England Discipline Issues: World Cup 2023
England’s discipline under Steve Borthwick has been well documented. It’s been long accepted that over the last 9 month, a high penalty count and 4 red cards in 10 games showed England were on a downward spiral. The Truth is somewhere in the middle. The cards can’t be ignored, and clearly, there is some failure to keep within the high tackle laws by England. But we also need to focus on the broader disciplinary...
The Anatomy of a Try: Jonny May vs Australia October 2019 Pt 2
Much of the talk before this England Australia game was around the midfield, England opting for a starting 10-12-13 of Farrell, Tuilagi and Slade. Australia opting for Lealiifano, Kerevi and Petaia.Part of Englands decision was to nullify Kerevi (and Petaia) but there was never much in the way of deception around how England would in turn play, it was about going forward both in attack and defence, brute forcing the Australians.Of the...
The Anatomy of a Try: Marika Koroibete – Australia vs Fiji
This years World Cup has got off to a scintillating start. Argentina and France battered each other for 80 minutes, scoring a bunch of brilliant tries along the way. Russia were certainly no push over for a strong Japanese side in the opening game and Fiji nearly caused the upset of the tournament by running Australia closer than the score suggests (yes, I know there’d only been one game at the time but even so). Fitness was...
Chris Robshaw – Corner or Kick?
Watching England’s defeat to Wales was painful. If it wasn’t already obvious I’m an Englishman, and by default an England fan. So waking up this morning it's interesting to see how a lot of the discussion has revolved around Chris Robshaw's decision to kick for the corner and go for the win. So I want to try and look at this objectively, remove the emotional element and hopefully look at that...