Wales

melkdave says...

How Howley can be pround of those Wales performances ,says it all .I for one am not pround of them ,i think they where well down on what Wales can do in terms of ability and intensity,and lets face it Australia where great either ,but still better than Wales obviously as they whitewashed them.The England managment isnt entirly happy ,as they failed to win a test ,but still manged to avoid a whitewash.The Ireland team isnt happy ,,the SA team isnt happy ,But it seems Howley is.Just for once id like the welsh to be honest.and say.We went with big expectations of wining the series ,had all the advantages it seems before the 1st test ,and then proceeded to play absolutely CRAP over the 3 tests ,bad decision making,bad set piece,horrible running and passing.dreadfull kicking and chase from hand .We let the fans and ourselves down with those performances.We beleived our own hype and paid the price.Now that is honest ,and not a PR stunt to save the players reputations

Posted 10:36 27th June 2012

rustytrumpet says...

blametheref -

sort of agree with you.

Howley was very nieve, some of his selections were bad (priestland, brad davies, beck)

Also the players were very nieve - they should be able to close a game out with a couple of minutes to go. keep the ball tight, dont pass it out very much etc.

We used to call it ' Up the Jumper' rugby. nothing wrong with it in those circumstances.

Re the Lions. Has been going far to long to scrap it. Some say it's the pinnicle for a NH player, but for me pinnicle would be playing for MY country (wales) not a conjoined team.

Although it is nice to see the supposed best in the UK playing together.

Posted 12:33 26th June 2012

blametheref says...

Wales are like Ireland when it comes to playing SH teams, low expectations, hence low standards, low results....Howley should be disgusted they didn't win the series, end of story!

NH rugby will only improve if we go to the SH to actually win matches, not be content with player experience and moral victories. This might improve if we got rid of Lions Tours and the Lions completely, as its being suggests that collectively England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales pay far too much homage and respect to our SH opposition. Instead of these stupid Lions tours our teams would be better off taking on SH opposition on a NH country v SH country basis

Posted 14:17 25th June 2012

cuw3100 says...

It would have been interesting to see a series between Wales and NZ , given the closeness of the OZ series and some of the comments made by coaching staff.

Given Wales is ranked higher than Ireland, and the fact that Ireland played a very good 2nd test, logically the result ought to be a win for Wales in a hypothetical situation.

Posted 11:37 25th June 2012