them and it would've been a completely different scenario and France wouldn't have come into the game at all.