The Official English Rugby Thread

[Raggs]

Lovely try from Sam Simmonds for Ex off 1st phase.

Danny Care bottled that so badly

Ha. TBF, I don't think he was making it and was worried about taking out Earle who was still in with a sniff of catching him

He was covering that space far faster than Earle was, that was his man every time :D.

[Saint]

Try 2. At least it wasn;t first phase this time

[Oxbow]

It's going to be a long season.

[Saint]

Mallinder's going to have a lot of minutes in his legs for his first match back

[Oxbow]

Tom Collins scoring from a maul amused me.

[Saint]

Tom Collins scoring from a maul amused me.

Yeah. When they look at the record books for this match, no-one will imagine that;s how he scored

[ASMO]

Dear RFU, please get rid of the abomination that is the caterpilar ruck, yous sincerely, every rugby fan ever.

It is a fucking joke, and Exeter more than any team take the piss using it

[Saint]

Dear RFU, please get rid of the abomination that is the caterpilar ruck, yous sincerely, every rugby fan ever.

It is a fucking joke, and Exeter more than any team take the piss using it

I think this is more a comment for the IRB? (of course they;re monitoring this and will respond)

[Kawazaki]

8 Saffas in the Sale starting XV plus another on the bench.

And none of them will ever be eligible to play for England.

It's a disgrace.

[Tichtheid]

Dear RFU, please get rid of the abomination that is the caterpilar ruck, yous sincerely, every rugby fan ever.

It is a fucking joke, and Exeter more than any team take the piss using it

I think this is more a comment for the IRB? (of course they;re monitoring this and will respond)

If you do away with the caterpillar you increase the risk of a charge down, the result will be a fly half kicking from deeper after more pointless one out drives, ie a win for a rush defence.

Enforce the five second rule after “use it” is a better solution

[Saint]

Dear RFU, please get rid of the abomination that is the caterpilar ruck, yous sincerely, every rugby fan ever.

It is a fucking joke, and Exeter more than any team take the piss using it

I think this is more a comment for the IRB? (of course they;re monitoring this and will respond)

If you do away with the caterpillar you increase the risk of a charge down, the result will be a fly half kicking from deeper after more pointless one out drives, ie a win for a rush defence.

Enforce the five second rule after “use it” is a better solution

Not disagreeing at all, just not sure what anyoen thinks the RFU can do about it

[ASMO]

RFU, IRB, who fucking cares, get rid of it. Quins, Exeter showcasing everything that is wrong with English rugby.

[Hal Jordan]

Looks like I missed 70 minutes of corking rugby, and here is an exciting driving maul try.

[Tichtheid]

That is far too easy, Simmonds should never have been able to do that, again

[Hal Jordan]

Can't see us getting a garbage time try, even.

Looooooong season ahead.

[ASMO]

Can't see us getting a garbage time try, even.

Looooooong season ahead.

Have to agree, Quins didnt fire a single shot, all they had were blanks. Earle was an empty shirt, Murley has potential though.

[Double]

Was that Dimes we could hear screaming at the referee from the stands?

[Saint]

Easy for Sale to put in a huge defensive effort when offside is ignored, There's a lot of problems with refereeing that need to be sorted

[Saint]

And Dimes started from paying lip service to social distancing to just plain ignoring it. Completely different issue, but if rugby wants government support then it needs to show it's trying to do something

[JM2K6]

That went well.

I was basically happy before the disallowed try - one brilliant score by Simmonds (and a bad misread by the tyro 13), and one predictably poor maul defence aside, we were holding our own. Then it all fell apart. I'll get the ref whinge out of the way: he's garbage, has no idea what's going on at the breakdown, doesn't know what a forward pass looks like (thankfully, as we threw most of them), and did not give a single shit about offsides. We had to virtually carry players for metres before he'd give a holding on penalty for the first hour. Baffling stuff.

Sadly, Marcus Smith had a really poor game; Danny Care's kicking was largely excellent, but whenever Smith looked to kick he either belted it straight to a player or just shanked it. Really poor. The complete drop off in intensity wasn't entirely unexpected given how shit our bench was compared to theirs, but it's still really disappointing. Earle as ASMO said was an empty shirt, Brown was middling, losing Symons was a big blow... back row went well and will play a lot worse than that for a lot more reward.

Exeter though, Christ. Simmonds is just too good. And despite our defensive excellence for long periods they never looked like they were panicking and never looked worried. Eventually it told and then they just turned Quins into a multicoloured smear on the windscreen. Ominous stuff.

[Tichtheid]

Exeter though, Christ. Simmonds is just too good. And despite our defensive excellence for long periods they never looked like they were panicking and never looked worried. Eventually it told and then they just turned Quins into a multicoloured smear on the windscreen. Ominous stuff.

Exeter are becoming Leinster-like, it doesn't really matter who is wearing the shirt, they will do a very similar job.

As a huge Marcus Smith fan, he didn't have his best game tonight, but the result was down to more than him. The gap between teams usually really shows in the last quarter or third of a game, and tonight it showed.

[ASMO]

First game of the season i know but both Quins and Tampon looking bottom 4 material

[JM2K6]

With 18 players missing and a 19th injured early on I'm not hugely surprised our bench sucked and we fell away. Chances are we'll be mid table again.

[sockwithaticket]

Cam Redpathlooking very bright against Newcastle atm. Early signs not good for them, carved open very easily on a couple of occasions.

[Paddington Bear]

Watching Spencer play on BT Sport Extra 2 before settling in to watch Ben Youngs at 3 is an emotional experience

[sockwithaticket]

Watching Spencer play on BT Sport Extra 2 before settling in to watch Ben Youngs at 3 is an emotional experience

Very much a game show "...and this is what you could have won" experience.

[Paddington Bear]

Fair play Newcastle, huge win and good value for it.

Increasingly have a sinking feeling for England

[sockwithaticket]

They turned it around big time, the opening quarter didn't look all that promising.

Also not feeing great about England. Hoping that Ford's introduction to the backline will be enough to save us.

Gibson-Park added a lot of zip to Ireland's game last week and an Ireland team looking to attack rather than box kick the shit out of everything is an unknown quantitity.

[ASMO]

England borefest already

[Hal Jordan]

And shitty spidercam for the scrums again. "I'm looking at Earls right over on the touchline" Well can we fucking see him, then?

[sockwithaticket]

May needed to start running left as soon as he picked up that ball, would've been a good chance to score.

[fishfoodie]

Farrell being dirty cnt already

[Hal Jordan]

We went three phases without a kick! But Farrell put a stop to that nonsense with an aimless grubber.

[Torquemada 1420]

Farrell with no arms "tackle". Quelle surprise. And in the air too just to add the icing.

[Hal Jordan]

Youngs throws a pass from the base of a scrum under zero pressure that causes the recipient to nearly stop dead to catch it behind him.

Edit:At shoulder height

[ASMO]

Youngs passing is a disgrace for a so called international scrum half

[Tichtheid]

England won’t get anything out of kicking towards Keith Earles,


unless they get a penalty at a resulting scrum right enough

[sockwithaticket]

Of course, with a free play, Farrell's immediate thought is to hoist it...

[ASMO]

The creative vaccuum shows no signs of dissapating

[sockwithaticket]

That's actually well executed, but jesus fuck Youngs completely sapped the momentum out of that attack making it necessary.