England's downfall could be the breakdown

SA completely starved Ireland of ball at the breakdown particularly in the second half. Their physicality prevented any go forward for the Irish by effectively slowing their ball down. They smothered the ball or held them up with ease. In fact if they were still playing that game today Ireland still wouldn't be able to score a try.

Having watched the game again England struggled at the breakdown against Fiji on many occasions yesterday. Often they were unable to shift the first Fiji guys who were able to slow the ball down with ease.

England need to find a much harder edge to their game at the breakdown. The other big 3 will be more effective than Fiji and won't run out of steam. Slow ball will result and Tries will be as hard to score as Ireland and Wales found unless significant improvement is made. Couple this with the fact that England made many mistakes which the SH sides will capitalise on for sure.

In the cold light of day I can see a big fall coming unless the squad recognises and deals with the problems.

Don't Fiji have better fetchers in the backrow than SA with Qera there? Who's playing in the backrow for SA?

The Fiji pack and their centres were big. England found it hard to shift them. I would be happier if our 2nd row didn't seem so lightweight in comparison. (I don't mean purely in the size and weight area but in the grunt they bring to the party.)

For me the problem was more that a lot of the time there wasn't anyone at the breakdown at all, just the tackled player and the SH, with most of the forwards lining up for the next phase, resulting in easy pickings for Fiji.

I feel one of the reasons for that is that the support play still isn't good enough. The top sides have far more people in close support offering themselves up for the offload or quickly clearing out at the breakdown and winning fast ball for the next phase.

you should note Ireland would have done better if Ferris and O'brien were playing. Still, whatever back-row SA put out is better than most in the NH. Alberts and Louw are the ones to watch.

By Ireland I meant SA

And I see it was Louw, he's pretty decent at the breakdown. Alberts is a good player and a force of nature but came off second best against England at the breakdown in the Summer. He made up for it by destroying us everywhere else

He's been criticised by some for his lack of carrying the last season or so*, but others also noted that Hartley had seemed to be (maybe asked to) concentrating more on his support work, hitting rucks and being a nuisance at the breakdown. Youngs had a decent debut at the weekend, but with a few of our forwards not as gritty in the tight as we might conventionally expect from their positions, I feel we missed Hartley in this area.


*he's doesn't seem too bad in comparison this season:

Hartley - Youngs

6 Matches 7
2 Tries 0
1 Try assist 0
18 Passes 10
33 Carries 39
56 Metres carried 32
0 Clean breaks 0
3 Offloads 2
5 Defenders beaten 4

Those are some pretty impressive stats for Hartley, surprising for Youngs though I really thought he'd be higher on the last 5 (probably not clean breaks).

One of them does have about 5 seasons more experience than the other though...