Where are his strike runners from deep? Where are his pods to carry the ball up? Absoloutely nothing is there, no one is carrying the ball to the gain line – hipkiss twice the week before but geraghty needs to probe in the same way Greenwood used to, other wise just moving the ball wide is just allowing defences to drift on the ball. Fluety would stop this but he’s not here, and Geraghty is too light to carry the ball effectivly, which means he has to use Hipkiss, and that means no distributor wide which agian allows the defence to stay tight and drift.

I’ve hardly seen england fix a defender once, and no one follows the runner in, they hit fight and then support gets there. Watch NZ, France or SA they always attack in twos and threes for the offload.

The kicking down the tram lines is fine if the chase is good but it hasn’t been. The quality of the ball means he’s not really got many choices other then to launch the ball down the middle and try and get the oppo to make a mistake, it’s a similar tactic to NZ except their chases are good.

Essentially if Wilko dosne’t have options outside him then he can’t do anything. watch him at Toloun and he always has two or three options and thats in the unstructured French style, england he has no options of 2nd phase ball.

Again the problem comes back to game plan.

England was awful but they won which is more than nothing, Argentina is not a weak team.
England’s pack is solid but that is it, Hartley and Haskell did seem to offer potential, they wanted to go forward, they made lots of mistakes but the two have talent and should be given a sustained run to up their confidence and hopefully eradicate the errors.
Moody was a gallant warrior but needs some help. The good news is that I think that this pack has potential of being more dynamic than the one that played against Aus, the better news is that Shaw is back for the All Blacks so moody will have company. He can give a lot of confidence to Hartley, Croft and Haskell.
This pack has potential but the back line is a tragedy, without ideas, without the ball, without hope. This is worrying as there doesn’t seem to be a hell of a lot of options for Johnno. However he has to change things, but he won’t.
Let’s forget about building for the world cup, I’m talking about building for the six nations, Fluety’s return will help as will Armitage but why Johnno has not taken a chance to blood another fullback I have no idea, Foden has to play against the All Blacks although it is a hell of an ask to come in when Dan Carter is kicking the ball at you, just to see if he can do it, Monye clearly can’t.
Banahan, well I have to admit I was keen on him but it hasn’t worked. Foden at 15 and Monye back on the wing where he was really successful last year. The problem is the decision making, Wilkinson has been shit, sorry but he has, I don’t care if he kicks his goals and tackles like a man possessed (his defense is great), he was brought into the team to manage the game, that and not tackling is number 10’s role. We need someone who can play off the cuff rugby read it like it is, Wilkinson will never do that. Geraghty should be given a shot, yes he hasn’t played well and he might not be good enough but we have to try we know what Wilkinson will do and so do the rest of the other teams. Move Clark into centre until the Flute is back. Yes it could go terribly wrong and the All Blacks will give us a trouncing but it can’t get worse than this backline, it seriously can’t. Nothing this kids could do wrong could possibly make us look any worse than we do right now.
1- Payne
2- Hartley
3- Barnes
4- Shaw
5- Borthwick
6- Croft
7- Moody
8- Haskell
9- Hodgson
10- Geraghty
11- Cueto
12- Clark
13- Hipkiss
14- Monye
15- Foden
This will naturally never happen.