The second thing is that I forgot to set my Sky box to record the game, so I'm instead trying to do this on iPlayer, which is a complete load of shit for rewinding and fastforwarding. Apologies if this affects the quality of the recap - it'll either make it go much slower as I swear at having to watch the same 10 seconds over and over when I just want to see who the player was in the last 2 seconds, or it'll make it go much quicker as I realise no-one cares who that player was and just move on.
Anyway, let's all reset our KADABs to zero and jump straight in.
Minute 1: A long kick-off lands on the head of Dombrandt and he carries up in a... fine manner, towards the edge of the 22. I may not have biases from watching the game live, but I did read what you all wrote and there seemed to be an opinion that Dombrandt had a decent game, so I'm looking out for that. However, I did watch France vs Scotland earlier and comparing the venom with which Aldritt and Ollivon ran back balls that they caught, with this, is not flattering to Dombrandt. He gets tackled solidly and driven back a bit, so it's very slow ball, but we're not planning on doing much with it anyway. Up she goes and out for a lineout just inside the Welsh half. Great kick from JVP.
Wales have a bit of movement from the lineout and AWJ takes uncontested at the front. Dummy maul and out to the back - it's a set piece move that threatens like it's bringing Grady back on a hard line and instead passes off to Adams. Looks pretty, but Faletau hasn't read it and gets in the way, and Itoje and Sinckler have read it, and get in the way. Wales reset and run a forward pod off 9 to recycle.
Minute 2: Ball passed back to Bigg... sorry, force of habit - to Owen Williams, who pumps it high and long, only for Steward to take a fairly regulation catch. LRZ (there's a lot of Three Letter Acronyms on the pitch today) chases well, but Slade unashamedly blocks him and Steward can make a few metres in traffic. It's quick ball and George carries well - looks like we're going to play today, but all that changes when the fire nation attacked Farrell calls for the ball and drops deep off the next phase. Looks like he's going to kick long, but instead, he kicks directly into Faletau's chargedown and we're scrambling back to cover.
Thankfully Steward is paying attention and is fast enough to get to the ball before any Welshmen, before rounding the first chaser and then stepping back inside another and then charging 15m up the pitch and driving through two tacklers in order to set up clean ball from the ruck. Speaking of impressions I got from the board, I'd picked up the impression that this was another poor game from Steward and he does nothing else but catch high balls. Good start, even if him dodging tackles did get his shorts literally pulled down in front of 80,000.
JVP decides he doesn't trust Captain Chaos anymore - understandable - and sends the forwards round the corner once so he can set up for another belting box-kick to take us back over halfway again. He's had a good first two minutes. I did check the Farrell chargedown to see if htere was mitigation from the pass but, no, it was a lovely quick and accurate service - Faletau was just very quick and Farrell was just very slow.
Minute 3: The BBC unmercifully show a slow-motion replay of Freddie Steward trying and failing to pull his shorts up mid-run and deciding he's better off just concentrating on running with a bare arse. Nice.
Wales get uncontested ball from the lineout and make a simple passing move into midfield - Rees-Zammit is coming round on the outside and we do have it covered except that Slade gets rounded and brushed off. Malins is alive and brings him down though. That was a simple move, but that's the kind of thing we should have in our locker when Arundell's on the pitch - we've got a bit of stardust, let's get him the ball and a one-on-one and see if he can make someone look stupid.
Wales look to go back the other way, but Itoje is a nusiance, first reading a play to tackle man-and-ball, then disrupting the pass, then hacking through and tackling the Welshman who picks it up. Ref calls us back for the knock-on though.
Minute 4: We don't get the scrum though as there's faffing about and then Raynal gives England a free-kick for an early engage.
Minute 5: Farrell puts up the SPIRAL BOMB, but it's far too long, landing a good 10m ahead of the fastest English chaser. However, Wales manage to fail to get anyone underneath it for the easy mark, and instead Williams and Faletau both leave it to the other one. It does bounce kindly for Halfpenny though, who evades Malins and kicks long to Farrell (probably Wales's second best attacking plan behind "Give it to LRZ").
Fazlet surprises me by passing inside to Steward, who probably should've passed on to Watson out wide, but makes acceptable metres and sets the ball. It's quick ball and JVP gets it out to Watson who, when faced with an overlap does this really weird thing where he... doesn't kick it along the ground? It's bizarre and unconventional, but it works better than you'd think - pass to Dombrandt and lovely quick hands sets Lawrence away down the left with Slade outside him. The cover defence gets over to them (and I would like to take a moment to note to Ollie Lawrence that the gods gave him two hands for the express purpose of using both of them to carry and pass the ball, no I don't care how cool you look or that you *can* pass one handed, I still remember the end of your break against Italy, use both hands on the ball), but we are up to the 22 and with quick, attacking ball.
Farrell's about to kick it, isn't he?
Nope, I'm disappointed in another way - Genge runs hard, but high, into LRZ and the wing does an excellent job of stripping the ball. I cannot wait until the Lions tour when I can legitimately cheer for him as he's such a good player. Wales kick poorly though and Steward carries it back, again functionally rather than any great threat. It's good ball though and we make a couple of good forward carries into traffic without really achieving much.
ETA: As requested, a reminder of the KADAB rules:
Puja wrote: ↑Sun Feb 12, 2023 9:59 pmI have come to the conclusion that I am going to keep up the tally of Kicking Away Decent Attacking Ball, but I'm going to define exactly what I mean by it, so it's a lot less subjective than last week's effort. I would say KADAB requires four things: a) Our possession is either within 40m of the opposition line or within 60m where it's fast-paced and we're moving forwards against a disrupted defence, b) The player has another option - doesn't have to be prime try-scoring ball, but has to be secure enough that we could restart an attack if we chose not to kick, c) the kick must result in the opposition having safe possession where they've got the ability to clear in relative comfort, d) there was not a good chance (ie without a freak bounce of an opposition mistake) of a try being scored from the kick (higher than 50:50).
