Originally Posted by
Sheikh
Just realised I missed the 2nd round when I came to this!
In the 2nd round, a fortnight ago, England ran riot over the Italians, Ireland beat France by a try and Scotland narrowly lost to Wales, although none of those of is really true!
Italy started brightly against England, going 5-0 up after 3 minutes and leading for 20 minutes until England scored two tries midway through the first half. A 15-5 half-time scoreline can't have pleased the Twickenham crowd, although an early 2nd half penalty earned them a bit more breathing space, until the Italians scored a 2nd try to cut the lead to 8, and if the Italians had a decent kicker it would have been much closer. However, England then started to dominate and scored 4 tries in 15 minutes. However, in the last ten minutes, when Italy have often seemed to give up, England instead started to play to defend the lead (47-10) and ended up being battered by the Italians, giving up a late try. While you can't really argue with a 30 point win, Italy showed up some gaps in the English defence which better teams could exploit.
Ireland won the match with France 18-11, but as with France's first match (against Scotland) the losing side scored the only try. Sexton, back in the Ireland 10 jersey, was perfect with 5 from 5 (he missed 10 minutes in the blood bin following a clash of heads with Bastareaud). France seemed to improve once the subs started coming on - not sure if that's a drop-off in quality with the Ireland subs or the French still not knowing their best side - probably a bit of both; the last 15 minutes were France attacking the Irish and they scored one try and came close to a second which could have evened things up. The Irish certainly have a good defence.
Wales' trip to Murrayfield will probably be remembered more for the controversies than for the game itself. Wales were the better side, efficient and inventive when required, although Scottish indiscipline in their own half cost them by gifting Halfpenny too many penalties. Wales had most of the early possession and were already a penalty up when Scotland scored a great break-away try from a turnover. Wales were getting back into the match when a Welsh kick got chased and Biggar and Russell both went for it - Biggar jumped whereas Russell was on the ground, eyes on the ball, and only saw Biggar late. Russell turned out of the challenge, but Biggar hit his back and landed on the ground shoulders first. The Welsh wanted a red card, the Scots said it wasn't a foul at all as Biggar jumped into Russell; the ref gave a yellow and Russell got cited after the match. Wales also went down to 14 soon after when Davies saw yellow for a similar, if less contentious, incident. Other controversies include: a disallowed Welsh try when the ref (rightly) called obstruction from a maul (although we've seen it overlooked plenty of times), a Scottish try at the end which was given despite there being no clear view of the ball being grounded, and the ref blowing for time following the Scottish conversion despite there being 4 seconds left on the clock. However, I think a lot of the controversies around this match come from the Welsh not playing as well as they think they should have, and Scotland making some silly mistakes; the scoreline shows the match was close, but really it wasn't that close.
And so we come to this weekend's matches:
Scotland v Italy was a game of two winless teams, although both have played well in their previous matches. A look at the stats would have you thinking Scotland won this
The good news for Australia is that neither England nor Wales look spectacular this year