Rugby World Cup 2015 has started

[JOHNNYAITCH]

Excellent result for England last night but a long a long way to go re the performance...but credit to the opposition

 

I thought the substitutes made a big difference and perhaps we saw what Sam Burgess can give us with his running lines and offloads.Brown was excellent and the forwards fronted up against a powerful team. But too many penalties and turnovers will kill us against better opposition.

 

6/10..must do better

[Robbie Earle's Perm]

Excellent result for England last night but a long a long way to go re the performance...but credit to the opposition

 

I thought the substitutes made a big difference and perhaps we saw what Sam Burgess can give us with his running lines and offloads.Brown was excellent and the forwards fronted up against a powerful team. But too many penalties and turnovers will kill us against better opposition.

 

6/10..must do better

 

Completely agree, hasn't stopped me winding up my Fijian buddies all the same!

[TheSage]

Can't disagree with any of that.

 

Relief was the word.

 

I'm a little bit worried that we are not firing on all cylinders. The warm up games don't count, I know, but some of our recent displays have been poor. The most worrying things are the scrum and line-out.

 

I've got tickets for next weekend (Wales) but I'm not half as confident as I was six months ago.

 

With England it's nearly always a case of what might have been and what if, yet the team is the most expensively assembled in the world, in terms of coaching, training facilities, medical support and so on, yet all too often flatters to deceive.

 

I can't see beyond the All Blacks (who don't seem to lower their standards ever) and the Aussies (who I think have the best back division in the tournament and will take apart a lot of teams if they get enough ball).

 

One anxious fan!

[JOHNNYAITCH]

I reckon we'll gel and get better..i can see us comfortably beating Wales and if (and it's a big if) we get our act together up front we'll be too strong for Australia. Regrettably it may come down to not giving away daft penalties and so who the ref is when we take on the big boys.

 

All Blacks..I don't know...they never play really badly so someone will have to play well to knock them out but then when was the last time they produced a truly outstanding WC performance..1995 v England?

[Robbie Earle's Perm]

I too think we will be too strong for the Aussies and the injury ravaged Welsh.

 

If we win the group we should reach the final, I can't for the life of me see us getting anywhere near the All Blacks though.

[JOHNNYAITCH]

Well we blew it against Wales and just not good enough against Australia

 

It's regrettable that we went out so early but people getting their knickers in a twist should realise we lost to two good teams and it's just bad luck that we had two good teams in our group and not just the one like the other groups. Had we lost to Wales/Aus in a quarter/semi/final the response would have been 'well we lost to a good team'..which is what's just happened!!

 

Having said that we were poor at some of the basics at the weekend..not getting to the breakdown quickly enough and not competing for the ball when we did get there. And our scrum was poor.

 

Robshaw isn't good enough..lacks speed and mobility

 

Credit to Australia though..the second try was fantastic and they basically out fought and out thought us