thankfully for England.
Can’t be many who saw that coming as England destroyed Ireland’s Grand Slam and Triple Crown hopes in a display we hadn’t seen from the home side so far in the Six Nations.
Can’t say I was too confident in England, after their last three games and then the team Eddie picked. It’s not like I rated Ireland, after their struggles against the wooden spoon contestant Jocks and mediocre Welsh, who only lift themselves for England.
Ireland are still struggling to get past their one dimensional play that the previous coach instilled at the end there.
But it doesn’t matter who they’re up against, how good or bad, if England don’t start on the front foot from the very off and keep it up for a good bit, then with that side they struggle. Youngs and Ford are useless when the pack don’t have dominance. If the front eight are bashing holes in the opposition, that pair can ride it out and you get away with them.
And that’s what happened here.
Again, I wasn’t so sure about Courtney Lawes as flanker. Yes you want Courtney on the pitch but is this the best use of him? Well, it was here. He saw a lot of the ball and he saw a lot of green shirts bounce off him as he charged forward.
His man-of-the-match was a no brainer. Though the front eight and their replacements played a huge, huge role. When Genge came on and they just ran straight through the Irish scrum. Joyous.
England got lucky with the bouncing ball and the fact that Ireland seemed to be dozing for most of the game, especially Sexton. Responsible for coughing up the first try and then with his kicking. To get caught for one try like that can almost be excused. For two, dear god.
Ireland got lucky with the ref. Never mind if it was late or not on Johnny May, it wasn’t a tackle. The fact the TMO barely even bothered looking at it is on par with the VAR decisions in football. And imagine an Irish player is holding on and Owen Farrell starts smacking him, I’m guessing the ref gives a penalty to Ireland and probably sends Farrell off.
Don’t know about Clive Woodward claiming it was the best, most dominant, half he’d seen from England. The World Cup semi-final wasn’t that long ago, where England weren’t at home and New Zealand are a somewhat better outfit than this Ireland.
Well, this time after that dominant first half, they may have lost the second but at least they won the game. They’ve given up good leads before and everyone was remembering the collapse in last year’s Calcutta Cup.
Maybe the Irish coach should have listened to Captain Beefheart… Man, who is this Bongo?