Ruthless Australia hammer England

[NewsBot]

Ruthless Australia hammer England

England lose the Cook Cup and the series as they slump to a 43-18 defeat against Australia.

[Burgs]

Xxxxx slumped to their xxxx consecutive defeat as the Xxxxx ruthlessly exposed their shortcomings for the second consecutive week.

Despite wholesale changes, Xxxxx failed to spark once again and were taken apart by a dynamic Xxxxx.

So was this a new article or did the BBC reporter just change the names from a few short months ago?!
How sweet it is, especially with so much room for improvement by the Wallabies yet. Nearly brings tear to the eye!
Certainly need to put the result into perspective considering the standard of the opposition and also our promising start against the Boks last year however, things are looking pretty good at this point.
Strangely no mention of devestated scrums, woeful forwards etc leading to the "ultimate humility" of requiring uncontested scrums though.....

[shasta]

"Room for improvement is an understatement". I thought that the Wallabies looked to be really struggling to contain a woeful England for large parts of the second half. The uncontested scrums were a major disappointment as the boys looked ready to gain some real ascedency there. This disruption may have had a lot to do with their inability to put them truly to the sword.

The less said about the Wallaby line-out the better. What price McIsaac will be back in the squad for Ireland?

Whatever, they'll need to lift next week or the well-travelling Ireland may cause an upset. Jeez I hope Rodzilla hasn't done too much damage. For sure, I've not seen anything so far that would lead me to back them to take out the Tri-Nations.

Not all doom and gloom tho. There's signs of improvement. They're at the "a long journey begins with a single step" stage. Let's hope NZ are already at the end of the road.

[travelling_gerry]

very true Shasta......McIssac now easily the most accurate line out thrower in the country and possibly S14.

The uncontested scrums were because England lost the their props??? Well how come we didnt have more ascendency at the break down as well...they dont have to be uncontested...or did I miss something?

[shasta]

It was a little confusing. I watched on Fox and they didn't really explain what the injuries were. Just that England couldn't field three "fit" front row forwards.

[Burgs]

My understanding is that as soon as there are no nominated players available for particular Front Row positions then the scrum must be uncontested.
I think, from memory one was a neck and the other was a back issue.
The irony of this ruling for the Wallabies last year was that we could have still run a scrum as we still had three fit Front Rowers, two Hookers and a Prop for sure however, Polota Nau had only been a Hooker for a year having previously played all of his rugby as a Prop! Either the Wallabies chose not to have contested scrums by "forgetting" that or he was only listed as a Hooker so could not be considered as a Prop. All pretty grey area to my eyes and in need of cleaning up. One suggestion last year was to have an extra Prop on the bench but still only allowing seven subs with the 23rd Man only available if the Front Row breaks down like last night.