Eloise's Thoughts and Fancies

Of the matches on offer this weekend I did not watch SA v Georgia, although I intended to, nor Argentina v Uruguay, again I intended to. The first match coincided with a thunderstorm and a cracking headache. The result was spoiled and I had little desire to watch it. Argentina v Uruguay failed to record for some reason, and while I could probably find it, I’ve seen the result (I didn’t look until I realised I couldn’t watch and the SA result had been spoiled) so I’m not going to make an effort. I think it’s good that these games are being played and I want to support them in general. Samoa v Scotland When you fall back on the cliché “men against boys” it’s usually a description of a disparity in experience, such as the full strength SA side against a Welsh team with fewer caps than their front row on its own, or a David v Goliath matchup like Portugal v Ireland. In this match the first impression, and one that remained as the match progressed, was much more literal. The Samoan blinds...

Another week, another crazy day of rugby. Fiji v Scotland This was a game of contrasting styles, luck and one where Scotland will be thankful that things didn’t click for Fiji much more consistently or this could have been a cricket score. It started well for Scotland, they got the ball, applied phase pressure and scored a nice try after about five minutes. In the rest of the first half there might have been 30s when the ball was anywhere near the Fijian 22. However, offloaded inaccurately, dropped the ball uncharacteristically and generally blew chances galore until the 35th minute when they scored a try from a driving maul (yes, Fiji pushed Scotland over) and then a lovely wide move to score in the corner as they suddenly regained confidence. Scotland were missing a cluster of stars on Lions duty, but still had a number of familiar names. From about the half hour mark they all looked gassed. Suva having its effect on visitors again. Wales managed the conditions in Japan better tho...

I’m going to return to a more normal review format this week. New Zealand v England Although this game remained close, probably uncomfortably close if you’re a Kiwi, the step up in most areas from the All Blacks was noticeable and it felt as if England were never really at the races. England scored two very nice tries, using the same shtick twice. Once the fullback and one wing were trapped in a ruck on one five metre line and there’s a dubious argument that DMac didn’t cover across for Perofeta fast enough, Telea was a bit narrow; whatever you think, England exploited that very quickly. (You can also argue Telea was properly staying connected to Ioane and DMac would have struggled to get across any faster.) Kudos to England for noticing and exploiting the situation but how often does it crop up? The second time, England kept the ball for enough phases that the defensive line contracted and again they exploited it. I don’t know whether the Kiwis just told their wingers to stay really...

Rather than writing a normal match by match review, I’m going to do something new. Because this is the first set of internationals for the Southern Hemisphere sides after the World Cup, while the Northern Hemisphere sides have played the Six Nations, it’s possible to frame this as the new versus the old, or at least the less new. Some of that framing doesn’t hold up to well: Wales are currently constantly new as the changes in the funding models work through and change the personnel, with four debutants in their lineup and a tight five that had fewer caps than just one Australian prop. France took a massively inexperienced side, with eight debutants starting. But the Irish and English had reasonably established sides and all the NH sides had established coaching teams at least. For the SH hemisphere sides there were changes in personnel, with retirements/players going overseas, changes in coaches, changes in tactics and the first time playing together in seven months. Most clear wit...

Rugby is, at an abstracted level, always a game of making and taking chances. We tackle about tackle efficiency, lineout success rate, scrum penalties, turnovers and so on but they all boil down to making scoring opportunities, taking them or denying those chances. The matches that I actually watched, and to a lesser extent the highlights as well, seem to highlight that aspect of the game more than normal. All Blacks v Ireland For most of the first half, Ireland created chances and took some of them, the All Blacks defence wasn’t terrible, while the Irish defence just prevented the ABs attack from creating chances at all. For most of the second half that reversed but just when it looked like the AB were going to come from behind and win the Irish scored again and that was it. Smarter people than me have been saying that the ABs have a really antiquated defensive essentially lack of system. They rely on their fitness and fight for every scrap of the pitch. This still works against mo...

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 victo...

I’m going to be somewhat abbreviated about at least some of these because I only saw highlights for various reasons. It’s hard to judge the whole match well from the highlights. In time order here we go. Japan v France This match rarely looked in doubt from what I saw, but France looked oddly out of sync for a while. I suspect that’s the new halfbacks just putting the timings off a little and everything certainly settled down over the course of the match. They also looked a bit heavy in the legs at first and, while I can concoct reasons for that, I’m not really sure why. Something to look out for next week. Nevertheless a good win for Les Bleus. New Zealand v Ireland This match was billed as a heavyweight battle. Ireland have beaten NZ a few times recently, including their last match in November. NZ had lost two in a row for the first time since 2011, they haven’t lost three in a row since 1998… would Foster face losing that record and the “Fortress Eden Park” tag - they haven’t lo...