APV1 says...

@ melkdave - Hear! Hear!

I rate Moody as a great player and a top bloke. But he wasn't a leader like Johnno was. He didn't seem to get a grip of the players and reign them in. On or off the pitch.

"...leading the team to decide at a players' meeting that they needed to be better disciplined." HE should have called that meeting, not the other players. HE should have got them together and knocked a couple of their heads together. Sometimes you need to come down hard at the beginning and relax a little at a time, as people earn your trust and respect.

If he had concerns, he should have addressed them early and nipped any issues in the bud.

But I agree that MJ should have been more dominant too. If the two of them, shoulder to shoulder, laid down the law at the beginning of the "tour", this may not have happened. It's one thing to trust them to go out and self-police, but you have to put the boundaries in place first.

And I'm not niaive enough to think that a lot of the stories weren't stirred-up by the press, giving them their sensational headlines. But why give them the ingredients in the first place? No-one was expecting hermits and a bit of fun and a few jollies are fine. But this was all too much and too easy for the media vultures to sensationalise.

Our behaviour off the pitch was a real shame for England rugby.

Posted 14:11 31st October 2011

startledwombat says...

>and believed they were invincible.

Gosh. Really? That's so out of character for an English team.

Posted 09:11 31st October 2011

Silver_Fern says...

Queenstown, not Queensland.

Posted 03:43 31st October 2011