Quote Originally Posted by ryanb741 View Post
How can you say this? Tonga shipped 92 points against New Zealand and 44 points against Japan in the past month. England were abject. The good thing is it was a gimme match and not a crucial game but they need to get better
Because the Pacific Island Nations are woefully underfunded and cannot have their players in camp for months in advance of the competition, so those results give a false sense of thir worth.
The Tongan preparation games were bound to start with a car crashes, as they have to collect their players from all 4 corners of the earth for the first time in ages.
If you compare todays team to the one that played in the Pacific Nations cup earlier this summer, it is 80% different.
But once assembled, their team improves quickly because they are talentend and great rugby playing nations (20% of all of the world's professional rugby players come from Fiji, Tonga or Samoa).
Do you really think, watching the Tongans play today that NZ would put another 97 points on them? No. Japan over 40? - no chance. NZ 40? Maybe.
Tonga's ability was poorly represented by those warm-up results, because they went into those games half-baked. They are better than that, and come the big stage, they want to prove it, so they will have played their best today.
And they may continue to do so, but they may also dip in form if it becomes clear that qualification from the group is unattainable.
England certainly left some points on the table today, no doubt, but they did okay.

D