Sexton to make first pre-season appearance in 12 years at Leinster

Suspect El-Abd will have a lot of input here, as both the defence coach and the only member of the coaching staff with a background in the back-row

England's main issue is defence. We both know this!

In this thread we were talking about how to improve England's defence.

I suggested that England are best defending over multiple phases, and struggle when dealing with counters.

You introduced the analogy of a snooker player being at his best when at the table for an extended period, which agreed with what I said.

You then immediately argued against your own analogy, and then shifted the discussion away from defence onto attack!

I think its reductive to claim I just want England to make more passes - I can explain why if you want, but I don't want to just begin last week's argument again. Last week though you did keep saying that England's main issue was defence, and that fixing that should be the priority - a point about which I completely agreed. I don't really understand why you now don't want to discuss that!

Should be an interesting 6N if Scotland get a bounce off their form.

I'm always weary of England too when they get off to a good start.

They'd the best autumn of all the NH teams too.

The closest they have come is signing BB a month after the RWC ended (while contracted in Japan) with a specific statement that he can play immediately for NZ upon is return, as a sabbatical etc. He even petitioned to be in last years SR season ending.

That is not the case with Leicester, upon all standards he will have to play in this years NPC season before he can be selected. That rules him out of the July and RC tests.

Of course now school is seen as so much more important, and sports as much more important to schooling, that those rural/public gets get these scholarships/free entry to play at private schools.

This might only be relevant in the tradition private rugby schools, so not worth implementing, but the same drain has been seen in NZ to the point where the public schools are not just impacted by the lost of their best talent to private schools, there is a whole flow on effect of losing players to other sports their school can' still compete at the highest levels in, and staff quality etc. So now and of that traditional sort of rivalry is near lost as I understand it.

The idea to force the top level competition into having equal public school participation would be someway to 'force' that neglect into reverse. The problem with such a simple idea is of course that if good rugby talent decides to stay put in order to get easier exposure, they suffer academically on principle. I wonder if a kid who say got selected for a school rep 1st/2nd team before being scouted by a private school, or even just say had two or three years there, could choose to rep their old school for some of their rugby still?

Like say a new Cup style comp throughout the season, kid's playing for the private school in their own local/private school grade comp or whatever, but when its Cup games they switch back? Better represent, areas, get more 2nd players switching back for top level 1st comp at their old school etc? Just even in order to have cool stories where Ella or Barrett brothers all switch back to show their old school is actually the best of the best?

🐥