Why Joe Marler retirement hint may leave England career in agonising spot

He should be under-committing and over-delivering, to give the team a shot at rising to the top over the longer term. Having said that, it did not work for Eddie Jones. The RFU administrators don't like that kind of thing.

My main takeaway has been the number of tries that have been left on the field. Thinking back to Fozzie's first couple of years they really struggled to create anything, but took their chances pretty well when they came and still had the individual talent to conjure the odd piece of magic against the run of play.

This year's team has been given a lot more license to attack and have created so many opportunities, only for so many to go begging. I thought the efforts against SA, Ireland and France were all worthy of 4 tries minimum, but simple mistakes at the wrong time, pushing passes instead of retaining the ball, and taking completely the wrong option has kept us to 2 tries when 3 would have won it.

It certainly has the makings of something good, but next year will be the real litmus test to see if this is an attacking structure that can evolve and improve, or will always be hit and miss because of it's very nature and lack of structure.

I am surprised we have not heard more about the Felix Jones exit. Best guess is that there was a major disagreement, kind of a "my defensive system can't work if you insist on doing/not-doing XYZ" discussion.

For your further education, I found the following breakdown of one prominent club's finances in the Top 14 [Clermont].

For Clermont (budget of €29.5 million for 2021-2022) :

- 20% from ticket sales

- 17% from the LNR (includes TV Rights, compensation from producing french internationals and other minor stuff)

- 5% from public collectivities (so you're looking at funds from the city of Clermont, the department of Puy-De-Dôme and the region Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes)

- 4% from merchandising and events

- 3% from miscellaneous

- 51 % from sponsorships and partnerships. They've got 550 different partners. The main ones are CGI, Groupama, Limagrain/Jacquet, Omerin, Paprec, Renault and of course Michelin (not surprising since they're actually the founders of the club).

As you can see nothing comes from the FFR at all. The LNR is a separate entitiy to FFR and their aims frequently do not accord.

WHAT IS THE POINT OF PLAYING CANE & PERENARA?

one last time? That you for your service?

He’s then surrounded himself with young, callow coaches. That might work at club level where you might be allowed a season or two for it to bed in, but not at this level.

He’s inability to hang onto those with experience (Jones and Walters) doesn’t bode well.

Hence why Aled Walters was so instrumental to the Boks.

Hence why the Bombsquad was forged too - the ability to field close on two packs over 80 and replacing 5 of them in one moment - became part and parcel of the Blitz approach.

I questioned at the time England players' committment to the system as it is no walk in the park.

I suspect that neither Felix nor Aled were getting the full buy-in and support from the players. And that contributed to the "working environment" claims.

Steven Kitshchoff's recent comment about England's fitness hit the nail on the head for me. They're not fit enough to make it work.

Also, their core group of older players all recently got paid upfront in their new sweet deal contracts... Now they're lazy too.

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