Next up - Italy

[Sandydragon]

North having a good impact on this game. Shame about that knock on as he has done well.

[Sandydragon]

Elliott Dee on in the back row, AWJ injured.

[Sandydragon]

Bit more comfortable now. Far fewer penalties conceded in the second half.

[Buggaluggs]

Score flatters us a bit

[normanski]

Our most creative players are our open side and number 8.

Faletau deserves his MoM.

[Sandydragon]

Lots of positives in that game, but still
Plenty to work on.

[Graigwen]

Well we played some pretty poor rugby today.

Personally I only got home ten minutes before kick off, and then threw up twice before the game started (no alcohol since last Saturday!).

Ioan Lloyd was very poor, but was clearly injured long before he was substituted.

Sheedy was not too bad and has gained more experience.

I am still not yet convinced by Rowland, I think Cory Hill was good when he came on and made a significant difference.

The lineout was still a bit dodgy and Parry joined the long overthrow club.

Wingers were fairly good but had less room than I hoped, Adams was right to hang on. Davies and North not too bad in the centre.

Nicky Smith was not impressive, Francis on the other hand worked hard in the loose and was solid in the scrum.

Botham was not impressive but I suppose he is still learning. Wainright was good when he came on.

Hardy's inexperience showed. It made a big difference when Davies came on.

The brainpower of Faletau and Tipuric got us out of trouble.

The order and timing of injuries severely hampered our scope to restructure the team on the field.

I have never doubted that Wayne Barnes works hard to be a completely even handed ref. Nor have I doubted that he considers himself the best ref in the World. Unfortunately he is wrong on both points. Even if his reading of our play at breakdowns was correct, he did not apply the same interpretation to the italians. Having said that, we were still pretty stupid not to adjust our play.

It was not the game I expected but should prove useful. Now we can write off 2020 as a year to forget.

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[normanski]

Well we played some pretty poor rugby today.

Personally I only got home ten minutes before kick off, and then threw up twice before the game started (no alcohol since last Saturday!).

Ioan Lloyd was very poor, but was clearly injured long before he was substituted.

Sheedy was not too bad and has gained more experience.

I am still not yet convinced by Rowland, I think Cory Hill was good when he came on and made a significant difference.

The lineout was still a bit dodgy and Parry joined the long overthrow club.

Wingers were fairly good but had less room than I hoped, Adams was right to hang on. Davies and North not too bad in the centre.

Nicky Smith was not impressive, Francis on the other hand worked hard in the loose and was solid in the scrum.

Botham was not impressive but I suppose he is still learning. Wainright was good when he came on.

Hardy's inexperience showed. It made a big difference when Davies came on.

The brainpower of Faletau and Tipuric got us out of trouble.

The order and timing of injuries severely hampered our scope to restructure the team on the field.

I have never doubted that Wayne Barnes works hard to be a completely even handed ref. Nor have I doubted that he considers himself the best ref in the World. Unfortunately he is wrong on both points. Even if his reading of our play at breakdowns was correct, he did not apply the same interpretation to the italians. Having said that, we were still pretty stupid not to adjust our play.

It was not the game I expected but should prove useful. Now we can write off 2020 as a year to forget.

.

Not a lot to disagree with there.

At every Italy kickoff their line was 10 metres behind the kicker but by the time he kicked the ball at least three if not four players were in front and offside and Barnes never called it.

[Sandydragon]

Lineout is a real source of concern.

Nicky Smith was OK without being that good. I prefer Wyn Jones.
Parry had some good moments with ball in hand but must accept some responsibility for a malfunctioning lineout.
Francis was pretty good I thought.
Rowlands was hit and miss.
AWJ was his normal combative self.
Botham is very raw. A good player in the making but definitely a backup at the moment.
Tipuric does what he does best.
Faletau is back to his best.
Hardy was OK I thought.
Sheedy ran laterally too often but also did some good stuff as well. He needs time to develop.
JD2 played well.
North played well at centre. Not hugely tested in defence but he gave us a lot of go forward ball.
Adams had a decent game.
LRZ looks very comfortable. A few errors but well out weighted by the positives on his game.
Liam wasn’t on the pitch long enough but could have got into trouble for his ruck clearance work.
Ioan Lloyd was poor.

I’m still a bit underwhelmed by our front five. Without Owens our lineout is a shambles.

[Son of Mathonwy]

Lineout shaky, got away with it because Italy's was just as shaky.
Scrum was good.
Breakdown, wtf I know Barnes was picky but in the second 20 minutes it nearly destroyed us. We needed to adjust to whatever tf Barnes was thinking.
Go forward, carriers, etc that was good, only Italy I know but nice to see us going forward.
Faletau and Tipuric, sheer class.
Hardy was good but Davies showed us a little magic.
Sheedy was good.
JD2 and North worked fine, in unfamiliar shirts. North at 13 can be continued.
Wingers were okay, if not really getting great opportunities.
Liam was fine (personally I think that clearout was a penalty at best). Lloyd was exposed having to cover from such an early point in the match. I feel for him but he's not ready for this level yet. I know Pivac wanted to give him a chance but the Italians would have scored a lot less if Holmes had come on instead.

Okay, so it's not 42-0 but still a clear victory at the end. Job done, some questions answered. Some progress has been made.

[Sandydragon]

Italy played a lot better than in the 42 nil match. At the hour Mark they had a close match with France in Paris.

The penalty count at the breakdown got me thinking about what the captain was doing. After the third one I’d be telling my players to wind it in. Something was going wrong and Barnes didn’t like it- no point arguing you have to adapt to the ref.

[Graigwen]

Lineout is a real source of concern.

Nicky Smith was OK without being that good. I prefer Wyn Jones.
Parry had some good moments with ball in hand but must accept some responsibility for a malfunctioning lineout.
Francis was pretty good I thought.
Rowlands was hit and miss.
AWJ was his normal combative self.
Botham is very raw. A good player in the making but definitely a backup at the moment.
Tipuric does what he does best.
Faletau is back to his best.
Hardy was OK I thought.
Sheedy ran laterally too often but also did some good stuff as well. He needs time to develop.
JD2 played well.
North played well at centre. Not hugely tested in defence but he gave us a lot of go forward ball.
Adams had a decent game.
LRZ looks very comfortable. A few errors but well out weighted by the positives on his game.
Liam wasn’t on the pitch long enough but could have got into trouble for his ruck clearance work.
Ioan Lloyd was poor.

I’m still a bit underwhelmed by our front five. Without Owens our lineout is a shambles.

We seem to have come to some kind of general concensus.

.

[Banquo]

Anyone else feel Liam Williams was a tad lucky with his clearout?

That really confused me- they reviewed it thoroughly and concluded it was legal, and the commentary team also agreed. Looked a tad careless at best. Then again, seen worse clearouts at almost every ruck in every game; they are Uber hot on iffy tackles but seem to care a lot less on iffy clearouts.

[Sandydragon]

Anyone else feel Liam Williams was a tad lucky with his clearout?

That really confused me- they reviewed it thoroughly and concluded it was legal, and the commentary team also agreed. Looked a tad careless at best. Then again, seen worse clearouts at almost every ruck in every game; they are Uber hot on iffy tackles but seem to care a lot less on iffy clearouts.

I did wince when I saw it and agin as the ref reviewed it. I suppose the mitigation is the position of the Italian player in relation to how Williams has to enter the ruck. And he did make an effort to grab on rather than shoulder charge.

It would be good to have some consistency though.

[Which Tyler]

[Sandydragon]

Great video. It’s brilliant for him and for us that he is back to his best. Hopefully Privac and co will keep him more involved rather than have him hanging around in the wings. He’s too good not to be allowed to influence the game.

[Graigwen]

Apart from all the flash stuff, what Faletau has done for us for years has been to clear up messy ball at the back of the set scrum. Think back to that last scrum of the 2015 World Cup game against England, it was Faletau who stopped us losing possesion near our own lime.

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