2023 RWC Buildup, Squads, Fixtures 'etc'

I said to my eldest lad at full time after the England game that if you listened very carefully you could just about hear the alarm bells going off in English rugby.

Watching May score a good try early on I was thinking England seemed a bit sharper and if May was in form it would lesson the blow of Watson. Boy did it go downhill for them, that last try Fiji scored was absolutely shocking - massive gap like that on the try line!? Players can't differentiate between the system they're playing to and the in-games tweaks they need to trust themselves to make on the fly. Absolutely no adaptability and seemingly bereft of confidence. I really think we're looking at the possibility of this England team topping the 2015 performance.

We could have done them a big favour this evening by losing - would have swallowed up some of the oxygen in the room. The English fan base on social media are unanimously scathing, even the in-game commentators are sighing with frustration at the increasingly amateur state of the national team and for the second week in a row they got bullied - Fiji were FAR more convincing. Looking at those updated world rankings there is a solid argument that Fiji have a better chance of a semi-final than Ireland do.

General sentiment towards Borthwick seems to be pretty sympathetic but totally out of his depth. Honestly I hope he can leave this stuff aside when he goes home, I'd be staring at the ceiling all night.

Bizarre end to the warm ups. Would not have anticipated such a dominant game from South Africa and the 7-1 split along with bench all coming on at once is potentially a bit of announcement to the other teams of how South Africa are going to play. England and Ireland struggling to the extent they did changes the narrative a bit on the eve of the tournament but the losing finalist from 4 years ago being out of form to this extent is crazy.

Edit: Scratch what I said about potentially doing England a favour by losing, England's final pool game is on the 7th of October against Samoa and it's very possible both teams could have one loss a piece coming into the game. They'll be more concerned by how well Samoa disrupted a somewhat flat Ireland and lasted the 80.