Autumn Internationals 2025, Week 0

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These internationals were played before the official test window began, hence calling it week 0. It made for some odd matchups, with really only New Zealand, Ireland and England playing with their full squads available (barring injuries and so forth), because they have agreements with their domestic leagues about releasing players (or in the case of NZ their domestic season is over) but overseas players do not get released. So Scotland played without Russell, Kinghorne and others, Australia were missing several of their regular starters too, and so on around all the teams.

This is going to affect how detailed I go with my comments.

Barbarians v All Blacks XV

I’m not sure where an AB XV ranks compared to a NZ Māori team, but this was a lot of young kiwis, mostly names I didn’t recognise from the admittedly poor NPC coverage here in the UK this year, against a fun Barbarians team. Normally this wouldn’t get in here, but the AB XV were well outplayed at first then fought their way back in to the game in what proved to be the most fun game of the weekend. If you’re going to watch one game, as a neutral, watch this one.

England v Australia

Although at least one short-slighted England fan I know thinks this was a great result, and four tries to one, that one coming off an interception and a 90m run, plus several attempts held up sounds good, I think Borthwick will not be impressed. England were poor, especially in the first half, and unnecessarily took the ball into contact instead of making one more pass and creating width and more chances. Yes, first game in a while and all that, first game with the new attack coach too, there are excuses, but there’s a lot to improve against an Australian team that looked out of sorts and like they were missing their brains trust. Schmidt will be even less happy for sure.

South Africa v Japan and Scotland v USA

I’m grouping these matches together because I have to ask one thing, why? SA smashed Japan, and broke Nche. Scotland destroyed USA even more convincingly and the only real benefit is that Hogg's former try scoring record is an even more distant memory. That’s not quite true, Dobie is emerging as a real threat at scrum-half as well. Otherwise these games went very much as expected.

I had fun watching Scotland demolish USA because I was chatting to an American friend and keeping her updated about the score, which was entertaining, as were the Scottish tries. But neither match was actually good.

Ireland v All Blacks

This was played in Chicago where, nine years ago, Ireland beat New Zealand for the first time ever. They’ve beaten them a few times since, but they’ve always had the belief that they can since that victory.

This match, even though Ireland went out to a 10-0 lead, suggested that this belief was seriously misplaced. Yes, Ireland have been without Farrell all year to now, because of the Lions, but this match started with Ireland looking largely incapable of advancing down the pitch and remained like that. Dangerous on the only occasion they got deep within the AB 22, but that was it.

The AB looked in control at first, but injuries to Scott and Jordie Barrett early on (2 min and 15 min) then Parker just before the half hour led to disruptions and the AB looking oddly out of sorts. Some of that was hard Irish defence, but some was players being not quite in sync and the passes not quite lining up properly. The moves were there, but when the midfield is suddenly a player returning after two years in France and a guy winning his fifth (I think) cap the smoothness of the connection not so much. As that settled into rhythm, the AB started to score. As they started to grind down the Irish the floodgates started to open.

I said that Borthwick wouldn’t be happy with a four try to one victory over Australia, but I think Robinson will be. Containing Ireland and scoring four tries against their defence after all the injuries is a good return. There are things to work on, sure, but this was a positive result against a tough defence rather than a story of missed chances against a poor opposition. Context matters.

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