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That League nonsense has no place in this thread!

A really great game. Despite being down to 14 men, I come away from it thinking that the ABs threw it away. They missed the conversion and the late penalty, both of which I thought would have been routinely got. They also turned down the chance at kickable penalties three times in the second...

Agreed. With the demise of Wasps and London Irish, and resulting exodus of English players from those clubs to France, I think the RFU are going to need to review the eligibility rules. IMO, it is an absolute nonsense to not pick players based outside England. If you look at SA’s squad for...

This. Our attack has been one dimensional for years though.

World Rugby has made a very quick decision on the alleged racist comment from the England v SA Semi-Final. Let's hope their comments about Tom Curry making the allegation in good faith are actually read and understood, and he's not hung out to dry. My wife, who is South African and speaks...

We were absolutely dominating the breakdown and objectively I cannot see anything wrong with any of England’s penalties. Our speed in defence, along with the ferocity of our tackling and technical work in the ruck was genuinely world class last night. It hasn’t been for a long time, but last...

Very unlucky. Unfortunately, as others have pointed out, Farrell’s ill discipline probably rubbed the ref up the wrong way. Regardless, Jamie George couldn’t have been any politer or more reasonable in trying to explain what the SA props were consistently doing. To be bundled out of the World...

Exactly what I highlighted in the thread last night. The referee couldn’t have had a better view of what was happening. Jamie George had even told him previously that it was happening at other scrums. However, it is probably also worth mentioning that Farrell’s ill discipline in causing us to...

Absolutely textbook from Scottish rugby fans. Brighton will win the PL before Scotland will win a RWC.

In this one off game, no. However, in general I think they are. We were very good at executing a particular game plan that suited the weather conditions and also tried to nullify SA’s strengths. In general though, man for man, they’re a much better team than we are. How many of our 23 today...

As above, from what I can see he actually turned his hip first and therefore wasn’t driving straight, which should have resulted in the penalty going to England instead.

The referee adjudged Ellis Genge to not be driving straight during the scrum, but from what I can see it was SA’s Vincent Koch who actually turned his hip first and therefore started driving incorrectly first. Scrum penalties are always very marginal, but this was a particularly frustrating one.

The ref has absolutely fallen for their scrum antics for the last crucial penalty. Koch has turn his hip first. The penalty should have gone the other way, but referees have a really annoying habit of essentially refereeing scrums based on who was dominating going into it, not what actually...

If we can keep our handling errors to a minimum and therefore a) keep the ball in the play longer and b) not give SA the change to scrum, we might get some joy. They looked vulnerable against France in the early stages when the ball was in play for long periods without too much of a break...

Our fitness coach, who was working for SA during the last World Cup, absolutely obliterated our team physically during the pre-WC camp, which I think led to the performances in the warm up matches, with the aim of them peaking about now. We’ll see if he’s done his job tomorrow!

I’m not writing off England‘s chances tomorrow quite as much as most. I suspect our game plan will be to kick as much as possible, probably trying a fair few drop goals to keep the scoreboard ticking over as well as kicking for goal from any and all penalties in range. If SA do have weakness...

Like the Etzebeth one yesterday. Could have gone either way. Our best chance will be going back to Steward at full back, picking Ford and Farrell and hoping that Ben Earl has another game like he did yesterday.

The thing I find very odd is that Borthwick (and the rest of the coaches currently with England) turned around a Leicester Tigers side that narrowly avoided being relegated in successive seasons and won a Premiership title with them. Running the show for them on the field was George Ford, who...