Wales 40 - England 24. On the face of it, that is a demolition job. I sat down to watch the match with no great expectations given England's shoddy previous performances this year. The peculiarity about this latest defeat was that it contained some English play far better than anything that had gone before in this championship. Mind you they were building from a low base.
Let's get it out of the way - referee Pascal Gauzere had an absolute mare. Shit happens. I refereed and, just as with players, you can have a bad day. He played a crucial (and wrong-headed) part in the first three Welsh tries. The first two have attracted huge press but the third seems to have gone unnoticed - he gave the mark yards away from the offence and allowed the Welsh scrum-half a crucial advantage over the defence. So that's out of the way - and here's the important point - it was not his fault that England lost. Good luck to Wales - it's not their job to turn down good fortune.
England's discipline was laughably bad. These are professionals - they should know better. Itoje (a great favourite of mine) was disgraceful and should have been binned. But beyond that here's what we learned - sorry but Eliott Daly is currently useless and butchered a gloriously worked overlap; Billy Vunipola (an honest player if ever ther was one) had a much better game; so did Owen Farrell whose relative calm in the face of the refereeing came as a pleasant surprise given his recent gobshite tendencies; Ben Youngs has lost a step; Tom Curry is a magnificent player; Henry Slade also played well; Ellis Gence can be a liability.
Jones must go? I now tend towards saying yes, but let' see how they perform in two remaining tough tests against France and Ireland. There's always some perverse fun to be had in spoling someone else's party.
We should also just applaud both Jones and his captain for not using the refereeing as an excuse for the defeat.
Anyway, I've just remembered that I'm Welsh. For the next few days.
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