He sounds like a child impersonating an adult, so there might be a conspiracy here.
My understanding is that by not committing men when England were down with the ball that meant there weren't rucks which meant it wasn't possible for them to be offside, so they could go past the line of the ball when it was on the ground and cut off potential passing options.
This will be happening across the nation in club rugby this time next week.
If it was worth doing New Zealand would have abused it to death by now, and the rules would have been changed to stop them.
It is probably worth doing if you have no ambition and just want to avoid going down by 60, but anyone else surely wants to contest the breakdown anyway.
Jesus Christ, imagine Tony Pulis Rugby.
"So Tony, tell us about your decision to start props as backs today?"
Gatlandball.
Speaking of which, is he going to go ahead with Wyn Jones as the captain despite him admitting yesterday that he can't control his own kickers?
It happens in Super Rugby from time to time and the answer has always been solid pick and drive with the occasional pop pass off the ground.
Edit: And drive past the ruck on the clean out if the ref isn't calling it.
If you don't contest the ruck, you don't win the ball? Seems self-punishing.
Best used if the opposition is looking to kick for territory, I'd assume. I quite like the idea there.
I think the problem that Dylan Hartley had is that 3 Italian players would go into the tackle, then 2 of them would just quickly get up and roll away - so it wasn't really a single man challenge. I don't know the rule at all, but this seems like a reasonable complaint. But yeah, as Ital said, you 'aint never winning the ball if you don't contest - although it did force England to kick a lot, and thus turnover was achieved (albeit deep in their own half).
Finding French players in there would have been confusing.
You see teams not committing numbers into rucks to make defense easier but they clearly warned the ref they were going to do it. I think the confusion came from there being Italian players in there but they were deemed not to be contesting. Still took too long to sort out though.
Oh yeah, fixedBloody Frenchies.
England would kick even if the Italian forwards started an impromptu performance of Riverdance behind the gain line.
It wasn't even that effective. I can't think of a single time the Italians actually turned it over. It was just a mechanism to kill the game and bring the margin of defeat down from 60 to 20. In fact if England hadn't been dreadful, it would have been 40 anyway.
What do you mean by "hold on to the ball"? Once the tackled player releases the ball backwards... it has to be played, so it's not as if you can just stand there with the ball... you have another set of tacklers coming to hammer you. All it did here was force England to pass directly backwards, rather than sideways, and that lead to a more aimless kicks than usual (which takes some, I admit).
As Queenslander said, there should have been much more pick and drive - I'm baffled as to why England couldn't work that out sooner.
Yeah, it caused confusion because all of a sudden there's no off side so you had Italian players coming round to block the scrum half. The stupid part is how it took them half an hour to work out that you just pick and go, you gain ground every time and force them to commit bodies into a ruck. Which is exactly what happened once they worked it out.
Interesting interpretation though, I think if they hadn't primed the ref ahead of time he'd have called some of the early ones as rucks and pinged them for offside. Quite how it went on for so long without the players sorting it or a message getting onto the pitch I don't know.
The upshot will probably be Ireland winning on points difference/scored unless we utterly hump the Scotch which I don't quite see happening.
Gameplan ruined, him and his captain shown up somewhat, plus we now probably lose on points to Ireland should they win the last game.
Still something of a hissy fit though, not really any need for that.
The St David's day Google image is literally a wooden spoon. Harsh.
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Toronto won their first league game 76-0. It was against the London Skolars, who some people see as the safer long-term London bet, so yeah.
Speaking of shite, lol at that clueless twat 'Madge' making Greg Inglis lollop about on a burst ACL for the best part of an hour (although lol at him calling George Burgess a waste of space). Souths have run that geezer into the ground, and he'll probably be in bits by the end of his contract.
Souths are a disgrace for letting/making Inglis play on.
It was his good knee as well, rather than the trick one that has bothered him for years. When did he last put a consistent season together? 2013? Poor bastard.
My best memories are of him in a Melbourne Jersey.
Well in, Wales.
There was some classic refereeing this morning in the Queensland derby (should have woken up early for that). The referee got in the way of a Brisbane player and stopped him scoring (he looked tackled but whatever), so the next time they were in he allowed the most forward pass you have ever seen. Pleb.
Stone Cold Shaun Edwards.![]()
Pretty much winner takes all today, then. Except Scotland would somehow find a way to fuck it up against Italy.
The Welsh handing it to us is quite amusing, that will have ruined a few evenings in Mountain Ash. Shows what happens when you remember to play both halves.
Really looking forward to the game this afternoon. Hopefully we'll bother to play in the first half.
I have my sister and her Scottish fiancé coming over especially to watch it, what japes. She hates it when I slag off the jocks now as well, whether in his company or otherwise.
My sister, who is English (well, we're half-English but English/British for sport) is married to a Scot and she said to me last night she's less bothered about England winning this and when I queried this the crux of it seemed to be because of Brexit. Daft mare.
We won't thrash them but I'd like us to. Probably going to be very tight, one way or the other.
Nice start Scotland.
Get right in his face, Floyd. Tip the settee over.
Oof, lovely. Lol at the defence, mind.
It's hard to tell whether we've turned it on or Scotland have BOTTLED IT.
I know they've lost a couple of players but the Scotch defence has been woeful, it's like they aren't even bothering in midfield. Finn Russell has also been shit.
In short: lol.
Speaking of sloppy defence...
I'm almost more interested in the atmosphere at chez Floyd right now.
What did he go for ? Was it a "GET in!"? "YAAAAAAAAAS!!"?
Wonderful.
Keep turning the screw.
We'll take the random 5 points now for the GRAND SLAM!!!!
Well that was absolutely splendid. I hope Jimmy is winding the guy by not even being that fussed about it.
Seen a bit of that. England![]()
Is Ian not Scottish?