July Internationals 9/7/22

More short reports, some from highlights.

Japan v France

I get that, like so many, Galthie is looking at his wider squad with a view to the RWC but, ouch. I don’t know the cap numbers here, but there are a lot on unfamiliar names, at least in Les Bleus shirt, on that list and the highlights showed that sometimes they’d click offensively, but they never seemed to play as a team. You could see the more experienced individuals, they put the work in, but it was solitary effort and Japan ran good support lines and offloaded from those solo tackles, looking good in attack.

To some extent that seemed to change when Galthie swapped the 9’s. Couilloud looked much sharper than Lucu from what I saw and the French sparked on defence around that.

Japan will be rueing the one that got away. Galthie will take stuff to learn for his team and players and will have learnt important things about his players while not losing.

New Zealand v Ireland

The Irish fans will be celebrating their first victory over the All Blacks in NZ but the coaching team will be upset. As will the AB coaches.

The ABs lacked discipline, seeing red and I think it was three yellow cards. Foster took Savea off for the RC so they could bring a prop on, but that meant he couldn’t return. Talk about a fuck up!

The Irish defence also held up the AB with both some fingertip tackles and some held-up over the line brute force. But for all that time with one or two extra players they only managed to score two tries - one before and one after the red, the AB matched this count, but scored both their tries after the red card. The difference between the sides was that Ireland stayed down in the AB half and kicked three penalties to zero.

It would be fair to say Ireland had pretty much every bounce of the ball and got the AB with a terrible run of cards. They are rightly celebrating but they got lucky.

Australia v England

This match is one where you have to stop and ask what is going on? Did England suddenly play a lot better or did the Australian defence get complacent? Given the way the defence stepped up in the second half, I’m going with the complacency answer. Sadly that gave England a comfortable lead, Australia ate into it but couldn’t quite maintain that and England stretched it out at the end.

This was a match that seemed to last for a long, long time partly because there were quite a few stoppages for injuries, on both sides but mostly Wallabies. Several people decided to tackle with their heads on bony bits of the other player and will probably be absent for the decider next week. But, in addition, there just wasn’t really a lot of exciting activity. Lots of roar and grunt, but no real penetration and pace. Much more a match that Australia lost than England won.

South Africa v Wales

This is a match that you would have to describe as “not for the casual fan.” It was a game in which the two sides knew how the other was going to play, knew how to counter that and were largely able to do that. Small mistakes here and there made the difference and those mistakes were more likely to be made in attack (knock on, holding on etc) than in defence, so the play was largely in the middle third of the pitch, slightly more in the Wales half. Over most of the match that was reflected in the scoreline, as South Africa were ahead 12-3 on penalties at one point, although that was whittled back to 12-6. Both sides missed an equal number of shots (one hard, one easy) and turned down about the same number of kickable chances to go for lineouts too. The difference came in the last couple of minutes. Wales had been slightly more creative during the game. They could carry close or out wide (not really in the midfield although Tompkins was a nuisance as a second playmaker). So when they got a lineout 5m from the SA line, then a ruck about 2m from the line, SA lined up to defend for a forwards drive, this was what had got the Welsh that 3m closer to the line after all. A nice bit of deception with a pass to Navidi that looked like a crash ball but turned into a beautiful pass, a nerveless kick from Anscombe from the touchline and Wales win in South Africa for the first time ever!

Although, ultimately, it didn’t affect the outcome, I need to point out one of the most egregious refereeing mistakes I’ve seen. AWJ comes on and sees yellow for “hands in the ruck” after a few moments, called by the AR. The scoreline ten minutes later has changed by 3-3 so no harm done. A quick 10 second replay that the ref declined to take clearly showed his hands were around the player in the ruck and the tackled SA player kicked the ball out of the ruck. Talk about one for the home fans!

It should be said this match was more entertaining than the Australia v England match. It pulsed back and forwards, both teams wrestling for control, neither really able to land that killer blow. I very much had the feeling if the game was 10 minutes longer SA would have scored again, but another 10 minutes longer and Wales could have scored again too. It felt that see-saw and so gripping. Australia v England was more 35 minutes of English dominance, then 35 minutes of Wallaby dominance (either side of half time) and finally 10 minutes of English ascendancy at the end. No real cut and thrust, back and forth.

One last comment, SA made 14 changes to their side, 14! There was a mix of changes for players who played badly, returning players after injury, and new players gaining experience and widening the squad. All of those actions are fine but all at once? Just no. Could SA have won if they’d made fewer changes? Hard to tell, but there were times on attack that their lack of cohesion and organisation showed.

Argentina v Scotland

This was an odd match. If you randomly sampled two minute long patches of the match, I’m pretty sure you’d expect Argentina to win but the results show Scotland winning 29-6 and four tries to nil. What that doesn’t show is the five or six tries that, one way or another, Argentina missed. Forward passes, held up over the line, dropped over the line, tackled and stripped ball over the line - you name it, Argentina found ways not to score or Scotland found ways to prevent them. Similarly, Scotland found a singular weakness in Argentina’s defence and kept exploiting it - nothing wrong with that if it works - Argentina found multiple ways to reach the Scottish try line and successfully defended all the other ways the Scots tried to attack.

Happy Coaches

Last week I didn’t do this, it seemed fairly pointless. Winning coaches would be broadly happy, losing coaches not so. There would be a ranking, sure, more work-ons for Australia than NZ for example, but This week it feels more nuanced. Both Galthie and Joseph will take positives and negatives from their match and have mixed feelings. Galthie marginally happier but not truly happy. Farrell will certainly be happier than Foster but Farrell will be worried both that his side only scored one try against a side down to 14 for 50 minutes (and 13 for chunks of that) and that they conceded two tries in that period, likewise, while Foster will be furious about the lack of discipline from his side, he’ll be pleased at their ability to defend and attack in adversity and ruing some “what if” moments when Ireland just made tackles with the tips of their fingers. Jones will be happy at the first and last acts that England produced, Rennie will be happy that Australia fought back. Both will be unhappy at the good bits from the other side. Rennie will be furious at the way that Australia just got bullied and forgot to defend in the first half. Jones will be equally furious, for the same reasons in the second half. Both will be deeply concerned about the injury list. Pivac will be happy, possibly the only one truly happy. The first victory in SA for his side, turning up and performing in Bloemfontein, a fortress for the Boks, and much better discipline than last week. Yes, this was a SA with multiple changes, but it was still a good side, littered with RWC winners, SA writers countered the “disrespect” argument by pointing out this could easily be regarded as the SA “form XV” and although it didn’t gel, large parts of the Boks’ attack rely on ball off 9 to a big runner rather than intricate moves… Nienaber won’t be that unhappy, despite the loss, because he’s seen a load of players from the wider squad. One or two have played themselves out, or at least down in the pecking order, several others showed they are fighting for inclusion in the top-flight team, others are certainly fighting for inclusion in a wider squad for RWC, even if they’d only start in the knockout stages if there were injuries. Townsend will be happy to have won, but on calmer reflection will have qualms. You really can’t rely on the opposition to blow all those chances every time. Likewise Cheika will be upset but look at the match overall and be somewhat pleased. Yes, it was a loss but… It was still a good performance and unlucky.

Honestly, Pivac is the only coach who can look at his team’s performance and say “well done.” I’m sure he’ll look and say “we need to work on this, this and this,” what coach doesn’t? Everyone else has positives to takes yes, but serious issues to address as well.