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STOP PRESS! The England team is not that bad
It's true! As far as a selection goes, it's better than could have been expected. No Matt Banahan for a start, although Louis Deacon is still on the bench - but you can't have everything.
Mat Tait returns, and while I have never rated him as highly as some, he holds the distinct advantage of being neither Mike Tindall or Jamie Noon, and the much less psychotic than he used to be Dylan Hartley is starting. Deacon aside, the bench actually has a bit of dynamism as well.
However, as someone once said: hope is the feeling that comes before someone smashes your gonads with a croquet mallet - or something like that. The personnel, after all, will be utterly wasted if the England Management Omnishambles have not got the drawing board fully wiped after the autumn.
We shall see; but I'm already looking forward to the game a damn sight more than I was yesterday.
England: D Armitage (London Irish); M Cueto (Sale Sharks), M Tait (Sale Sharks), R Flutey (Brive), U Monye (Harlequins); J Wilkinson (Toulon), D Care (Harlequins); T Payne (Wasps), D Hartley (Northampton), D Wilson (Bath), S Shaw (Wasps), S Borthwick (Saracens, capt), J Haskell (Stade Francais), L Moody (Leicester), N Easter (Harlequins).
Replacements: S Thompson (Brive), D Cole (Leicester), L Deacon (Leicester), S Armitage (London Irish), P Hodgson (London Irish), T Flood (Leicester), B Foden (Northampton).
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February 2, 2010 in England, Six Nations 2010 | Permalink|
Comments
Damn right - best team in a while! woohoo....obviously still going to be beaten though..goes without saying
Posted by: Timmo | Feb 2, 2010 3:56:33 PM
Yep, this should be a tasty game. At least we will hopefully be spared some insufferable strangled abortion of a game. My heart says that England will loosen up a bit and threaten us, but in the end this will play into Welsh hands and we'll win by five points.... I hope so anyway....
Posted by: brighty | Feb 2, 2010 5:15:13 PM
Yes, you still have to say Wales to win, but by somewhat less than we thought. Equally, this tolerable-ness means I no longer have to pretend to be Scottish this February! Good times!
Posted by: ScrumGuru | Feb 2, 2010 7:29:31 PM
lee-editor, dude i totally agree with you it does look pretty good on paper, and wholeheartedly hope, pray, sacrifice to the gods that maybe just maybe they actually play as they did in the first twenty minutes of one of those autumn internationals!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: duncan_disorderly | Feb 2, 2010 8:41:49 PM
Matt Tait would be my first choice at outside centre as he has the ability to run at gaps and has the pace to worry any international defence. That combined with Armitsge and Monye and we have some real pace on the outside. My concern is Wilkinson. He sits deep and is easy to defend and it cuts down the time and space for the outside backs. Unless the powers that be have encouraged him to stand flat outside the pocket, I'm not sure the backs will see much good ball. Looking forward to Saturday
Posted by: Nick | Feb 2, 2010 8:54:16 PM
Whooo hoo, I'm even going to put my Sunday run on hold to watch this now. It had better be good though, it's bad enough having to get up at 4am as it is for this.
Posted by: Dan | Feb 2, 2010 9:07:05 PM
Nick, I agree that Tait seems like a player who goes for a gap but did you see that joint interview he did with Hipkiss? Taut described himself as like "an extra flanker now" so he seems to have succumbed to the common England affliction that centres are now no more than battering rams.
Posted by: Brighty | Feb 2, 2010 9:22:29 PM
Don't talk yourself down boys.....leave that to us!
Only kidding, I can't argue too much with the selection. If they string together a couple of performances such as they did toward the end of last years 6N then they could be on the road to being a decent rugby team again.
Of course equally this could be a ruse to cruelly lift their beleagured supporters hopes only to have them dashed by the cunning EMO game plan that has Tait at 2nd row and the other 14 playing in a channel 2 yards either side of JW, who is of course lined up 20 yds back from the gain line.
Posted by: GazP | Feb 3, 2010 12:40:23 AM
How the hell does "Mr. I'm so great and awesome, but really am a crock of shite" Cueto get a run in the team these days? Do we really not have any better options that this narcarcistic prick?
Posted by: Dan | Feb 3, 2010 4:33:25 AM
Dan, while it is true that cueto can be a bit of an arse, he is a decent player and he was solid if not spectacular in the autumn; which was a fuckload better than most of them
Posted by: Lee editor | Feb 3, 2010 9:06:09 AM
I would ask how does Tim Payne hang on to this spot - but there appear to be pretty much no English props anywhere on the planet. Best nick some from the Pacific Islands - that'll upset the kiwis...
Good to see Johnson saying England must attack - whey hey! Revolutionary rugby that is. I hope he doesn't come up with any more crackpot ideas like "sometimes England will need to defend", "it gets dark at night", "its more likely to snow in the winter" etc...
Suddenly all is not lost - only a little bit is lost. It should hopefully not be quite the embarrassment it would've been, indeed, if it weren't for our lack of props, I would say we'd take the Welshies with this side!
Posted by: BigR | Feb 3, 2010 10:29:03 AM
Agree with BigR, it is all well and good having these nice shiny backs but means nothing if England get smashed in the scrum. Payne is a disaster waiting to happen against Adam Jones also there's a severe lack of pace in the back row - no doubt this will come to pass and all the backs will be blamed for failing to self-generate quick ball
Posted by: Bam Bam | Feb 3, 2010 12:03:39 PM
Wow, how long has it been since the opposition were actually more terrified of our (Wales) forwards than our backs? Happy days.
Seriously though, I can't see us being so sure of a win. I'd love us to sneak it but I'm just not confident enough. One win there in over 20 years probably has something to do with it....
Dan, that's the best summary of that whiney little prick Cueto I have ever heard. He reached new levels of big-girls-blouseness this summer when he was the only guy in the whole of Britain and Ireland to publicly state he should have been in the Lions squad, and he only didn't get in cos of the Welsh bias (his words). He is a prick of the largest order ever.
Posted by: brighty | Feb 3, 2010 1:59:05 PM
Its front row that worries me most. Inexperience against Welsh/British lions - gonna be a hard day at the office.
Posted by: nick_b | Feb 3, 2010 2:54:31 PM
True to my ame I am confident of a 20 point England win.....Ooo what was that, sorry i had fallen asleep and was dreaming of Johnny getting quick ball on the gain line, (brought about as the english forwards had smashed the whimpy Gethin & co at the ruck) and then Johnny up at the gain line delivers beautiful pass to open up gap for Flutey who uses Tait as a decoy runner and cuts inside to flip to Armitage at pace who scores right under the posts.
In the other reality - Wales 18 England 11 (albeit a risky prediction as it assumes England score a try)!
Posted by: Stupid Englishman | Feb 3, 2010 3:03:49 PM
I hear you Lee, but the reality is that England should not be picking 'solid' wingers. We should be picking 'exciting' and 'outstanding' wingers. Cueto is a bottler in the tackle. Granted he can run, but only when there's a 3 on 1 overlap and he can walk in a try.
There are better options, for example, me. I can tackle, OK I'm not as quick as him, but I don't whine and moan like a bitch about not being selected for the Lions when in really he shouldn't even be in the England team. Rant over... the twat will probably go and score the winning try now on Saturday and make me look like a prick :)
Posted by: Dan | Feb 3, 2010 9:19:46 PM
Points on Cueto agreed, but who else is there? Assuming no-one will be mad enough to suggest Banahan, you end up with a choice of Ben Cohen, Tom Varndell, David Strettle, or someone relativly untried like Topsy Ojo (remember him). JSD the best option, but he appears to have disapeared off the face of the earth.
Posted by: ScrumGuru | Feb 4, 2010 8:08:22 PM
