RugbyRebels

Stom wrote:

Puja wrote:

Renniks wrote:
For various different reasons, and some of them maybe stretching “wasted”, but, I think all 5 of these would have improved England at times when they were playing at their best…

Wade
S Armitage
Pennell
Tait
Kvesic

Wade, I will give you. SArmitage made his own choice and it's not really our fault that he thought he was better than the rules. Pennell as well - his best form was at the same time as Brown's and then he chose to stay loyal to Wuss when they went down and gave up any chance of England. Tait seems like an odd call post 2011 and Kvesic is marginal at best.

Puja

Tommy the Tank, surely!

Dan Robson?

Definitely agree on Robson. Otherwise I’m completely in agreement with Puja.

jngf wrote:Even without the (IMO criminal) waste of talent of not selecting Steffon Armitage, Many other quality opensides wasted in past 5 years: Dave Seymore, Matt Kvesvic, Andy Saul and arguably even Tom Wood could all have done a better job in that berth than either Robshaw or Haskell (both of whom were 6.5s at best) imo.

Where do you get this stuff from?

Seymour and Saull were good players but you seemed to be confusing players that weren’t exactly contemporaries. Their careers may have overlapped with Robshaw and Haskell but they were not competing for a place in the squad at the same time.

Armitage was anonymous in the couple of England games he got and then pissed off to France. I’m not sure he was even as good as he was made out to be anyway - a classic of someone who is made better by being absent.

Eastmond was a real shame. He looked electric in his games against the ABs, got the hook in one of them for a structural defensive error, and then just didn't get any more gametime after the other (if I recall correctly). Yes, he's small, but he hits hard, and can do things in attack well beyond most other 12s.

In my view Steff Armitage's physique and conditioning got found out at International level. Although at Prem/Top 14 level he was playing elite professional athletes - he never looked either comfortable or at the races in his couple of hit outs.

Wade would have provided an account so far in credit for yards and scores against the debits of stature in defence he should have been on 50 caps by now. Billy Whizz got found out for height but scored a crucial try in a world cup final.

kvesic should have been given an autumn or 6 nations to stake his claim at some point.

Raggs wrote:Eastmond was a real shame. He looked electric in his games against the ABs, got the hook in one of them for a structural defensive error, and then just didn't get any more gametime after the other (if I recall correctly). Yes, he's small, but he hits hard, and can do things in attack well beyond most other 12s.

Yeah, but he had some other issues, unfortunately, unrelated to his footballing ability.

I still think Eastmond could have been England's 12 for years if he'd managed to sort out his head sooner in life.

Class act on the pitch (when not tackling like an iceman).