to blame.
For all the good he’s done in building this current England side yet again Stuart Lancaster couldn’t help himself managing by numbers and playing his part in England losing the Six Nations championship.
You’d have thought he’d have learned his lesson by now. It’s cost England the title in the past, it cost them the win in Paris, therefore cost them the grand slam and against Italy it cost them the title by just 11 points.
He can’t admit he was wrong though.
Against the Jocks, Ireland and Wales, he didn’t make those it’s 60 minutes gone I have to change the hooker substitutions and what happened? Team won in style.
But against Italy in Rome again it was predetermined substitutions. So many minutes on the clock and changes made. No looking at what was happening on the pitch and working with that but set out plans. You can see why Burrell went off the park shaking his head.
Which substitute didn’t add?” Manu added, I thought Tom Youngs added – Stuart Lancaster
Yes Tuilagi added. But was it not a job that Burrell was already doing? Out on the wing May wasn’t really involved, unlike Burrell. Well Tuilagi could quite easily have replaced someone not contributing.
The best thing about Tuilagi being introduced so early was it shut up that clown in the BBC commentary box going on and on and on about when will he be introduced. Seemed like he started even before the kick-off.
Lancaster, you thought Tom Youngs added? Well Youngs came on against France in the first game and started the process of England losing that game with an errant line-out throw. Dylan Hartley has been one of those I should have pointed out in the previous post on the rugby that has turned himself around. His throwing at line-outs has been pretty damn exemplary. Yet for some reason Youngs was introduced and straight away he lost a line-out.
Youngs contributed nothing but to help England go backward.
OK England may have not gone on to score those extra 11 points without the subs taking place. But it was more likely they would as it’s regularly shown that games deteriorate when such changes are made. Moment is just stopped in it’s tracks.
Some changes work, have done when Lancaster has implemented them. Mako for Marler and the former’s brother Billy being replaced by Morgan. Youngs hasn’t.
And to make matters worse the other changes after this when players shifted position, though Robshaw scored a try, completely stopped any chance England had of getting the required score.
You always hear that stupid phrase after games, well losses, that they’ll learn from this. Well the fact Lancaster sees he did nothing wrong and it’s the second time he’s done it in this tournament alone suggest no they won’t learn anything. And at the moment it’s the big thing between Lancaster being a good coach and a to class one.
Title should have been England’s no fairy tale ending for O’Driscoll. Who only got that man of the match against France on sentiment and quite frankly over the last couple of season bar a couple of inspired pieces of play has done very little. The Irish still whinging about his Lions exclusion in the last game, when without him they were better and again quite frankly he only made the side because of his name.