Australia re-lives nightmare

[tic]

Well played England forwards - you were superb.

Wallaby backs did the best they could with rubbish ball and no momentum.

I an extremely angry about the forwards performance. OK the scrum was going to struggle but we lost this by directionless and lazy breakdown work. That's where England won this game - pure and simple.

Now I know you all love Nathan Sharpe here - and he is a quality player - but I am going to be critical of him. I just believe that he doesn't have the "mongrel" that we need in a forward leader to ram it up the forwards when they are performing poorly. He is in a senior and trusted position in the pack, but I question his ability to fire up his pack and shame them into a higher workload.

We need serious work on our front row (Dunning is a joke) - but we also need a tough SOB to scream at the troops and lead them around - England is not short in this department.

Finally, I believe Australia and particularly NZ need to stop pandering to these highly paid and underworked athletes. The actions of both Unions this year in resting and rotating some of these poor darlings has come back to bite on the butt. It has created a culture of pandered powderpuffs who can't knuckle down and do the hard stuff at the pointy end of the competition.

I think England's ageing pack deserve a gold medal in toughness and playing their guts out.

It pains me to say this, but we must use that English forward toughness as our template if we are to be a threat again.

[.X.]

Can someone explain something that I think I noticed.

Was Mortlock playing at Left Wing in attack?

or did I miss something there.


Here's hoping that Trestle doesn't Retire gracefully, but just slinks away to an oblivion he so rightly deserves. And if he takes Dunning with him to, that would be just fine.

[Em-Forcer]

Think Trestle was on the wing at one point...?!

[Happy]

see the thing is with the all blacks is they didn't score enough tries, hence their points weren't high enough

[GIGS20]

I agree with you Tic. I think our pack has lost it's mongrel.

Rocky could fill that role pretty nicely, I actually think Sharpie could make a fair fist of it too, but to be honest, they just need to be told to get on with the job!

We need someone to inform our team that the fight for the ball is EVERYTHING in a rugby match, and you don't get the ball as a matter of right.

[lmaag]

The tight 5 were particularly poor against England. They meekly surrendered to the will of the england forwards. I agree with Tic's call about someone needing to fire up the forward pack.
Watching the ARC I've not seen someone who could fill that role yet, however, they may be someone I haven't seen.

[BOD is GOD]

Al Baxter what the? I sadly watched the replay tonight and noticed baxter stuffed up big time in last two minutes twice! firstly he ran the ball into touch! he had heaps of room to work with could have stepped back in i dont think he was going to run around anyone! secondly the last play that knockon he kicked the ball out of our tackled players hand on the ground wat a retard not to mention his srummaging he should have never left to france wat a joke

[BOD is GOD]

Add to that O'neills outrageous comments (How can he sit on the IRB board now without looking like a fool) and all I can say is we deserved to get beaten.

Also on a different note i dont no why u guys are critising Oneil aussies hate the english its true u cant call urself an aussie if u dont! (I believe it should be on citizen test) its exactly the same as queenslanders hate NSWelshman and Melbourne hate sydney talk about something getting taken out of context there are some pathetic people in this world

[GIGS20]

It's the PC thing BiG, you can't speak with any passion in public anymore for fear of offending someone.

Personally I see nothing wrong with the word hate if used in the right context, and there wasn't too much wrong with the context there.