Autumn Internationals 2025, Week 1

This is the first week within the test window, when everyone has their full complement of overseas players. Even Japan. Who got Saito from Toulouse, benefitted from this.

These comments are given in the order I watched the games, not the order they occurred. Several clashed and I caught up with them late, so they appear at the bottom of the list.

Ireland v Japan

The final score will suggest this was an easy win but watching the game says anything that it was but. At half time the Japanese were within a score, and until the last ten minutes or so they were in touch.

Some of that was Saito keeping the Japanese attack much sharper than last week, to the surprise of the Irish, who went with a weaker team than last week and weren’t all over the breakdown in the same way that they usually are. But some of it was that the Irish were disjointed in attack as well. Now, in my comments on last week’s games I was forgiving of the AB looking disjointed with changes in personnel. I’m going to cut the Irish some slack too, a bit less than the Kiwis because they trained all week, well most of it after getting back from Chicago, with these combinations rather than being forced into them due to injuries. But they were still essentially untried under pressure, so ok. But the lineout was a disaster, possibly worse than against the All Blacks. A bad lineout against the AB, SA and France, that happens… but against Japan? That suggests your unit has serious problems.

Scotland v All Blacks

Scotland are the only classic tier one team who have never beaten the All Blacks. (Italy are now a tier one nation, since joining the Six Nations, they have also never beaten the AB). Buoyed by demolishing Japan and the return of the foreign-based players, and injuries to a number of senior Kiwis, Scotland believe this is their chance.

In the first half that belief looked misplaced. Scotland applied pressure but couldn’t buy a point. Even when NZ had a man in the bin for eight minutes at the end of the first half, they were the team to score. The All Blacks looked much more fluid than last week but the Scottish defence conspired to keep the score down to manageable numbers, 17-0 at half time.

In the second half, Scotland burst into life, and the AB (somewhat dubiously on at least one occasion) ran afoul of the ref, who had previously been somewhat lenient on Scotland a couple of times. I’m sure overall it was even, it didn’t feel biased, but some of the bigger decisions felt one-sided. But Scotland roared back into the game, drawing level on the hour mark.

The AB didn’t get into the Scottish 22 for 30 minutes of the second half, but on their first visit they scored a try. Conversion missed, the try was really wide but the kick was truly awful and the All Blacks had a five point lead with five minutes left. A couple of minutes later, the Scots gave up a penalty and this time the kick was straight, the game was over, bar the shouting. A couple of minutes later, the fat lady actually sang.

Given they flew across the pond, plus they’re missing a bunch of key players to injury, I don’t think Robinson will be too upset by this result. The Scots certainly fought back and made a game of it, but the players found a way to win. That All Blacks aura that has been fading since 2015, took time to build and took wins like this to build as well: games that they certainly could have lost, arguably should have lost, but found a way to win. Scotland have positives to take but, ultimately, it’s another loss to the AB, Murrayfield remains an All Blacks fortress.

Italy v Australia

This was a weird game to watch. I sometimes talk about one player having a wider variance than another and being less suited to test rugby. If they both average, say 7/10 performances, the player who is 7/10 every week is generally better than the one who is 9/10 one week but 5/10 the next. You can select other players to cover the weaknesses in that missing 3/10 if you know what they are, and you know that they’re always the same. Likewise you can select that consistent player as part of a unit so that overall the unit covers all the bases.

I’m not sure 7/10 is the mark I’d be giving either team, but let’s stick with it. Italy were consistent. They definitely have flaws, but they weren’t big and ostentatious. Mostly their flaws involved getting the ball too close to McReight, but odd little other things as well. The Wallabies varied from the sublime to the ridiculous. When they were good, they really were very good, 9/10 might not have been too generous. When they were bad, 3/10 might have been fairer than 5/10.

For large periods the great parts of Australian play seemed to be enough. They could keep Italy far enough away from their try line that they scored in threes, not sevens, whilst the Wallabies scored in fives and sevens. However, as fatigue set in to both sides, and possibly fired up by outrage at a terrible referring decision - even the one-eyed Wallaby fans I know think it was wrong - Italy shot down to the other end, scored two tries back-to-back and essentially that was it. Australia tried to get back into it, but that wide variation in their play reared its ugly head again, and a stupid mistake, a penalty to Italy and that was it.

France v South Africa

This was a game of two halves, sometimes the clichés exist for a reason.

In the first half, the game was close, tense and honestly exciting. The commentators were asking if, at the end of the game, the two misses by SFM compared to the faultless kicking from Ramos would be the difference, at least until de Jaager (rightly, despite the bleating of Berger, why do people think ex-players are better at understanding and applying the laws than teams of referees who stop and take their time?) was shown a straight red for trying to knock Ramos' head off.

France scored two good tries and dominated the run of play, South Africa kicked a couple of penalties from range, missed a couple, and produced a try from a moment of brilliance. It’s hard to say it was against the run of play: they were just outside the French 22, applying pressure, won a scrum and then Reinarch went boom and scored. It felt undeserved but he took his chance.

In the second half, it started with France applying all the pressure again but nothing quite working for them. LBB tried to pass inside, but it was behind Penaud who knocked on. A little later, LBB offloaded beautifully off the ground to Flament, his pass on was too low for the next player thanks to the defensive efforts of (I think) Snyman, who tried to make a tackle and got enough on the outside arm to disrupt the pass. Ramos put a kick through and it bounced badly for the chaser. The rugby gods were not smiling on them.

As soon as the SA escaped and applied pressure, they scored, LBB got a yellow card (and was lucky not to concede a penalty try) and that was really it. France never really got close to the try line again, and whilst the Bokke didn’t camp out on the French line, they played down in that half and made and took their chances. The French replacements were, honestly, disappointing to bad. Lucu looked back to his 2023 form in blue, but he’s just back from injury so I’ll give him some space. The replacement front row was poor, some of that was deserved, some was Gus taking against them.

Much was made of the youth of the French front row. The Bokke definitely had an edge in the scrums, and that won them some deserved penalties and some more dubious ones where the ref had it in his mind that they were dominant but it didn’t look that way in that case. This is the toughest test they’ll face and you’d have to say that I think Galthié will be moderately satisfied with how they performed. He might have hoped for more, but they’ll have learnt a lot, and they’ll face up to the 6N with this under their belt and be much more competitive against Ireland and England.

South Africa remain top dogs. They have the power, the depth and the nous to turn it on, at least sometimes. Whether they can carry that through to the next world cup remains unclear, but they remain the team to beat.

Wales v Argentina

Going into this match, the smart money was on a victory for Los Pumas. They’ve beaten the Lions, the All Blacks and Australia, and came within a couple of points of beating the Bokke. Since they faced each other in France in 2025, which Argentina won, Wales lost, lost and lost more, 18 games in a row, until they finally beat Japan in July. Here they go with a new team on the field and off it, and the hopes of a nation.

However, at least here, those hopes are not really for a win (although I certainly would welcome one) but for a performance. Play for the whole game. Defend well. Make and take some chances. Decent set pieces.

In the first 10-12 minutes it didn’t look good. Wales didn’t look bad, exactly, but Argentina were doing all the small things better, like a team with 900+ caps, and taking their chances in the form of two converted tries. But then the Welsh recovered a kick off and passed the ball beautifully along the line both ways and you could see the confidence building. That attack stalled, but moments later an even better one saw Williams scoring under the posts. A couple of poor kicks, one genuinely bad, one a bit unlucky from Argentina, both kicked dead, gave Wales even more belief and after some nice play to get them there the forwards kept it close and crashed over - something that’s been missing for quite a while.

I hope they keep playing like this, but even that 15 minutes is better than we’ve seen for a couple of years.

Thomas got shown yellow for kicking out at a player but not making contact. Because there’s no clear contact, it stayed yellow which seems reasonable. We don’t want players even trying to kick each other in rugby, but kicking and missing shouldn’t get a red card.

Right at the end of the 10 minutes, Argentina scored a try, stretching their tally to ten points, Wales will feel aggrieved that a maul wasn’t called dead, but it was pretty borderline. Moments later Matera made a break, kicked it wide and Carreras pounced on the ball, evaded a tackle and scored. 31-14 at the half seems unfair - Wales have been outplayed, yes, but have played well in patches and deserve to feel like they’re still in this game.

The second half started a bit like the first, but Argentina only scored one try, LRZ showed what we’ve all, both rugby fans and Wales fans, been missing when he came on but couldn’t quite finish it off. But Wales were getting the ball, advancing it down the pitch into the red zone and converting quite a lot of their chances.

There were mistakes, individual and system, from the Welsh, and a much more experienced opposition who definitely played better for more of the match. However, for a couple of years there have been few moments of hope. In this game there were more moments of not only hope but genuine periods of dominance over a much more highly ranked team that suggests that the corner might just have been turned. There is a long way to go before they’ll threaten to win a Grand Slam again, but there are enough extended periods of positive play that Tandy et al can focus on expanding the good parts more than eliminating the bad ones.

It seems crazy to describe a 52-28 defeat as a good result for both teams. But Argentina were far more experienced and far more coherent. At times they scored too easily but at times they were forced to work hard. And Wales have been struggling to score points for quite a while, four tries, and a few other decent attempts, against Argentina is a good start for the new team, playing and coaching.

England v Fiji

In sports there are always “what if” moments. Even if we limit ourselves to just decent scoring chances in rugby it’s fair to wonder about this match, with opportunities missed on both sides. They were not all equal, Muntz seemed to have completely forgotten how to kick for the posts, he might not be Ramos and Pollard like, but he’s usually pretty reliable. Those are easy points Fiji should have got. On the other side, several English players dropped passes and the like, pretty much with the line open a couple of metres in front of them. A better pass, a better timed run, and there’s always the chance of a tackle in those situations too, but it wasn’t like a roll of the dice from 22m out, it looked like a dropped five points.

If Muntz had kicked straight the scoreboard pressure on England, which was real pretty deep into the second half, would have been that much more acute. Could Fiji have won? Honestly, even with better kicking, probably not. The difference in this game was the benches. The England bench was a step up in quality. I’m not really sure if the Fijian vote was a step down or just couldn’t handle the improvement from the English, there wasn’t a really clear decline.

England, much though it pains me to say it, have looked ok so far. Pretty decent victories over Australia and Fiji. However, they’ve relied on their bench to pull them away both times, against teams they really ought to beat, especially given Australia were unable to select from a full squad. Will that work against Los Pumas and the AB? Both teams that regularly face the original bomb squad? It certainly could but it seems far less likely to than it has in these games.

Looking back to last week it’s fair to ask what Japan and USA learnt from their matches. Detailed analysis might show tiny things, but not much. Japan might have learnt a little bit more this week. Wales can certainly have claimed to have learnt things, positives and negatives, from their loss yesterday. I think Fiji are in the same boat as Wales. They might have been more hopeful than Wales before the game, but at half time they were a point behind (and should have been three points ahead) and even at 55 minutes they should really have been three points ahead. But gradually the replacements showed their class from here. Up to that point, Fiji had a lot of positives to take from this match, and although the last 20+ minutes were one-way on the scoreboard, Fiji kept playing and have some real positives to take from it, among the 17 points and the card they leaked, including a huge break and a (correctly) disallowed try whilst down a man.

Looking Ahead

I’m going to list these matches in chronological order, not necessarily the order in which I’ll be watching them!

• Italy v South Africa - Italy will be confident, but I can’t see SA dropping this one.
• England v New Zealand - both sides will be pretty confident but I think the Kiwis will take this. They’re not back to the pomp of the 2011-15 team yet, but they’re starting to build something special
• Wales v Japan - although it’s only the second game together for Wales, and it might not be pretty, they ought to win
• Ireland v Australia - neither team has really impressed so far, but Australia have a losing habit, Ireland mostly have a winning habit. Ireland could blow it, but won’t
• France v Fiji - Fiji could push France, but the places that the French were weak, Fiji are not supremely strong. I can’t see France losing this.
• Scotland v Argentina - Scotland will want to bounce back, Argentina will be full of confidence. The world rankings suggest a close game with Argentina just winning, I think there’s a bigger gap than that.