Team news for Wales

[Galfon]

33 - 23 , 77 mins.
Biggar conv. his own try.

[Warrior85]

Bit of a joke performance from the ref in the last 15mins

[Galfon]

It's Wales again, with the 2 man adv..
33 - 30 FT, 2nd try for Tip.
Eng lose 2nd half & squander BP and points difference potential.
Poor showing in 2nd half.

[Scrumhead]

True, but O’Keefe really screwed us over there.

[Sandydragon]

Well done, better team won.

[Sandydragon]

True, but O’Keefe really screwed us over there.

No he didn’t. Tuilagi went in there full power and caught North around the neck/chin. That’s a red all day long under the current rules.

[Scrumhead]

Looked to me like he hit his shoulder/right side of his chest and not his head. Didn’t help that he was on his knees by the time Tuilagi got there. Yellow, fair enough. Red absolutely not.

[twitchy]

Weird game.

[Danno]

Weird game.

Very. Looking forward to the MBM more than usual

[Galfon]

Triple Crown winners - that is something not to sniff at.

[Epaminondas Pules]

True, but O’Keefe really screwed us over there.

No he didn’t. Tuilagi went in there full power and caught North around the neck/chin. That’s a red all day long under the current rules.

It wasn’t full power. If anything he pulls out of full power to avoid hitting the falling North and then ends up in a worse position than if he’d just carried through with the tackle.

[fivepointer]

We won and played pretty well in parts. But for the second game in a row our second half (which we lost 13-21) and in particular an awful final quarter left a very unsatisfactory feeling.
At 33-16 we really should have pressed home our advantage and gone for a try BP. It's been really frustrating watching us get in to a position of dominance only to see us meekly surrender the initiative in the closing stages.
On the plus side, it has to be said that Youngs had his best game for....er, a very long time. I thought Sinckler was excellent but should have been subbed well before the 76th minute, Wilson likewise.
Tuilagi's red was harsh. North was brought down by Slade's tackle and Manu could hardly have been expected to alter his angle in a nano second. Some appreciation of the high speed that these incidents play out could have been employed here surely.

[Epaminondas Pules]

We’ve got Daly at fullback and then Slade there from very early on and it takes Wales until 70 odd minutes to actually kick a contestable high ball! Bizarre! Seriously bizarre!

[Epaminondas Pules]

We won and played pretty well in parts. But for the second game in a row our second half (which we lost 13-21) and in particular an awful final quarter left a very unsatisfactory feeling.
At 33-16 we really should have pressed home our advantage and gone for a try BP. It's been really frustrating watching us get in to a position of dominance only to see us meekly surrender the initiative in the closing stages.
On the plus side, it has to be said that Youngs had his best game for....er, a very long time. I thought Sinckler was excellent but should have been subbed well before the 76th minute, Wilson likewise.
Tuilagi's red was harsh. North was brought down by Slade's tackle and Manu could hardly have been expected to alter his angle in a nano second. Some appreciation of the high speed that these incidents play out could have been employed here surely.

To be fair Manu does alter his position. You can see him trying to not go through with the tackle but that then puts him in a worse position.

[OnlyMonikerRemaining]

A better Wales side would have won that. Every time they took it away from the fat lads they made ground, the number of overlaps they spurned and the number of times they ran out of space for all the extra men because they weren’t running straight...
Thought the ref was a complete homer in the first half and maybe trying to even it up.

[Mr Mwenda]

Yes, stacking the bench with forwards and then bringing them on very late is weird. I agree, both Sinkler and Wilson were looking very tired well before they went off.

[fivepointer]

Just looked at the tackle stats.
Navidi made 10, the most by a Welsh player.
LCD made the same number and he came on in the 2nd half. Another sub, Launchbury made 11. Sinckler made 18, Lawes 20 and both Wilson and Curry 22.
Yet again, the possession and territory stats show us losing out. Wales got 64% possession and 65% territory.
We might be winning but there must be easier ways to win games, musn't there?

[Timbo]

Last 15 minutes leaves a bit of a sour taste, but overall shouldn’t take away from what was a pretty comfortable win. Had the lead from the 4th minute and never once felt that the result was actually in doubt.

Need to use the bench a bit smarter, and Curry at 8 is still an issue imo. He is a reasonable stop gap, but he just doesn’t have that snap in the carry you’d want from your 8. Was a ludicrously early call of ‘maul’ from O’Keefe, but Curry should never be getting held up from a number 8 scrum pick up 5m from our try line. That just can’t happen.

[Digby]

England with more power and less discipline

[Stom]

Just looked at the tackle stats.
Navidi made 10, the most by a Welsh player.
LCD made the same number and he came on in the 2nd half. Another sub, Launchbury made 11. Sinckler made 18, Lawes 20 and both Wilson and Curry 22.
Yet again, the possession and territory stats show us losing out. Wales got 64% possession and 65% territory.
We might be winning but there must be easier ways to win games, musn't there?

I think this definitely has an impact on our ability to self-destruct in the final quarter.

We want to either score or get to 10m from the first 3 phases. After that, we'd rather the opposition has it.

It's the same as what Mourinho preaches in football: you score from the transitions - if you don't score quickly, you might as well not bother anymore.

That's going well for him.

And all it means is that we invite a lot of pressure on our line. Which looked great in the first half, with those crunching hits. But when we cede control of the match, it starts looking like a pile of dog crap.

It requires you to be ruthlessly efficient and mistake-free when you have the ball. And with Youngs at 9 dithering over delivery (however much better he was today, he still dithers like hell, jeez there was one LCD carry where LCD made his first move something like 20 times before finally getting the ball, at which point the Welsh had lined him up perfectly, so he went back 1m. We're playing football, not doing the bloody foxtrot), we're not going to do that regularly.

We need to have the intensity we regularly show early doors throughout the 80. Because we consistently drop that intensity on attack, and all that does is invite the opposition on to us more and more and more, until we buckle and break.

[Stom]

We seem consistently unable to deal with teams getting “on a roll”. We start giving away penalties, we don’t stop, we concede a lot of points in a short while.

I don’t like the reffing style of suddenly penalizing everything the team on the back foot does, though. There were a lot of Wales infringements in that final quarter that weren’t blown up, but it’s a regular thing by many refs and you’d think we’d have got to grips with it by now

[Spiffy]

Again, the standard of passing by both sides was poor. Can't believe the number of head high- , poorly directed and badly weighted passes we are seeing at international level. Good handling and passing should be second nature to these guys. They are professional players and have bugger all else to do but practice.

[francoisfou]

I wonder how much longer Eddie will persist with his experiment with Curry at 8. You can't fault Curry for energy and determination, but surely from an 8 you need a player to make metres and commit defenders à la Billy and Faletau. He's earned his place in the side, but his future has to be at 7.

[WaspInWales]

Looked to me like he hit his shoulder/right side of his chest and not his head. Didn’t help that he was on his knees by the time Tuilagi got there. Yellow, fair enough. Red absolutely not.

Yellow/red...makes no difference as we would've still been down to 13 for the last few mins.

It was at least a yellow though and I can see why the red was given. It was reckless and every time the ref looked at it, it looked worse. The only mitigating circumstance was North's position but that wasn't enough for the ref.

It flattered the scoreline for Wales. I mean, if you can't score one or two tries with two extra players on the pitch against a tired defence, then questions should be asked.

Good win for us. Did some things well, some less so.

[WaspInWales]

We seem consistently unable to deal with teams getting “on a roll”. We start giving away penalties, we don’t stop, we concede a lot of points in a short while.

I don’t like the reffing style of suddenly penalizing everything the team on the back foot does, though. There were a lot of Wales infringements in that final quarter that weren’t blown up, but it’s a regular thing by many refs and you’d think we’d have got to grips with it by now

Yep. Agree with both points. I think Farrell gave away 9 points. Wales definitely got away with a few offsides and questionable rucks.