mentality. Pure and simple. The key men on the field for Australia (well, pretty much all of them) know what to do, and 95% of the time they execute it. So you spend swathes of time on your own line.
We have players who aimlessly dolly the bal to defenders, who can't find touch from penalties, and who can't catch or apss the ball.
The rest of the time they can do these things passably, but at the level of Australia, they shiit their pants and play like ts. Not all the time, but enough to gradually and comprehensively lose the war of attrition, and then start to deflate and implode.
Seen it all before. Need players who can play up to A-game in a Test match, not ones that can't execute at that level. The basic errors were frankly embarrassing. If I'd been an Aussie, i'd have been loking forward to that game, hoping at last the Burgess boys and the fetef backs would make it into a keen contest, even if I'd still expect Aus to win. The Aussie speccies must have been as mystified and disappointed as the rest of us that England couldn't play IN THAT KEY GAME at a level to even approach competing with Australia, who ended up winning at a canter.
I just assumed the Aussies would go easy on them, because the Kiwis would be a harder game in the final. But they obviously want to defeat everybody, all the time, which is a winners attitude.
On the plus side, the amount of progress Scotland made over the 3 games, was amazing. You could see the improvement across the board for the England game after the Aus game. And then they upped everything again, for the Kiwi game.
All views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the RLFANS.COM or its subsites.
Whilst every effort is made to ensure that news stories, articles and images are correct, we cannot be held responsible for errors. However, if you feel any material on this website is copyrighted or incorrect in any way please contact us using the link at the top of the page so we can remove it or negotiate copyright permission.
RLFANS.COM, the owners of this website, is not responsible for the content of its sub-sites or posts, please email the author of this sub-site or post if you feel you find an article offensive or of a choice nature that you disagree with.