England Team to face Italy Announced!

Dear god, Balshaw is playing again! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I wonder if any other country apart from Ireland is as annoyed by selections! Ive lost respect for Brian Ashton as a coach. I now think he's an idiot

I think I'm going to cry!

Heavens above! Balshaw still at 15. My sympathy to Mathew Tait, what a travesty.

Did this sneak out well under the radar or what??

I didn't think it was tba till lunctime today and nothing on sky last night or bbc this morning - v odd.

Anyway i'd rather focus on that than the team esp with Balsup being the first one on the list *sigh*

Stevens should have started at Loosehead rather than Payne, and that would have given the chance to start Mears instead of the pensioner.

Gommersall & Balshaw given yet further chances to bury themselves.

Contrast with Lievremont's changes to the French team.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008:02:06:10:19:07 by Dorset Boy.

Two comments!

1) Oh Dear!!!!
2) Newcastle must be a good team - 10 of their players involved over the England and England A teams. So why on Earth are they 9th in the GP? (can't find a smiley which reflects my total bemusement)

Reading_Fatboy - I think the number of Falcons in the Saxons squad is simply to do with the fact that they are one of the teams not to have a Premiership game this weeked.

One thought that has occurred to me is:

Is this one of those spoof anouncements? Looking at the players left out, will we see a speight of "injuries on the training field" on Friday????

lets be fair - lets give them one more game to redeem themselves.
tyat said - i am a bit concerned..........

I have a horrible feeling that Sunday could be a repeat of last saturday.
Also I can't believe that having called up Geraghty that he doesn't even make the bench.

I might be watching the game from behind the sofa !

Italy are 5/1 for this one.

Has to be worth a punt.

That's a weaker lineup than the one that faced Wales last weekend. Confidence is low, and Italy have a pack to match that. Sheridan out, Easter lacking in match fitness, Haskell and Lipman still very inexperienced, Vickery way off form. The English front 8 looks vulnerable.

I can sniff a massive upset in the air.

Does anyone think Ashton's up to it or worthy of respect after recent events?

15 Iain Balshaw (Gloucester Rugby) - I think we are all agreed on this.

14 Paul Sackey (London Wasps) - No problems

13 Jamie Noon (Newcastle Falcons) - Oh hooray. Poor, impoverished man's Tindall.

12 Toby Flood (Newcastle Falcons) - No problems

11 Lesley Vainikolo (Gloucester Rugby) - Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Not experienced enough.

10 Jonny Wilkinson (Newcastle Falcons) - He'd better put in a MOTM display and get the backs moving.

9 Andy Gomarsall (Harlequins) - Well, who else is there?

1 Tim Payne (London Wasps) - What on earth is he doing there?

2 Mark Regan (Bristol Rugby) - Wrong. Well off the pace against Wales. Gutless to retain him post WC.

3 Phil Vickery (London Wasps, Captain) - Not a captain, not in good form.

4 Simon Shaw (London Wasps) - Fine.

5 Steve Borthwick (Bath Rugby) - Fine.

6 James Haskell (London Wasps) - Fine.

7 Michael Lipman (Bath Rugby) - A.N. Other GP 7 to slot in after Moody dropped out was always on the cards and he's as good a choice as any,

8 Nick Easter (Harlequins) - Good. Get some grunt and nous into the back row.



Replacements

16 Lee Mears (Bath Rugby) - Should be starting with Hartley on the bench.

17 Matt Stevens (Bath Rugby) - Should be starting.

18 Ben Kay (Leicester Tigers) - Should be nowhere.

19 Luke Narraway (Gloucester Rugby) - Deserves a lash in the second half.

20 Richard Wigglesworth (Sale Sharks) - Who else is there?

21 Danny Cipriani (London Wasps) - Hopefully will have a slightly better time of it this weekend!

22 Mathew Tait (Newcastle Falcons) - Thank the Lord we have at least some cover.

Terrible team selection in many ways. But entirely expected. Why go for youth, vigour and dash when you can pick age, conservatism and stodge?

I don't think it would be a massive upset at all - quite predictable!

The Italians will really fancy it this weekend. The props should totally outscrummage Payne and Vickery plus they are more mobile. Lineouts will be a close contest and the way Gommers and Sir Jonny are distributing the ball the Italian 3/4s will have little to worry about. Add in an aerial bombardment of Balshaw and 5/1 looks worth a bet for the odds alone.

BRW,

A team needs balance. The Falcons prefer Noon at 13 outside Flood tyo give that balance. Frankly I think Noon gets a raw deal on here. He's a far better player than most make out. No, he's not as expansive or exciting as Tait or others but he brings a balance and solidity that they don't sometimes. He also has a decent try scoring record. Let's hope he gets some ball this weekend to show what he can do. Most of the performances for which he has been most strongly criticised have been when he has played 13 outside Tindall at 12 and notreceived any ball.

Other than the injury to Sherri and Easter being fit it's the predictable selections.
I like the look of the Newcastle midfield and Lipman is the best 7 we have available.
Would have prefered Tait or JSD (is he fit?) instead of Les and there's no point talking about Balshaw as i think there's only one man in the country who would have him in his 22!

If the Newcastle midfield is so amazing, how come they're so badly placed in the GP? And how come half their pack is picked for the Saxons?

Newcastle are the new Bath!

Battering Ram Winger, do you ever stop moaning?

The team is fine, anyone who watched Italy play last weekend knows that they're not exactly firing on all cylinders at the moment anyway. Noon is more than capable at OC and gets far too much grief on here.

England, who will be desperate to put things right after last week, by 15.

I will stop moaning when the right team is picked and they play competently for 80 minutes. Woodward and Johnson wouldn't have let such a shambles as last week occur, why should we accept anything less from Ashton and Vickery?

I'm sure you'll find something to moan about even if we are winning every game. The 'right' team as told by you I imagine?

Ashton isn't the one who told their players to throw in the towel and give up playing for the second 40 minutes. The players were to blame, simple as that. Everyone was saying how they were responsible for the WC turnaround, with no credit being given to Ashton... the same should apply here.

The amount of moaning and over-reacting on this site is truly incredible.

Tigeroo he never stops moaning.i am at the end of my tether with his persistent moaning

Quote:

tigeroo
Ashton isn't the one who told their players to throw in the towel and give up playing for the second 40 minutes. The players were to blame, simple as that.

Correct. But the fact that Ashton is rewarding those who so spectacularly underachieved by selecting them for the next match is what worries me. A knee-jerk reaction is exactly what was required to shake English players and coaches alike out of this complacent mentality that, a couple of errors aside, we more or less won last Saturday's match. We didn't. We executed poorly and then we fell apart. Ashton needed to be brave with this team selection and has patently failed to be so.

More of the same here.

I think this team should still beat Italy, we would have mullered Wales if we'd followed one of the most basic mantras of Rugby, 'Don't shovel shite' if the ball is bad there's no point in just shovelling it along the line, take it to ground, reset, be patient, work through the phases 15 or 16 if needs be

How come the England coaching staff didnt intervene during the disasterous second half then? It wouldn't of been too hard to get messages onto the pitch via the water carriers and/or replacements. Or was it just Arseton and Co. Doing their bewildered, dumbstruck silence bit?

Quote:

I'm sure you'll find something to moan about even if we are winning every game. The 'right' team as told by you I imagine?

Now you're getting it.

And you, Total Flanker, are a shameless self-publicist!

So is it too much to ask that professional international rugby players dig themselves out of a hole on their own? Do they need their hands held for the full 80 minutes? Of course not. If England had continued playing like they did in the first half, scoring 4 tries in the second, would you all be criticising Ashton? The players screwed up, and Ashton is giving them the opportunity to make up for it against Italy.

What would dropping them after one game do for confidence? something that is often talked about as lacking among England players.

Stop exaggerating one loss for christ sake and give the players the chance to put in a good performance on sunday. Blaming the coach for all the wrongs of last weekend is very roundball. Ashton's gotten us 3 wins out of 5 in last year's six nations and a world cup final in October. Enough with the witch hunt already.

Quote:

Ashton's gotten us 3 wins out of 5 in last year's six nations and a world cup final in October.

I thought that was down to the senior players essentially telling him to go and put the cones out whilst they did it themselves?

Anyway, whether it's his fault or not, you know the buck stops with Ashton.

Okay Tigeroo, but we do seem to be giving rather a lot of chances for it all to come good, an average 6N last year a terrible run into the world cup a pathetic start to the world cup okay that was followed by a suprising but welcome last few matches but a lot of credit for that must go to the players who had the confidence to stand up and speak their minds, since then, against a poor and misfiring Wales, we lost

BRW wrote "And you, Total Flanker, are a shameless self-publicist "


pot kettle?

Tigeroo - are you Rob Andrew?

I'm with BRW on this (Unholy LI quins alliance)

Ashton picks the team. 60% of this team is from the bottom 5 GP clubs. Work it out.....

It is poor selection, plain and simple.

I think you could make a pretty (GP) decent team of an unholy LI-Quins alliance!

Gatland picked a team who are 8th in the Magners league. Does that make him a poor coach?

Would you rather not pick Wilkinson or Cipriani because they're in the bottom half of the GP table? How about Flood and Tait? Haskell? Shaw? Let's not pick any of them because their TEAM isn't doing well in the GP! What rubbish. And all the others ARE from the top teams in the GP. So what's the problem exactly?

Harlequins are rubbish so we shouldn't pick Strettle on that basis?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008:02:06:14:14:10 by tigeroo.

They are playing week in and week out in losing teams. How can you then expect them to suddenly become winners for England?

Let me give you an example.

Tigers, with just one player on the bench on Sunday, versus Falcons with 3 on the pitch and 1 on the bench. Tigers would win big 9 times out of 10, and I would suggest that there are several Tigers players who have more right - on form to be selected for England next week.

Your example of Strettle is valid. Of course a good player can be part of a poor team, but when the vast majority of the England team are selected from the under performing clubs, by association, the players themselves must be under performing. And I believe it is quite legitimate to question their selection.

Especially as last week they showed themselves to be way off their games.

Not sure it matters where the players come from. Not sure the Ospreys are 8th is an argument. The Magners League has no baring on anything it seems.

Agree with points about players sorting out for themselves. But, they didn't did they. It went wrong and no one sorted it out. So shouldn't they be accountable for and dropped?

OH DEAR

Could it be that BA lilstened to me, realised Sheridan is pants and has dropped him (for one week only) so tha the can play for Sale against Wasps this weekend.

Surely it would be a shock to discover that England have busted him again.

Unhappiness, where's when I was young
And we didn't give a damn
'Cause we were raised
To see life as a fun and take it if we can

whilst i don't agree with some of the team selections.can someone please tell me what rob andrew has to do with it?
does he pick the team?
have some say?
and,does he then let ashton take the flack for his lousey picks?

"How many more times,Ref?"

Oh what a surprise. Iain "One-more-redemption-shot" Balshaw starts again.

PS - Sheriden is aparently in hospital with a glorified blister, sorry, abcess, close to an achillies, so I doubt he's free to play FOR SALE.

Quote:

andrew w
can someone please tell me what rob andrew has to do with it?
does he pick the team?
have some say?
and,does he then let ashton take the flack for his lousey picks?

That's a good point do we have a selection committee or is it just Ashton?

Most of the Wasps boys have not been playing in losing sides. Wasps lost a lot of games during the World Cup, when they were away. Once they returned, the team lost only one of their next 12 or 13 games.

Reading_Fatboy, your idea that England players should only get picked from clubs at the top of the GP table is still baffling. Why deny the likes of Strettle, Flood, Tait, Haskell, Sackey, Shaw, Wilkinson... the chance to play for England? Would anyone argue with any of their selections in the starting XV, Wilko lately, apart?

Absolute rubbish that Ashton shouldn't be picking the best from clubs lower down. What happens when a club does well one season, but terrible the next, should highly rated England players who made a name for themselves one season be punished for their teams current inneficiencies the next? Of course not.

Apart from the players I've mentioned, the likes of Stevens, Kay, Borthwick, Narraway, Lipman, Tindall, Vainikolo, Mears, Wigglesworth, Cueto, Balshaw, Lund are all playing in the top half of the GP table, does that satisfy you?

You say that last week showed us that players from lower ranked clubs were way off their game. I'd argue that the majority showed they were very much ON their game in the first half, and the second half was a collective failure.

Why punish a prospective England talent like Strettle, just because his club is underperforming? Same with Flood, Tait, Haskell, Sackey....

Of course Ashton wants players who know how to win, that's probably why he's not picked any from Leeds or Worcester or many from Bristol. But to say that the England team should be comprised of players from only the very top of the GP table is ridiculous.

*Sigh*

It's Andy Robinson all over again. England by 9 with a try in 2nd half injury time, adding gloss to a dreadful performance. 3 tries maximum. Ashton to hail "a good performance." All 15 to be retained for the France game. England to get stuffed by 40.

Ed you should have gone into comedy

I was looking forward to a few changes against Italy to add a bit more dynamism to the side after the 2nd half capitulation against the Welsh.

Gomarsall should be out and Wigglesworth in.

I would give Geraghty a chance at either 12 or atleast have him on the bench.

Cipriani in the side at either fly half or fullback, since Johnny is the kind of player that can change a game at any moment at 10 and coupled with the fact that Balshaw had a nightmare against Wales.

Tait should have been brought back in at inside centre instead of Noon which would have given a little more spark to the backline.

The whole Vainikolo in an England shirt is just wrong for me, Varndell should be starting after a good season so far and he's English by birth.

the forwards also need a shake up with maybe Mears at Hooker, the rest of the side is fine only 5 changes for me!

Ed's nailed it with that comment! Surely there has to be something hard or something we dont know about rugby coaching. I mean how does everyone on this board find it so blindingly obvious who should be picked but the man who coahces/picks the team doesnt! Someones missing a trick here.....

What concerns me is that we can dominate territory and possesion but we still seem to lack the cutting edge to turn it into points.

This has been going on for a while and keeps coming back to haunt us esp in tight games. Then we get a bit headless in the effort to score tries and end up giving away points.

And don't get me started on the national obsession with aimless kicks upfield...

Well if you look at the Premiership it's all about possession and grinding teams down. There's very rarely any incisiveness, and those that do don't get picked for England as they're deemed a liability, so the England team is bound to reflect that.

a kick upfield and in play is great as long as someone is chasing it, as soon as the other guys gets hands on the ball you need to be putting him on the floor or making him so nervous he drops the ball, we kick the ball up field and wait for it to come back, or worse still barley kick it at all.
We have players who can break defences, Cips, Flood, Haskell, Geraghty, Lamb, Strettle, Rees etc.
We had several problems last saturday, but the biggest one was the link between backs and forwards, the fatties did some great work and it was all undone by slow delivery from the scrum half and poor distribution or wasteful kicking away from th fly half.
Watching the French on Sunday, there were mistakes sure, but the attacking game was played with intent, they shipped the ball down the line fast, for the most part it was not telegraphed and the defenders did not have a couple of paces headstart. England attack, apart from a few individual efforts, looked laboured and telegraphed.

Tigeroo.

I don't want to go on about it but winning is a habit, as is losing.

60% of this team are from teams losing more often than they win.

I say no more about it.

RF - as I pointed out earlier,with reference to Wasps players, most of those losses occurred during the World Cup. Since we had our England players back, Sackey has only played in one losing side. Shaw has played in one and a bit -the bit being the Munster game, in which he was injured
Since the end of the World Cup, the Wasps record is:

P14 W9 D2 L3

Yeah Reading Fat boy your arguement is being shot down here. Seems your making a mountain out of a mole hill to be honest. You sound like a politician throwing 'missleading' statistics out there trying to make a point!

By the way, only one of those defeats was in the Premiership!

During the World Cup, our only GP win was against:

London Irish!

Fair enough, you win some and you lose some.

I've got 11 to 2 against Italy for any win, and 15 to 1 for more than 10 points.

Never thought I'd see the day when I would feel confident about that sort of wager. Here's hoping I'm wrong

You did see how awful Italy were at the weekend right? Playing against an even more awful Ireland side.......

Their pack looked very decent to me, probably they will get parity in posession. They looked pretty dire in the girls and their defence had more dog legs than all the Chinese restaurants in Reading.

Nick Mallet will have the defence sorted for this week, and I don't think they will even think about playing more than a 10 man game... Just muscle up the posession and for a variation put the ball up in the sky and have all the loony's converging on Balshaw.

I give them a bit more than a punchers chance.

As I said - Hope I'm wrong

I agree, Italy will look to play 9 or 10 man rugby.
Sadly - I think England will as well.

I'm distraught to find myself thinking we might lose this game and I desperately hope Reading Fatboy loses his money on that bet

Brian Ashton wants his players to beat Italy with style on Sunday, to show the kind of rugby they are capable of.

Last week’s Twickenham defeat to Wales has threatened to derail England’s RBS 6 Nations, exacerbated as it was by the number of injuries they picked up.

David Strettle, Lewis Moody, Tom Rees, Mike Tindall and Andrew Sheridan are all ruled out of the trip to Rome, forcing Ashton to make five changes to the side.

“The team going out to play on Sunday is going out to play some rugby,” Ashton told the Daily Telegraph.

“We don't want to end up playing the same game we played against Italy last year, when we played in just a 15-metre channel.

“It would be very easy for us this week to go into a very tight mentality saying 'we can't afford to lose or not do this or that'. There's a real determination to make sure when we get out on the field on Sunday, for the whole of the game, you see the real England.”