Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Great game

Dupont not so shiny today and more like Teflon with the ball - well played England a deserved win in good old Europpeeing weather - just..

Great watching the young talent making a mark too.

It was a fantastic game.
Now for Scotland v Ireland this afternoon.

Bud
4/4 - Stanley

Its' nice to see the long overdue promise of the England team come together for the full 80 minutes. Staggeringly close and enthralling game to the bitter sweet end. Marcus is certainly coming into his own and very pivotal to the English side...........

It was great to see the substitutions did not water down England's game as they have so done in the past. Needless to say our Irish fair weather friends were only supporting England to beat France to improve their teams chances. Hopefully Scotland is up to the task this afternoon.

Looking forward to the kick off, this could be another real belter so strap yourself in with Guinness in hand...

I did want to post something a minute after the game but I don’t know how to start a new topic !?
Hmm, unsure which game some of you were watching (John) but if you read Stephen Jones in the Sunday Times you would think he was somewhat biased ……..actually I rarely agree or like what he writes.
We certainly did not play well for 80 minutes but our kicking game for most of the game was far better than that of France.
I am a big fan or Marcus Smith but do think he has not worked to well in the ‘backs’ and whilst he was goodish yesterday on occasions his epitaph was written by Stephen Jones ! He will stay at 15 I think. Cowan-Dickie and the jumpers were poor and thank god George came on and hit the jumpers each time resulting in the last gasp try.

I think the result casts its spell on the whole game - the last 15 minutes of the game were wonderful,
Thankfully Dupont wasn’t epic, only goodish although SJones seems to think he was great..
Enjoy todays game. MM
PS still think my previous forecast of standings at the end will be close, especially after this England win .

Just click on the relevant area ie MalvernArms - then " new thread appears" top LHD just give it a handle and the world becomes your oval..

Morganmike,

I didn't say England played well for the full 80 minutes, but for the first time in a while it played for the full 80minutes. In the past we have seen England fall apart once the subs bench comes on, that didn't happen when some of the starting 15 were gradually replaced. Of course there is room for considerable improvement all round. To build up the spirit and moral of the team it was a very necessary victory, over the championship favourites after a terrible series of game losses.

The whole point of sport is to win, not just to compete for the sake of the game itself. Italy's poor performance and losing streak a few years ago , lead to speculation they may be dropped from the 6 nations, so winning does matter, not good enough to just compete..

Don't you just love arm chair critics (no matter how authoritatively they speak), who seem to lose sight of its the winning rather than how the game was played that really matters to many in the heat of competition. Now they need to improve and build on that success and deliver a more consistent winning performance.

I 'd take a far from perfect winning performance, no matter how scruffy, over a more technically perfect performance loss, any day

I just read Stephen Jones in The Times online. There are over 900 comments - the first page of those is summed up well by just one of them - “An appalling review of a brilliant game.”

They dug deep and were rewarded for the effort, rugby is not about purity only the win matters and soothes the pain.

Well a fairly predictable result in the Scotland v Ireland game.
However, for those of us down here in Devon; well done Plymouth Argyle.
Bud
4/4 - Stanley