Autumn Internationals 2025, Weeks 3 and 4

There are a lot of matches you’d predict to be one-sided this week, plus Ireland v South Africa, Rassie has never won at Landsdowne Road but will be looking to correct that.

Wales v New Zealand

New Zealand scored early and I’m sure much will be made of both LRZ's missed tackle and the defensive system that had him alone between the goalpost and the touch line against three All Blacks. That kind of narrow defence is pretty common, you see them even narrower with no winger out there, and LRZ got out and made good contact with Clarke, who was strong enough to ride the challenge. The Welsh coaches will definitely look at that and think about it, but probably not considering it a huge failure. The press won’t be so forgiving I’m sure.

LRZ then had two lovely bits of play almost back-to-back that led to a Welsh try on the opposite wing. First DMac threw an awful pass, not clearly to anyone, and under Jordan's knees, that he knocked on trying to catch it. LRZ caught it and Wales regained possession. From that, a contestable kick put LRZ up against DMac, and more Wales ball led to it being spun along the line and a lovely try.

Over the quarter of an hour there was a strange stalemate. The Kiwis looked better ball in hand, but couldn’t manage to penetrate and score, except a penalty, the Welsh were far, far better in the air, on both sides of the ball. At least until Clarke won a kick, and moments later Love was scoring under the posts.

Rogers scored his second for Wales a few minutes later, and Tamati Williams rounded out the scoring with a close range try after Wales successfully defended a 5m lineout but couldn’t keep NZ out for the following phases.

At halftime 24-14 to the All Blacks was a pretty fair reflection of the match. New Zealand had played better than Wales but Wales had played appreciably better than against Argentina or Japan, both in attack and defence.

The second half started with the Kiwis kicking shorter, so they could reclaim their own “contestable” kicks without pressure but when Wales won the ball back, a lovely flowing move put Rogers over - the first Welshman to score a hat trick against the ABs! From the kickoff Wales tried to put Rogers away again immediately but the ref spotted a knock on. Boo! (She was quite right.)

Essentially from that scrum Clarke looked to have stretched the lead again, after two very bad tackles, but there was a knock on, denied. However, it was caused by a Welsh leg, penalty, 5m lineout. That didn’t go as planned but the ball went back to Jordan who appeared to charge over, but the TMO showed enough evidence for the ref to change her mind. (I’m not sure that’s correct protocol; as a Welsh fan, I’m not complaining.) From the goal-line dropout, New Zealand eventually scored, although they needed the TMO to confirm this one.

After this, the ABs exerted extended pressure that the Welsh defended fairly well, at times pushing the Kiwis back appreciably, but over the period of the disallowed tries and the Ioane try and this stretch they’d continued to leak penalties. Finally the ref sent a player to the bin, and the AB pounced almost instantly out wide.

Wales weren’t done, LRZ got the ball with enough space to run for the first time, left Clarke for dead and suddenly they were 25m further down the pitch before he could be tackled.

As Thomas (the prop) returned from his sin bin, Plumtree was shown yellow for a dangerous tackle. Reece got on the end of a terrible pass from Jordan to score his second shortly afterwards.

Wales were not done, even down a player. They marched up the pitch, one of the Kiwis went in at the side of a ruck and was pinged. A lineout 10m out lead to a short drive, a move towards the posts and back to the wing and LRZ scoring in the corner in glorious fashion. This marks a high point, 26, for Wales points against NZ in Wales.

Clarke scored a second to stretch it to 52-26.

All is not perfect in Welsh rugby. If not going to pretend it is. There were moments when tackles that really should have been made were missed. There were no stolen balls in rucks. There were far too many penalties conceded. However, they have clearly improved over these three games, in attack and defence, and despite this defeat there are signs of recovery and resilience that were not there even in the summer. They’re probably going to get smashed next week, but Italy and even Scotland, a potentially stuttering Ireland are reasonable targets. If France and England are not at their best, they could lose too. This time last year you couldn’t say that.

Ireland v South Africa

Ireland won the first penalty, and the subsequent lineout, and for the next 12 minutes pretty much nothing went their way, with the exception of some sliced kicks. Even that was pretty momentary.

South Africa swung into attack and scored a nice try in the corner. SFM put in an ugly looking hit on one of the Irish players, but contrary to the Irish colour commentator’s opinion, there was clearly an attempt to wrap - the other arm counts too - it was shoulder then head, the player was still falling and in the tackle of another player. It started at the YC threshold and lots of mitigation moved it down to just a penalty. From that they moved the ball to within 2m and then gave up a turnover. Lowe chased a kick, saw he wasn’t going to make it and slowed down, but couldn’t resist tackling Willemse in the air. Ireland kicked a penalty, it bounced off the post, and Lowe caught it. A couple of phases later they looked to have scored, but Ryan had illegally cleared out a player at the previous ruck. It looked borderline to me, no attempt to bind, reckless, and shoulder to the head. The FPRO agreed, red! Ireland kicked the ball out on the full twice in a row, inviting the pressure onto them. Both times tiny errors saved the Irish from conceding tries directly.

At 31 minutes I think the Irish got genuinely lucky, a shoulder to the head was taken down to penalty only. There might have been enough mitigation; I can’t help feeling that the fact the Irish were under a red card swayed the decision more than anything. After that, SA finally added a second try, and Prendergast was binned for repeated offences - he was a mile offside, ironically that made the gap Reinarch ran through to score.

Somehow, down two men, and totally against all the pressure, Sheehan scored just before halftime. Ireland looked to be working their way to halftime after that, but a cynical hand on the floor in the ruck, Crowley on for an HIA for O'Brien, gave SA another chance, although Ireland stayed at 13 because the red card had just expired. SA took the scrum, Porter got carded, Ireland down to 12! Another scrum… penalty try! The ref took pity, said it was the whole Irish front row, so no yellow card (probably fair).

I’m not sure how it’s only 19-7, but that’s the score. You have to imagine the floodgates will open after playing for extended periods with 12 and 13 players against the Bokke. In the first half SA were 100% in lineouts, Ireland only 67%! And thanks to the cards, that’s not the story.

Ireland won a penalty at the first lineout of the second half, scored three points, then knocked on the restart. A six-man scrum in the middle of the pitch, half way between the 22 and 10m lines. It went backwards faster than I can run, penalty advantage, a nice pass to SFM, try.

SA got their restart drill right, Ireland messed it up - after the box kick, Doris obstructed the kicker, penalty 11. From the lineout, SA went on the rampage and Ireland got their first ruck turnover. The clearance was short, the next attack ended in a choke tackle and a scrum 5m out, but the Irish had all their players back. The scrum still looked like it was going backwards on wheels but they just got the ball out and JGP cleared. After this SA spent what felt like forever and might actually have been 15 minutes scrummaging, and racking up penalties but no points, on the Irish 5m line, they went wider, got turned over and the pressure was briefly relieved.

The match ended with Ireland pressing but SA just sucked up all the attempts and said nope. 24-13 final score.

This was a game where both teams will feel bad at the end. South Africa will, rightly, wonder how they didn’t score more against such a denuded team and with such dominance in everything. Ireland will wonder how they got pinged so hard by the referee. Ok, the red card was a rush of blood by an individual, but all the yellow cards were bad play, responses to pressure, and that’s worrying. Ok, there may not be many sides that can bully Ireland in the scrum like that, but SA, France, NZ and maybe England can. That’s going to be an issue…

France v Australia

A lot of the talk before the game was that the Wallabies were exhausted, this was their fifteenth test match, and they’d been poor throughout the whole of the autumn internationals. France have not really been brilliant either. Now a lot of teams look less than stellar against South Africa, but they looked out of sorts against Fiji too.

Anyone subscribing to the fatigue theory needs to watch this game and ask themselves some serious questions. There is a narrative about the French here, and how long it took them to find their rhythm, which we’ll come back to, but there’s a story about the Wallabies and the energy and intensity they brought to this game. They scored first, they exploited gaps in the French defence to score again, and they mounted a good maul that pushed the French pack over the line to score a third. If Edmed had packed his kicking boots, they could have had a lot more points.

France were not totally inept, they had moments of defending well and some glorious attacks. LBB became the top try scorer for the year, Deporteere got on the end of a lovely pass from him too and there was a third. 17-17 at half time. But where the Wallabies had pushed and strained, sometimes breaking through, sometimes foundering, Les Bleus looked they were only clicking about half the time. They were making stupid mistakes in defence and mostly looked disjointed in attack. When they got out of their heads and played, they looked good, but they couldn’t do it often enough.

The TMO was clearly not watching the same match as everyone else. Everyone saw Wilson hit Ollivon in the head. It looked like a yellow card to me, but could have been a 20m red. “No clear head contact.” There was a second hit to Ollivon's head, again no sanction. And in the second half a high tackle on LBB, no intervention from the TMO.

In the second half, the French looked better. Ramos pulled out a bit of magic and suddenly they clicked into gear, try. A penalty and the score was starting to stretch out. But Jorgensen got a nice break, showed some real speed and scored. I never had the speed to play wing, but the defence from Penaud looked odd. Chris Ashton, who knows much more about it than me, said he took the wrong option, I’d like to know what the debrief is like. France gradually eased out into a comfortable lead, and although the Aussies kept going, they ended up well beaten, 48-33 was the final score. At the time I felt that flattered them, the next day as I write this, it feels more like a fair reflection of the match.

I think anyone writing off France is forgetting their injury list, and the compromises they’re making. Lucu and Ntamack are both the quieter partners at halfback normally. Lucu plays more like a non-French 9, delivering the ball to Jalibert who runs the show. Ntamack normally plays outside Dupont who definitely bosses Toulouse (and France) around the park. But together, the French halfbacks are too passive. Le Garrec would have been a better fit with Ntamack, but he’s injured too. Outside them, Fickou is still class, but getting old, Deporteere is young, and they’ve got basically no experience together. When they click they’re great, but they have too many times when they don’t quite do it automatically and everything is just a step slow. But that’s basically 9-13 not quite firing properly. In addition, there are new props, a new hooker on the bench and the list goes on. Now, there will doubtless be injuries for the 6N too, but hopefully there won’t be as many - and it doesn’t take much, Mauvaka, Moefana and one of Dupont and le Garrec for France to suddenly be firing on all cylinders again.

Of course, Australia are not without injuries. Edmed is, depending on how you count, their fourth or fifth choice 10. Schmidt has generally run a game plan centred around big bodies running straight and close to make holes out wide, but Skelton, one of the biggest there is, was injured in his last run out for La Rochelle (and unavailable for both Japan and England). That said, there have been dubious selections (Wilson ahead of Valetini, no LSL) given the plan, or, on the flip side, no tinkering with the plan given the players available. Wilson is a good carrier, but relatively small for an 8, he’s better in space or at loose shoulders, not directly at defenders. Valetini, who is taller and heavier does that better. But the plan is straight ahead and damn the torpedos! A small tweak, Wilson changing angle to hit the weak shoulder, makes him much more effective, but no. At least not until this match. And whilst Australia certainly started with more verve, their slightly tweaked tactics kept them feeling more successful and thus playing longer than we’ve seen in some time.

Scotland v Tonga

This match started badly for Tonga, what felt like almost the first ruck (it was actually after 4 minutes) saw their blindside sent to the bin for falling onto the legs of the Scottish player and the review saw his card upgraded to red. I think it’s on that borderline where you could justify either colour, but red is certainly not unreasonable. We were again* treated to the commentary team bleating on about it being harsh, there was no malice. The laws do their absolute best to take intent and malice out of how they’re applied. Things like accidental v deliberate knocks on are judged by going for the ball with two or one hands, not the referee deciding whether it was deliberate or not. Malice isn’t part of the process, except incidentally - punching, kicking, stamping and head butting are deemed so malicious they’re automatic red cards - but that wording doesn’t appear in the laws, rather they’re contrary to the spirit of the game. This is why other reckless acts still get straight reds. High degree of danger, yes. Mitigation, no. Red card. (I think there’s an argument for mitigation because of the second player he slid off, I’ve seen it given, which is why I think it was borderline.)

Scotland scored three tries during the red card, which you have to say is good, but that was all they could manage. Tonga never threatened to score but were able to contain the Scottish attack and at least put pressure on the Scots. Still, 21-0 is not bad.

The second half started possibly worse for Tonga. Right at the end of the first half they got a yellow card, with a few seconds left on that, they got another. It’s hard to say the 13 men really cost Tonga, Scotland had time to kick to touch but not take the lineout, however, they’d have been thinking we survived that, then they had to focus and defend against an extra man again. As that sin bin ended, another began and finally Scotland scored their fourth try, more than 35 minutes after their third and after an additional 20 minutes of having an extra player. This is a much changed Scotland team, sure, and a bit of unfamiliarity is fair enough, but Scotland's attack was frequently very poor and enabled the Tongans to defend easily. They were definitely up for it, making their tackles, attacking the ball and so on, I am not taking anything away from their effort, but Scotland didn’t really make them work as hard as they could, and should, have done. Scotland scored twice more during this yellow card, once from a driving maul, once a long range run in that looked very nice but was more a case of fresh Scottish legs out pacing tired Tongan ones.

Scotland ran in two tries in the last ten minutes, as the Tongan legs looked tired after 50 minutes down a player. 56-0 was the final score. Tonga will be hurting now, but have probably emerged with more credit than the Scots from this game. It felt like it should have been more like 112-0 with all the cards, but soft errors and soft attacking lines kept the score down.

England v Argentina

England started brightly in most respects, good kicks to compete, good possession and territory, leading first to a drop goal then a rather fortunate try as Argentina tried to defuse a kick but ended up dropping the ball into Ojomoh's hands in full flight for an easy run in.

By contrast, the first two Argentinian lineouts were not straight, when Gallo had the line wide open the pass was too hard and too his shoulder and he couldn’t collect it, and a charged down Ford clearance kick bounced away from the three chasing Pumas straight to Feyi-Waboso.

A little later, a good English scrum went left but Ford kicked right and Feyi-Waboso ran in with no blue and white shirts near him.

Argentina got unlucky again. A great attack and a pass that would have seen a try was blocked by Ford's head. If it had been his arm, knock on, penalty try, but the head is play on…

Argentina scored a penalty but, right at the end of the half, they gave up a penalty. England kicked to the corner and looked to have scored a try but it was dropped short and rolled over. Argentina were lucky. 17-3 at halftime.

I just want to talk about the English commentary team, particularly the halftime group. You would think England had been perfect, Argentina awful. England played reasonably well, Argentina also played well but were unlucky on three different occasions. That’s not awful, that’s unfortunate, and equally it’s not perfect from the lily-white boys. The live commentators were better, occasionally caught up in the moment, but more balanced.

The second half started with good Argentinian pressure, a try and a penalty. Ten points in as many minutes. Suddenly Twickenham was really quiet. Another ten minutes later and another penalty for Argentina. Squeaky bum time! England had had possession in that 20 minutes but it was always really short, maybe two of three phases at most, then a kick or knock on and Argentina roaring back into the English half.

England finally got a bit of possession and pressure. Ford missed a drop goal, but moments later England scored a try. That brought Ojomoh's tally to a try and two assists, not bad.

England won that ten minutes, but a really stupid late hit from Curry on Mallia gave Argentina even better position than they’d have otherwise had - he kicked a 50-22 from inside his own 22. Argentina looked to have scored, albeit too little too late, but another knock on in the act of scoring denied them. However England had infringed, they got another chance, scored, and the drop goal conversion was good with two seconds left for a restart!

England kicked long, asking Argentina to run 80m to win. Then they defended incredibly softly and they got into the 22 comfortably. A penalty, a kick to the corner and a stolen lineout. England survived, somehow.

Italy v Chile

This match was played at the same time as France v Australia, but I watched that one first, perhaps unsurprisingly. On paper this is as much of a mismatch as Wales v New Zealand, but Chile are full of confidence are qualifying for the 2027 World Cup, and whilst Italy shouldn’t be demoralised by losing to South Africa, they’re fielding a fairly changed team, some due to injuries and some down to building depth in the team. It has the potential to be closer than you’d expect at first glance.

Italy started well, and a lovely pass from Garbisi (Alessandro rather than Paolo) to Capuozzo opened the scoring. However, although Chile were not really able to retain possession and apply pressure, their defensive system was good, despite being cut by Capuozzo - who did that to the Bokke last week, so that’s not really a black mark - their kicking game was good and their kick chase was decent. Better than Australia’s on both sides of the ball, better than New Zealand's defensively, causing issues for the Italians. Not up there with the best in the world but the best of any tier two nation I’ve seen this autumn, up there with a bunch of tier one sides.

Italy applied extended pressure thanks to a variety of penalties against Chile, finally settling for three points from right in front. The easy points were there to be taken, but Italy hadn’t looked like getting over the try line, good call. Chiles had a decent period, which largely meant keeping play in the middle third before Italy scored a try by crashing over from close range, but Chile ended the half by returning the favour. The score of 15-7 seemed fair.

Chile started the second half in much the same place they ended the first. They were camped in the Italian 22 for nearly 10 minutes before scoring, but came away with another try.

That seemed to wake the Azzurri up from whatever post-prandial doze they were suffering after oranges. Three tries followed, about ten minutes apart, taking the game away from Los Condores, before a last minute try for Chile made the score look reasonable. During the period of those three Italian tries, and a bit on either side, the play was essentially camped in the Chilean 22. Not 100% of the time, but probably over 75%.

I think both teams and coaches will come away reasonably happy with this match. Italy gave a bunch of their wider squad time against a motivated opponent. They won’t plan to use all of these players at once in many games before 2027, but they’ve got more experience for their injury cover. On the other hand, Chile have only played 11 times in Europe, ever, and this is their only game against a tier one opponent this year. If you look at Scotland's games against USA and Tonga, both huge scores and shutouts, you have to wonder what any of the three teams got from them. Chile were beaten, yes, but had an extended period on either side of half time when they attacked well and scored, plus a try at the end. Although they gave up six tries overall, they also had some extended periods of containing the Italian attack.

Looking Ahead

The November Test window has officially closed. However, the idiots in charge decided to sign up Wales v South Africa for shits and giggles. Both sides are weakened by the loss of some or all of their overseas players - SA kept their players based in Japan - Wales called up 11 new players, SA trained with 25 people.

Why? What are we going to learn from this?

Week 4

Because I’m so late, and there’s only one match, I’m tacking this on the end.

Wales v South Africa

Being outside the test window, everyone sensible has packed up and gone home. Players are either resting or returning to club rugby for a week before European Cup rugby starts next week.

Because we’re outside that window, both teams are losing swathes of their overseas players. However, the Boks are on top of the world and have a squad with lots of experienced players. Wales barely have any depth and have called up 11 fresh faces to the squad that was just starting to, very tentatively, build confidence from doing things well for parts of matches in defeat to much better teams and week-on-week improvements, then they’re ripped apart to start again against the world number 1.

The first half was certainly one-sided on the scoreboard, 28-0. Wales had moments in attack, but they were fleeting, SA camped in the Welsh 22 for probably 25+ minutes of the half. The fact that they only scored four tries is a mix of them being overeager and the Welsh defence putting pressure on them.

There were poor passes down to good pressure, good defence that forced turnovers and the like. But when SA sorted everything out, they could and did score. The scrums were interesting. SA were mostly dominant, certainly on their own feed if they got the engagement right they could choose what to do, take a penalty, push Wales over the line, play the ball at will. But they also gave up free kicks and ultimately penalties at the engage for going too soon for M. Ramos. Wales also got the ball out on their put in pretty reliably - it might have been really fast, route one, ball, but it was clean possession.

The second half started oddly for Wales. On the scoreboard you’d say it was disastrous. The Bokke pushed straight into attack, and in the process of scoring Plumtree was offside, and shown yellow for cumulative penalties. South Africa scored three more tries in that ten minutes. As soon as he came back, Wainwright was shown yellow for a high tackle, which was soft and pretty borderline between a penalty and a yellow card (it certainly started as a yellow card but with mitigation down to a penalty IMO) and Wales conceded another try during this period.

However, during each of those yellow cards Wales also mounted genuine attacks against the Bokke line. During the second one an extended period of pressure, which doubtless helped keep the score down at the other end. The Bokke defence was good enough to hold the line, but conceded a bunch of penalties and were stressed by the Welsh attack. It’s a small win, but that’s all we were likely to get.

The end of the match saw Etzebeth sent off for a clear eye gouge. Several South African outlets, Bryan Habana being the most well known, claimed that he was provoked but this has been thrown out. Official media outlets have described the claims as “highly dubious and doctored” - lets be honest and say the still looked photoshopped and there’s no video that shows anything like it. The Citing Officer took the unusual step of not only not citing Mann, but saying there was no evidence of wrongdoing on his part.