Man City: day of reckoning draws near

The Premier League's case against Man City is now being heard.  Should a free-marketeer care about what private football clubs do with their money?  Is this just something to appease sports fans who'd prefer a more level playing-field (and a bit of justice & fairness)?  The same team winning every year is pretty bloody dull.  And if it goes against Man City and they get relegated, how will their quite ridiculously overpaid squad respond?

Personally my game is RU and I have very little interest in the details of this hoo-ha.  But I will summarise the RU precedent for those who don't know it: Saracens, who'd also been winning quite a lot and had comprehensively busted the salary cap -  systematically and quite creatively - to assemble a very hard-to-beat squad with a great many top notch players**; more than anyone else could remotely afford.  They were duly fined and relegated (via an insuperable points deduction).

To me, aside from evening things up a bit and dealing out some justice, the interesting phenomenon was that almost all their prominent players stuck with the team through a dull, and actually somewhat debilitating year in the lower division: they just didn't get sufficiently competitive matches to keep them fully sharp.  But they came back up after a single season via promotion in due course, and they all sharpened up quickly enough thereafter.

The loyalty was impressive.  Whatever money they'd splashed around illicitly, they'd nevertheless obviously built a team ethos that wasn't merely mercenary.

Views on the questions above?

ND

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** Plus Owen Farrell

RWC: England not too badly placed

OK, so England beat Fiji on muscle-memory, as predicted.  But overall, I'm more optimistic than I would have expected to be at this stage.  Partly, that's because England have a history of building to the later stages of the RWC rather uncertainly (2007 etc, and even including 2003): but mainly because, notwithstanding 2019, South Africa isn't a bogey team for England.  Let me explain.

In a given period of time, most teams seem to have a semi-irrational bogey.  For years, France couldn't get past England in any competition whatsoever.  Australia often seem to freeze against England.  And France themselves have lately done the job on England.  (England would also fancy New Zealand rather than they would have Ireland ... but let's not, *ahem*, get ahead of ourselves.) 

So - back to Saturday last: what did we witness last week?

Farrell:  for about 10 minutes towards the end, Farrell more-or-less earned his pay - at long last.  (Right up until his crazy knock-on right near the end, which might easily have seen him in the bin at the very death.)  That's a pretty thin return on the many years of undeserved England pay he's drawn.  We'll never know whether Ford + a different captain could have done the same job over that 10 minutes: but then again, the alternative combo might well have closed Fiji down even earlier.  Counterfactuals are like that.  So I'm unrepentant: Farrell shouldn't have played.

Smith:  well, he didn't pick himself at 15, and he gave it everything he'd got.  But, as they say, a good big'un ...  Anyhow, it's irrelevant now; and tomorrow, Steward it will rightfully be.

Tuilagi:  we've all heard the tired old saying, uttered continually over more than a decade - "if Manu's fit, he's in".  Well, by some miracle he's managed to stay fit.  But how many more times is it deemed satisfactory that he storms into a match and grabs a dynamic early try, then fades into the background?  If that's his MO, take him off after 30 minutes. 

Lawes:  how many more times can he be expected to go to the well and draw performances like that?  Unless he has truly superhuman powers of recovery, I don't like to imagine the shape he'll be in after Saturday - whatever duties might be sought of him beyond that point.

Earl:  speaking of super-human ...

ND

Footnote: apologies for the garbled early draft of this post for those who encountered it. 

Farrell / Part 3

Alright, so Farrell now has his record points tally and sentimental indulgence has been granted (well done that lad) - can there be any remaining reason why he isn't given the shove?  If his abject performance on Saturday isn't enough to have him dropped, Borthwick deserves everything that follows.  Fiji might just about be sufficiently shaken that they can be beaten in the quarters using muscle-memory alone: but an England appearance in the finals seems highly unlikely with Farrell on the pitch in any other capacity than water carrier.

Farrell père, now that's a different matter.  No obvious sign that the Irish have peaked too early, is there?

ND

Farrell / Must Be Dropped / Part 2

From Curry's sending off in the third minute of England's RWC opener on Saturday, England were backs to the wall.  And how George Ford responded! - 27 points from his boot, and a masterpiece of strategic adaptation and game management (which he'd been doing for Leicester all season before his nasty injury in the 2022 Premiership final[1]: so, no surprises whatever).

The suspended Owen Farrell could no more have pulled off that essential performance than fly over the moon: all he'd have come up with would have been blood-and-guts, huff-and-puff, & probably another card.    And England would effectively have been out before the tournament had even really got going.  His red card and still-current suspension during the warm-up series was as felicitous for England as that.  

And there is no obvious vacancy at 12.

This is the RWC; this is serious.  So, back to where we were four weeks ago:  Farrell Must be Dropped.[2]  

ND

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[1] Haven't seen this mentioned, but nearly half England's starting 15 (and some of the Argentinians!) have played with Ford at Leicester at one time or another.

[2] Actually, for a little more creativity: when his suspension is lifted, Farrell could be put on the bench against the contingency some opposing eejit decides the solution to Ford's dominance is to drop him with a forearm to the head.  Then the bonehead can take over against the remaining 14 men.  Smith can also be on the bench as a general-purpose option: people already like the thought of him at 15, and he could probably do 9 as well as 10.

Eddie Jones: it was indeed time to go.

Sport's a tough business, and nobody has the right to stay at the top forever.  Despite his many achievements, with England and elsewhere, it was clearly time for Eddie Jones to go.  The autumn test series was indeed a test, and he failed.

Jones worked wonders with the disorganised and demoralised 2015 side (even if one suspects almost any new broom would have dusted them down).  The immediate Grand Slam, followed by an epic tour of Australia - I have never watched a defensive effort like England's in the Second Test - suggested he was doing more than just making a handful of much-needed changes.   His choice of captain, the 'mongrel' Dylan Hartley, seemed inspired.

So where did it go wrong, for such a thoughtful and successful coach?  

1. Seems to me he's a tactician and not a strategist.  He plans carefully and successfully for particular games - for Australia, the semi final over New Zealand in 2003; for Japan, the extraordinary victory over South Africa; and for England the exceptional win over NZ in the 2019 semi final - a game he must have been working on from the moment the pools were announced several years before.  And then ... it was absolutely clear he had no equivalent gameplan for the final - a contingency just as foreseeable.  In fact, just like 2003 when Woodward's England beat him in the final.  (Clive Woodward: now there's a strategist.)
2. Stubbornly 'keeping faith' with the wrong players, admirable though 'loyalty' may be.  Two examples (out of several I could list):  Farrell and Tuilagi.  I don't care what "warrior" attributes he possesses, Farrell is a liability at international level - directly and predictably responsible for England going out in the Pool stage in 2015.  He shouldn't have been in the squad, let alone the post-Hartley captain.  And Tuilagi's physical frailty (sounds like a crazy thing to say, but rugby aficionados will know what I mean) makes his formidable performances of ten years ago an irrelevance.

If England can get Borthwick to step in - and I presume this is primarily a matter of money - the squad is strong enough to mount a turnaround in time for the RWC.  And he's just the man to do it.  Thanks, Eddie, and farewell.

ND

Eddie Jones' England

Settling in for another weekend of Six Nations rugby as the tournament rumbles on its satisfactory way.

I write as an Englishman, of course.  Ireland and Wales contrived an early draw which is hardly helpful to either cause: the Welsh and French must slug it out at 8pm on a cold winter's Friday night (what's that all about?); and the others will contest the wooden spoon.

That Eddie Jones, what a card.  Maro Itoje?  Nah, mate, he'll be great one day but it's too early just now.  Then, a couple of weeks later - I told him he had to work on a few things; he's done that, and now he's ready.  Elliot Daly?  Nah, mate ... then, a couple of weeks later ...  Good enough for me: Daly should have played in the RWC and he can't get into the starting line soon enough SFAIAC.

And I like the gracious way Jones is allowing the hapless and hopeless Robshaw a dignified passage to the bed nearest the door.  He still has to fix Farrell's petulance though.  Another gratuitous display last time out: it can't go on.

Jones' arrival seems to gave galvanised everyone, notably including James Haskell (and his agent / ghostwriter) who has gone into overdrive on the mouthing-off-for-the-journos front.  We've had issues with the puffed-up, pumped-up Mr H before, and he's still a big oaf: but he's done his time, worked his passage, obtained a sense of humour and - within his obvious limitations - playing better than ever.  The RWC fiasco wasn't down to him.

But back to Jones: it's great to see someone with such a crystal-clear view on what needs to be done.  "We're only under pressure when we don't know what to do" (which is true in almost every sphere of life) - he's thought it all out and lets them know exactly what to do.  Speaking of which, Jonny Wilkinson is equally clear-sighted in his match-day punditry for ITV, with instantaneous, incisive (and utterly authoritative) diagnoses + practical prescriptions.  He'll make a great coach, too, if he's minded to give it a go. 

ND