Reply With QuoteGood luck to England this morning!!!
Will be interesting to see what French team turn up, want England to win but have a sneaky feeling the French might come up with a surprise.
Bacon in the pan, coffee in the pot, Wales in the semi final. Lets hope for a better start than our last game!
F.T.F.A.
Good luck to England this morning!!!
Will be interesting to see what French team turn up, want England to win but have a sneaky feeling the French might come up with a surprise.
Swing low, sweet chariot
We have sent the Frenchys home the last 2 world cubs, lets hope we do it for the 3rd time, good luck England
Indeed. Hopefully a nice clean win and pick up some momentum for the Wales game - because we're going to need some, looking at their performance.
I think France is going to get up for this one. Going to be a fascinating contest - too tight to call.
Come on boys do us proud......
Allez le Bleu!
Just kidding! :mrgreen: I may live here, but the atmosphere in the bar is electric!
difficult to be cheering for England, but hey!
Yeah, allez all the way back to France after this match! :POriginally Posted by montrehomme1
Allez le Bleu!
Yeah, allez all the way back to France after this match! :PAllez le Bleu!
Pause.........Engage! :mrgreen:
0 - 11 as I turn on the telly.
Not a good start to the day....
Predictions for the final score??
Looks like England are getting the wake-up call they've been heading for.
They'll need to gather themselves and play like another team entirely to turn this around.
The French can smell an upset here, the locals are going nuts!
England are going to need a hard talking to at half time!
Where is the PASSION :shock:
Wilkinson and Flood struggling; basic handling errors; France on fire. Long way back for England from here.
They have a lot of work to do, im staying positive, but they need to come out a different side in the second half :?
Anyone know what watch Dallaglio is wearing?
His usual smug grin, as he does everytime things don't go right for Johno!
I'm half English half French but have a British passport. I usually cheer England first and foremost but not this rugby team as I believe this team us guilty of constantly breaking the rules and quite frankly if professional athletes can't lay of the beers and keep their noses out of trouble for an international tournament then they have their priorities wrong. Looking at the England players' body language I can tell you that they have lost the mental battle (they lost it weeks back when Tindall lied about his whereabouts) and England are going to lose this by around 30 points. Good riddance to negative, niggly, cheating rugby and Allez Les Bleus!
:DHis usual smug grin, as he does everytime things don't go right for Johno!
"Rugby player drinks beer, shocker" :lol:
...but what do I know; I don't even like watches!
Needed that!
Has that try turned the tide? looking forward to playing either side next week!
Indeed, your lot should be keen as mustard to take on either side on display here.
Yep. Hopefully the same side that turned up this morning will turn up again next week..Indeed, your lot should be keen as mustard to take on either side on display here.
Disappointing!
Another slow start, too many handling errors and line-out turnovers, and pushed back by the French time and time again. For me, the French wanted it more than we did.
Flood and Stevens very poor and the rest were a bit invisible
Anyone want an England Rugby Watch?
No real quality, only works for a few minutes
Anyone want an England Rugby Watch?
No real quality, only works for a few minutes
However, I can't think of any watch ever made which would adequately represent the patchy inconsistency of France :lol:
Although no trees were harmed during the creation of this post, a large number of electrons were greatly inconvenienced.
Well I am not as upset as I thought I would be. England have been poor, and in my view the problems were from the top with the team selection and type of play.
For four years I was meant to be going to NZ to watch, and for reasons could not, and I actually do not mind.
Anyway, next week off for a very quick whizz round the world instead with a couple of friends. Must remember to to tell the wife I will not be home for dinner.
Deserved French win, gutted but a resigned feeling after 20mins
Too many missed opportunities & a very good French performance.
Andy
Wanted - Damasko DC57
Yep, disappointed that England are out, but it had an air of inevitability about it, and the French deserved their win.
Time for me to get behind the Welsh boyo's now! :D
I've really enjoyed the tournament so far, despite patchy England, and really looking forward to SA vs Aus!!
It was a terrible, terrible campaign. Ill-disciplined on and off the pitch. We were outclassed in every department by the French. They were faster, more positive, more confident, they dominated the scrum and the lineout (at least in the first 20 minutes), their handling skills were far superior. We wee sluggish and error prone. In truth, we haven't improved at all since the tournament began. We have been cruelly exposed as the nonentities we are. England talk big but deliver nothing. I'm embarrassed.
Martin Johnson is simply not the man to raise England up. A fine captain he may have been but his time as coach doesn't seem to have delivered much. A win against anyone seems like a pleasant surprise. Cheers Martin, but lets clear out the old guard.
Reckon you've nailed it!, also would add, any of us who have spent time at a rugby club will understand the importance of the clubhouse, and the drinking, and general off-field team building. Perhaps some of the lethargy displayed on the field could be put down to over indulgence, and maybe just the wrong attitude?
Take nothing away from the French pack though, they looked an altogether different side today!
On the positive side, we won the second half 12-3 :(
Ah well, best of luck to the Welsh.
I have been woking in Paris last few weeks, and they love their rugby..
Back there monday morning which should be fun.
J..
Oh dear, you are in for a rough ride.
Some very sloppy play in the first half from England! France had a blinder though - who would have thought it??
The whole campaign has been poor first half with a fighting second. Gutted but inevitable really. Put us out of our misery. Roll on the rebuilding.
Agreed. We should have seen it coming !
I work for a French company and it started in the first half and has just gotten worse :cry:Oh dear, you are in for a rough ride.
Agreed, England lost today and really they deserved to lose. You cannot enter a tournament and go out and behave like they did. What we heard about was probably only half of what they actually got up to. If you dont take the competition seriously you cannot expect to win. I am half Irish half English and got a double whammy this morning :?
Disappointing tournament for England and genuinely gutted we don't get to meet in the semi's - it would have been a hum-dinger....
Many others, including me, seem to think that the strategy and choice matter not a jot when the players keep dropping the ball, holding onto it, running into touch, fluffing or high tackling, kicking the ball sideways into the stands, etc. etc. etc. I don't think Johnson told them to go out and do all those things ! Blaming purely the management for that performance merely excuses the players' lack of effort and attention.
...but what do I know; I don't even like watches!
Understatement of the year! :lol: :lol:
Hoping Wales make the final to play NZ, would be just reward for all the hard work they have put into their rugby over the last few years.
Hi Andrew - yes I do agree, the players were not good! However, plesae see this from Stephen Jones in the Times.
Sorry about having to paste it, but unless you are a subscriber, the links do not work!
What is worse than defeat? In England’s case, victory. Here is a chilling thought, with which I tortured myself in the hours after England’s exit from the World Cup. What if they had found some fortuitous way of beating the revived French? It would have destroyed the elite arm of the sport in England for generations, nothing less.
There has been a dreadful smugness surrounding the national team for far too long. “We’re getting there,” has always been the mantra. Where, exactly? Oblivion? But had they won, Martin Johnson could have waved happily to the fans on his way to the semi-final, perhaps even convinced himself that he should stay on, whereas now he must know in his heart that he should go immediately. After 38 games of his tenure as team manager, I cannot find a single area in which England are not emphatically worse than when he arrived.
Lack of discipline
In the first game on his watch, England players got drunk and behaved badly on tour in New Zealand. On this World Cup tour, Mike Tindall staggered around in a nightclub, tried to cover up his activities, and other players were involved in lurid incidents. For Johnson’s first home game in charge, against New Zealand, there was a blizzard of yellow cards. That indiscipline continued, the TV cameras often picking up Johnson smashing his fist on the table as another man in white departed to the bin. Yesterday as ever, the penalties came in a cascade.
A selection of errors
He spoke about seeking consistency, and offered loyalty, then spent years choosing the wrong men — Tindall and Shontayne Hape in the centre, on the apparent basis that they were big. It never seemed to matter that neither could play. He established Toby Flood as his fly-half, on the most sketchy of grounds. He railed privately against people he deemed were non-conformist, driving out Danny Cipriani, and how desperately England could have done last night with a player with an ounce of Cipriani’s creativity.
In the end, all the drivel about loyalty meant nothing, because as the World Cup approached, the established team disintegrated — Hape, Flood, Dylan Hartley, Steve Borthwick, Louis Deacon, Tom Wood and others of his regular team were jettisoned late in the day. The bugler sounded the retreat.
Leading questions
When he came in, he expressed a determination to build a group of leaders. He made the bizarre choice of Borthwick as captain, to begin the creation of the group. By the end, his captain was Lewis Moody, stricken by injury, diminished by niggles and by time. And the rest of the team had barkers and shouters, Tweeters, but no leaders.
Coach class (and lack thereof)
When Johnson took over, the coaches already in place were a polyglot bunch, pieces of different jigsaws, remnants of other regimes. Johnson should have disbanded them, consulted and drafted in proven ability. What did he saddle himself with? Brian Smith, the attack coach, has apparently managed in what I estimate to be about 220 training sessions, to produce not a single fluid attacking performance in any match on his watch. John Wells, the forwards coach, has presided over seasons when England’s magnificent heritage of forward play has been betrayed. The Premiership clubs, who have been denuded continually of their players so that they can take part in the endless sessions, should be asking what they were doing when they were away. So should the guardians of the public money poured into the RFU.
Thank goodness England lost, otherwise some people may have found an excuse to conclude that the edifice surrounding the national team should not be dismantled. By any performance indicators, by all the anecdotal evidence, by the rugby-in-chains style of play and by the dire results, nobody can escape.
Development? What development?
And what of the individuals under England’s command these last four years? To watch England play has been excruciating, but to see the lack of development of some promising young men is sporting tragedy. Fine prospects such as Courtney Lawes, Dan Cole, Tom Croft, Dylan Hartley, Tom Wood, Chris Ashton, Ben Youngs and Ben Foden should be contenders for a place in any world team. But they are marking time, and the Johnson regime stands accused of standing in their path.
That certainly hits home and I can't argue with it either.
The article is rather sober and depressing reading.
Let's hope the change that is needed actually happens.
Stephen Jones normally drools over all things pertaining to english rugby . The adjectives "thunderous" and "splendid " being widely used.I'm pretty sure that he also supported the appointment of Martin Johnson a man who had no track record of coaching or management and whose man management is based on aggressive behaviour .The way in which his selected players conducted themselves on the field and off it I believe showed that they had no respect for Johnson .
All very sad for the supporters who had been led by the press and TV to believe that England were a genuine favourite to win the RWC competition this year .
Responsibility for interpreting the review will rest with Rob Andrew :(
A rather alarming fact above surely RA has reached his sell by date by now, he is responsible for MJ's appt and should really take the consequences. I was always wary of Jono taking over when he did with no managerial experience and i really do not see how or why he should stay.
In the first half yesterday England really did remind me of a team that had to phone around to get players to play. Not one of the best eight teams in the world, there was no defensive line worth talking about, Haskell was on the bench, Lawes played on the blind side, Stevens played on his wrong side, all the result of poor motivation coaching and selection IMHO.
MJ was a great captain and player but he has been a very poor manager, it must be time to admit he was an error and to appoint a qualified person in his place.
best
Den
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