England have made changes for the second Test in Australia with the World Cup in mind but the coach is on thin iceBacks against the wall, endless personnel reshuffles, constant talk about things coming good eventually. England are currently 12,000 miles away from Downing Street but their series against Australia is at a not dissimilar crossroads. Lose heavily on Saturday and, as in Westminster, public confidence in those in charge back in London may ebb away rapidly.Which is why Eddie Jones’s callow backline selection for the allegedly crucial second Test against the Wallabies has raised more than a few eyebrows. Three starting 21-year-olds, a 19-year-old “apprentice” on the bench and a debutant who used to captain the University of Sydney?...
Too much shouty negativity and everybody loses: like all the best drama there have to be shafts of emotional light as wellWelcome to The Breakdown, the Guardian’s weekly (and free) rugby union newsletter. Here’s an extract from this week’s edition. To receive the full version every Tuesday, just pop your email in below:Sport brings out the best and worst in us. The same occasionally applies to sportswriting. One minute it is all breathless hyperbole, florid adjectives and poetic descriptions of the best days of our lives. The next it is curtains for some ashen-faced manager and the purple prose turns to acid rain. One day you’re a rooster, as the ex-Wallaby rugby coach Alan Jones used to say, the next...
Do not be fooled by the late tries when Australia had the game won, there were no obvious signs of progress from EnglandYou have to wonder what might happen to England the next time their opponents keep 15 men on the field. For the second match running they were outclassed, outfought and out-thought by opposition who had a player sent off. If there was a degree of mitigation against the Barbarians, this was a troubling first defeat by Australia in nine matches and the first under Eddie Jones, who now comes under intense scrutiny. Positives for England are limited to Henry Arundell’s mesmeric late cameo on his debut and the fact that Australia did not backheel any conversions.The laws will...
Noah Lolesio was a late injury replacement at fly-half but his second-half intervention proved crucial in PerthCourage, character, craziness. Dave Rennie’s Wallabies pulled off one of the great back-to-the-wall victories on Saturday, defeating England with 14 men and snapping Eddie Jones’s eight-game winning streak against his homeland with a brave, barnstorming victory in the first Test of the Ella-Mobbs Trophy three-match series.Already missing their first-pick playmaker injured in the warm-up, the men in gold then lost their full-back to a season-ending injury, lost the foundation of their scrum to a head-injury assessment and lost their lineout caller to a red card – all within the first 35 minutes. The most desperate of hours loomed. Continue reading...
Wallabies and Rugby Australia have cause for optimism as England Test series arrives after a chastening periodAs the local mining community would no doubt agree, to find gold in Western Australia this week you have had to go looking for it. There is the odd Wallabies flag fluttering in the wind but blue and maroon have been the dominant colours in Perth, which staged the second State of Origin match last Sunday to considerably greater fanfare than that which greets the first Test between Australia and England on Saturday.Maybe that should come as little surprise given the limited appeal of rugby union in these parts compared with the National Rugby League, but for all that starting the series on the...