Monday 14 February 2011

Six nations round up - week 2 - 2011



If you want a write up from a kiwi point of view about England V France for the Six Nations 2011 - you absolutely must click here
For England's glory moment against Italy...keep reading.


Six things we've learnt after another great weekend of Six Nations rugby.

1. England are looking good. In fact, yesterday they played some of the best rugby I've ever seen an England team play.  Admittedly, it was against a quite abysmal Italian side.  But - was this because England made them look abject?  It's a bit of a chicken and egg conundrum. Only time will tell.

2. France struggle to another win. I didn't see this game but it sounded like the Irish gave the French a good run for their money. I expected this after watching the Irish play the All Blacks in November, who gave the NZers the hardest game of the series.  I was surprised Ireland nearly lost to Italy last weekend. No more so after seeing the way Italy played against England yesterday.

3. Scotland is a confusing team. One minute they are beating the Springboks who in turn, crushed England at Twickenham. The next thing, they're struggling to get over the gain line against Wales.  Strange and disappointing. I was hoping for a Scottish resurgence.

4. Chris Ashton is not a half bad winger. Four tries in one game is rather good. He has the Hosea Gear-esque quality of finding himself at the right place at the right time.  Rugby speak of course is that he runs some good lines.  But his showboating, swan diving malarkey may set him up for trouble one of these days soon. Hopefully this won't happen to him...



5. Mark Cueto is not a good winger. 1 try in 19 games?  Seriously? 

6. There are two teams in the race.  England and France but I still think Ireland could potentially upset the apple cart too.  My money though has to be on England.

3 comments:

Nursedude said...

I agree that at this point, England and France seem to be separating themselves from the other 4 teams. It will all come down to the match at Twickenham, it looks like.

It's not often you get outscored 3 tries to one and still win. France may be giving up tries...but they are still undefeated.

Steve Munford said...

True, Mark Cueto's try scoring record has been poor of late but he has actually been playing well and doing a lot of good work for England. In the Autumn Series he was one of our best players, beat a lot of denfenders and made a lot of yards. But yes, a winger is usually judged on tries scored, let's hope that his try at the weekend will bring about an avalanche of tries.
As far as Ashton is concerned, you can see him one day dropping the ball from one of his swallow dives and Johnson giving him a dam good thrashing. Let's hope he never feels like one of these guys. Rugby bloopers

Ferdy said...

Yes ND - the match between England and France is looking to be quite a prospect! It's great to be able to watch the games as well - because as slugso said in the blog before, it's a bit of shame that the games are on a really obscure channel at home.

Steve - welcome to the site and many thanks for your comments. You're right, I might have been a bit hard on Cueto. He is a steady pair of hands mostly. I guess he just lacks that spark that Ashton appears to have acquired so effortlessly.