Autumn Internationals 2024, Week Four

The last full weekend of matches and a number of relatively predictable games essentially topped and tailed by two good looking matchups.

France v Argentina

On paper this looked like a good game. France are transitioning in a number of positions and while their youth are good, they lack experience. Meanwhile, Argentina had a number of senior, valuable, players returning and looked stronger than the side that narrowly lost in Ireland. They will also have the anger of that defeat in their mind.

The scoreboard would suggest it wasn’t all that close - France won by 14 points. In the sense that the game is about scoring points, more points than the opponents, it’s not lying. However, if you watch the game, it didn’t feel this unequal. The big difference between the sides was that France were more clinical, especially in the first half, and took their chances. Argentina were much more profligate with their chances, and ultimately that was the difference.

Some of that was French brilliance: LBB scored what is becoming one of his trademark tries; there was a nice try by Flament that was a few bits of Toulouse magic strung together to send him crashing over. Some was French defensive intensity being a little higher, the joys of playing at home. But Argentina fought back at the end.

Barré looked great in this game. Villière had a much better game in attack and was mostly good in defence. He does have a habit that Edwards needs to smack out of him before it gets him at least a penalty. If he’s on the side of a ruck or in the guard position he tends to run forwards with one arm stretched out - if that connects with the ball, that’s at least a penalty, if not a card and potentially a penalty try. Run smart and look to make a tackle. There was someone I noticed later in the weekend doing that, but I don’t remember the name now.

Both sides had issues in the set piece. Given how good they were last week, I suspect the weather has had an impact on training this week. Gallo was all over Colombe, but he’s very young, he’ll improve.

France have won all their games. Argentina looked will look back and rue some chances and some indiscipline but think they’ve had a good year.

Ireland v Fiji

Prendergast is a very lucky player. The guidance that we understand around never legal hits, such as a shoulder with the arms tucked like he demonstrated to a tee, is that no mitigation is available. But the FPRO found some and his yellow card stayed yellow. (On later examination, the force of the impact is not something that is in the mitigation framework: that comes later. The FPRO assesses “low force, entry point yellow, no mitigation from there” so it’s probably the right call. It still looks bad though.)

This was, in that old cliché, a game of two halves - at least in terms of what happened on the scoreboard. In the first half, Fiji didn’t really show up. In the second half, although Ireland won on the scoreboard Fiji suddenly appeared and it was a contest.

The scoreboard will suggest that Ireland have fixed their woes. But even in the first half, where they outscored Fiji 28-3, they left a load of opportunities begging. In the second half they managed another four tries, but conceded two and somehow blew even more chances than they had in the first half.

It’s easy to say Ireland were better in this game than they have been so far. I’m not sure that’s completely true. They started well, Fiji had a terrible half - worse than any half Wales have produced this November - and you could visibly see confidence and discipline moving from the players in white to those in green. I obviously don’t know what was said in the changing rooms, but it felt like “do you want that load of shite to be what everyone remembers this year by? Go out, don’t worry about winning, but make everyone at home proud.” Fiji responded, maybe Ireland eased up a bit too, but as soon as Fiji applied the pressure the same issues started to appear.

With the best will in the world Fiji are not the All Blacks, nor are they an Argentina that has beaten all three SH rivals this year. They are a side that is on the up, but where Argentina are definitely Tier One, Fiji are on the cusp between Tiers One and Two. I hope they can continue to climb, but they are not a challenge to any of the top four teams yet, especially playing at home. But when they had their purple patches, and they did, they made Ireland, the world number two team, look ordinary. Some of that is credit to Fiji, some is an indication that Ireland’s issues were disguised by the score.

Wales v South Africa

This is a match with the most late changes (five) that I remember in the starting lineups due to injuries and illness. Part of the difference between these teams at the moment can be seen by what happens in response to this: South Africa bring in Etzebeth as one of their late call-ups, even I’ve never heard of the cover Wales call up… well, some of them.

This is going to seem odd but I’m much more proud of Wales this week than last week. I’m not blind to the problems, the replacement front row is a distinct step down in quality, there is a lack of creativity in the team as a whole and all of that is both a symptom of, and exacerbated by, the youth of the team. Our most capped player today had 23 caps. Yes, South Africa fielded players with two or three, but they sprinkled amongst double World Cup winners.

Wales conceded seven tries, got under two attempts, and prevented a number more with turnovers and forced knocks on. Unlike last week, when Australia practically scored at will, South Africa were made to work for them. The final moments might have been easy but the build up took effort. Like against Scotland, South Africa smothered the Welsh attack, which made the attacking issues look worse, but Wales still scored two tries.

The improvement from last week was easy to see from the Welsh. The improvement from the Springboks was also present. This is the first time they’ve swept the November tests in over a decade. It’s also the first time Wales have gone winless in a calendar year since 1936.

Erasmus has wanted to see his team perform and implement the new plans. They will face stiffer opposition than Wales, but they put their plan into action and they looked good.

Italy v New Zealand

I was wondering if this was going to be a cricket score. Italy tried their utmost to prevent that by making a mess of every breakdown. I was less forgiving of what I was seeing than the referee - it’s one of those where I don’t think the ref was biased but the amount Italy defended compared to New Zealand made it feel that way.

When the All Blacks sorted out the breakdown and started getting clean, fast ball their handling - very unusually for them - was usually poor. I’m not quite sure why. I think it was more than one thing:

• they committed more players to the ruck, so some of the passes had to be longer and were to players under more pressure because there was less deception
• It forced players who are not great passers (Ioane) to pass more often
• Although ALB is a good-to-great midfield player, he is not the big lump that Jordy Barrett is. Jordy has a lot of other skills for sure, but he is a fine crash ball centre too. ALB, for all his qualities, is not. Savea and Sititi are great ball carriers too, but missing that extra carrier a bit wider off the scrum and sometimes off the breakdown hurt them.

I’ve said, to the point it feels like it might be the theme of the weekend, teams in transition have bad games. The All Blacks had one of those and still won.

Italy really didn’t get out of second gear, they didn’t trouble the All Blacks defence until they had a flash of brilliance near the end and scored their only try.

Scotland v Australia

This was a game that took a long time to really spring into life. For the first 50 minutes it looked a bit like a school disco, lots of people too nervous to really enjoy what they were doing, then Scotland scored their second try, the Australian heads started to drop and two more tries followed before the Wallabies scored their one and only consolation try.

There are critics of Skelton but, while he was on the Wallabies scrum looked solid, so did their lineout mauls. He went off and Scotland started milking penalties at the scrum and destroying the maul. Coincidence? Possibly but it seems unlikely.

Scotland have things they need to improve. Their lineout, especially after Ashman was subbed, was awful. Against France, and Ireland if they can rediscover some of their form, they’ll struggle. But the things they need to improve can be fixed quickly and Townsend will be pleased with what he saw.

Schmidt has worked to build a team before. The fact that Australia didn’t win, were contained by a good Scotland, won’t really upset him. Three tries in 20 minutes and all the heads going down, that will. But it’s still better than the capitulation against Argentina earlier in the year.

England v Japan

This was a match where wild hope made me hope for two different things. Being Welsh I was hoping for a miracle like Brighton, 2015. It was soon clear that was not to be. My alternative hope was that England would run up a cricket score and paper over the cracks. That sort of happened - 59-14 is a good score - but England were beaten both up the middle occasionally and around the edges frequently and then inaccurate skills from Japan let them down. Likewise, although England scored nine tries, their attack looked stilted too often. A slightly bigger and more physical team would not have been shifted backwards at almost every contact and would have been winning turnovers and penalties, as well as defending on the front foot.

I suspect the fans will be happy. The coaches, I’m not sure. Playing Japan pretty clearly exposed a number of issues in the systems live, watching the game. You have to imagine the coaches, with all the video analysis they have, should have been seeing versions of this in the faster games. I’ve been aware of them, not in fine detail perhaps, and this highlighted some specifics to me. The question will be whether Borthwick will make the changes required. Again, I’m not sure.

End of Term Report

• Argentina. Contepomi will rue the missed chances against Ireland, but overall be pretty happy with this tour I think. Two good matches and one where they probably deserved a closer result but were held out by one of the best defences in the world on the day, after such a disrupted week is a good tour. Argentina have changed the guard too - there are a lot of unfamiliar names in their squad, forwards and backs - but they’ve had a great year and just run out of steam a bit at the end, but you have to believe they’re going to improve next year.
• Australia have a game next week.
• England. Although England have a slightly better record than Wales, I feel they’ve only gone backwards this November. Wales have been up and down, but they rebounded from that low against Australia. It may be baby steps, but they’re not there for England. The question is, how low will they go?
• Fiji. Byrne, and Fiji, have had a mixed November. Good against Wales, poor against Spain, a bit of a curate's egg against Ireland. A good year, overall positive, but the last two games a bit of a let down. These things happen with improving teams, I think he, and they, will accept that, take the lessons about what went wrong and work on them to try and stop them coming back, while looking to remind everyone of the positives and repeat that, improve on that next year.
• France. Galthié will be happy that his youngsters have come through looking good. Colombe needs to work on his scrummaging, but everyone knew that before he was selected. But all his other picks have looked like test players without any issues, and Colombe’s scrummaging will improve rapidly playing in the Top 14.
• Ireland have a game next week.
• Italy. Italy have had a poor November. They were thrashed by Argentina, struggled to convert their chances against Georgia and looked to play a spoiling game, which was partially successful, against New Zealand. Quesada will take the positives from the win and the narrow defeat I’m sure, but from the outside it looks like more negatives than positives.
• Japan. Japan only really played two games. They got monstered by France and England. (They also beat Uruguay apparently but I didn’t get to see that match.) Some of what happened to Japan was inevitable - they are small and played two of the biggest northern hemisphere teams - and just got outmuscled. They are also really young, against England it was the second lowest total of caps by a visiting team in history. I don’t really know what they can take from this. Wales showed some positives, even in defeat, improved after their poor performance against Australia even though SA are much better. Japan, not so much.
• New Zealand. The tour ended with a poor performance that gave them a victory following a good performance where they lost. Sometimes the rugby gods are fickle. But over the tour, three wins (four if you count the warmup in Japan), a lot of really good play in their defeat to France in the best game in years for a neutral. Razor's plan is in the players' bodies as well as their heads and, while there are issues to work out (a younger 10, 13, adapting to the referee and opposition if they do things like Italy for example), the basics are there and they can build up and out from pretty solid looking foundations.
• Scotland. Scotland have had three comfortable wins (Fiji, Portugal and Australia) and a “good loss” where they played the better rugby but were smothered by the SA defence and couldn’t contain their power in attack when they strung enough moments together. Scotland might never break into the top four, but they’re a very good side, and we’re starting to see some youth coming into an experienced squad to suggest they might not fall off a cliff in 2028. Townsend will be pretty happy with his November.
• South Africa. Rassie has changed how SA play and it’s been a bit hit and miss. Today was a hit, and that will help going forwards. They’ve also built depth - a load of new caps, more players with less than 10 gaining experience. A good tour and a good year.
• Wales. Wales are in a tough place and most, if not all, of that is due to off-field problems caused by the WRU leading to a squad with hardly any experience and less depth. Japan were the side with the second fewest caps to ever play at Twickenham, and they had about 20 more than Wales. Experience will improve given time and despite the low against Australia, their willingness to come back and strive against SA shows that Gatland has not lost the team. It’s too early to talk about the green shoots of recovery, but there is hope for the future.