Autumn Nations Cup - round 2 summary

I have to say I enjoyed Saturday afternoon.

England vs Ireland wasn’t exactly a feast of running rugby but, for a backrow forward especially, England’s defensive effort was a thing of beauty. Put simply, the English defence completely bullied Ireland. Priti Patel would have been proud. Magnificent.

England’s attack, however (Jonny May’s fantastic individual effort aside) was pretty moribund and I can’t see the tactic of hoofing the ball to the opposition and then engaging in glorified tackling practice working against the likes of France. At some stage England are going to have to hang on to possession, no?

As for Ireland, they worked their collective socks off but rarely looked like troubling the scoreboard (until their late flurry in the final quarter when the game was lost). They are talking about taking lots of positives from the game, but in reality they were never in it.

Wales vs Georgia in Llanelli was rather flat by comparison. Wales unearthed a few decent players – Botham, Rees-Zammit and Jonny Williams all played well – but Georgia were pretty limited will be reasonably happy with the 18-0 scoreline, despite not scoring point for the second week running. Clearly they need to play much more rugby at this level if they are to improve.

Wayne Pivac now needs to go away and select a team to unlock the English defence. Good luck with that.

On to Sunday and a reasonably entertaining, if error-strewn, match between Scotland and France. Scotland lacked composure in possession and, whilst mostly defensively sound, coughed up a soft try to Vakatawa which proved decisive. France won without ever really getting out of second gear and the Hogg error with the clock in the red – missing touch with a penalty – pretty much summed up Scotland’s afternoon.

All in all I am just delighted to be watching international rugby again – albeit I am still finding the empty stadia more than a little weird. 

And the one “jump up out of your seat moment” this weekend – Jonny May’s length of the field try – was, on its own, ample justification for the organising of this competition.

Total Flanker – the older I get, the better I was