Boyo,s 30 v Old School Tie 3

England 38 New Zealand 22

Wales 30 England 3

Wales v New Zealand ?

If only NZ could be persuaded to play in white

hi cat

i know the reason why but it always bemuses me that Wales play with a different intensity against England than other nations, compare yesterdays effort to the matches against Samoa and other SH teams, this usually results in bad first half performances and giving away early tries, and then leaving themselves with too much ground to make up-after all they are professionals now and in theory should give every game the same effort

sewter, you cant play with that same intensity if you dont have the players available to do it, and at the time of playing samoa and other SH teams in autumn wales had many many injury problems to key players.

Don't think you can make any excuses for not beating Samoa at home with this team, arguably a stronger squad than Wales had out yesterday......

15 Leigh Halfpenny
14 Alex Cuthbert
13 Ashley Beck
12 Jamie Roberts
11 George North
10 Dan Biggar
9 Mike Phillips
1 Paul James
2 Richard Hibbard
3 Aaron Jarvis
4 Bradley Davies
5 Ian Evans
6 Ryan Jones (c)
7 Justin Tipuric
8 Toby Faletau

16 Ken Owens, 17 Gethin Jenkins, 18 Scott Andrews, 19 Luke Charteris, 20 Sam Warburton, 21 Tavis Knoyle, 22 Rhys Priestland, 23 Scott Williams

Rainier, Wales are the 6 Nations champions, so the facts speak for themselves. Losing Autumn internationals pales into insignificance. For the last 2 seasons, Wales haved proved themselves easily the best of the 6 Nations teams. Grand Slams winners, then defending their title. Hard to knock in my opinion, without appearing churlish.

hi sewter

fully agree about the intensity ........ you must have some English club v Welsh club stories to tell

..... perhaps pre match team talks

I'm not knocking Wales at all. I commend and applaud the Welsh, but spare me the bullsh!t that Wales lost those games because of injuries. I could sit here and moan about Ireland having 15+ first teamers out injured at the moment, but it would gloss over the fact that they had good enough players on the pitch to win each of their matches this tournament. It's a red herring. If Wales want to step up and mix it with the big boys down south, they need to become consistent and ruthless. That means not just getting pumped up for the big occasion. At the moment, Wales pick and choose which games are important. They've set the bar, the challenge is maintaining that level of performance.

How do we have all this nonsense about England beating NZ, Wales beating England etc, without mentioning that Wales did play NZ last Autumn and got spanked? Always an excuse I suppose.

Wales certainly are the strongest six-nations team at the moment, that's not in any doubt, but if they want to be taken seriously worldwide they have to do better than losing 8 games on the trot in between six-nations and you can't just say we had some injuries so it doesn't count. Everyone does, NZ have injury crises now and then and nobody even notices. It's embarrassing as a hemisphere that whoever our best team is tends to get hammered by NZ, Australia and SA year after year - Wales had 4 chances against the Aussies and blew them all. RW is right, they've raised the standard expected to the point where we know they can win big games so to become a genuinely memorable team they are going to have to start doing that.

England beat NZ and drew with SA last year. It should be Wales doing that now. We are told often enough that this England team really isn't all that (which is true, they are still pretty naive for one thing and lack finishing ability for sure), but:

1(1) New Zealand 90.08
2(2) South Africa 86.94
3(3) Australia 86.87
4(4) England 83.72
5(5) Wales 83.36
6(6) France 81.59
7(8) Samoa 78.71
8(9) Argentina 78.71
9(7) Ireland 78.05
10(10) Scotland 76.86
11(11) Tonga 76.10
12(12) Italy 76.06
13(13) Fiji 71.52
14(14) Canada 71.41
15(15) Japan 70.09

cat I unfortunately remember coming down from Gloucester to play Pencoed and getting absolutely hammered, at the time I was very naive and really wasnt expecting the England/Wales rivalry as we didnt really think of it like that!!

had to put up with plenty of stick yesterday, and again in work today

but despite all the we hate England stuff I have found the Welsh to be great after all have lived in Wales now longer than in England

have had some amazing team mates both in rugby and cricket

I agree with a lot that has been said.  Wales by far the better side on paper and on the pitch and in front of that crowd, Wales really performed. But Mike Phillips reflects the problem; on Saturday he was the best scrum half in the World but in less intense atmospheres, he can be one of the worst. Wales are a top side but that have a mental block against the southern hemisphere and beating that block should be the objective and beating a young and average England side (i am an england supporter) should be treated as just that and nothing more.  But it wont happen and the complete over reaction to Saturday is exactly the reason why.