Foakes shouldn’t have been dropped when he was but he hasn’t been in good enough form to justify a recall this season in fairness. Would expect him to be in South Africa and Sri Lanka though.

In regards to Roy most of the players who were involved in both the World Cup and the Ashes have been rested – Bairstow’s the only one who played in both to be involved in the T20 games, and he’s obviously not on the Test leg of the tour. Could say that Roy could’ve been picked for the T20 games but he’s a lock-in for an England T20 side, while Bairstow has never established himself in the format the way he has in ODIs or had done in Tests.

Yeah, the ECB changed the rules so that they were in line with the ICC’s rules. It’s not like the entire laws of the country were changed to rush through a leggie’s qualification…

There was a really interesting piece in The Times this morning about the money of the respective 6N boards.The RFU is the richest, by quite some distance, but a large portion of that is down to the fact they don’t pay the wages of the England players. Indeed, in terms of the aggregate wages, the starting XVs that England, France, Ireland and Wales put out in the 6N last year were all very similar – in fact, France and Ireland’s players had a larger combined salary than England’s (although England players get a sizeable match fee when playing for England, so they’re hardly much worse off!) That means the IRFU, for example, is pumping a decent amount of their profits into the central contracts of the national team, whereas the RFU is freed up to spend more money elsewhere, which if you look at the sums of money going into the grassroots over here now – the RFU are spending big to make the game more accessible and visible, with it becoming more prevalent in state schools, and communities that previously haven’t really shown much interest for various reasons, like the sizeable South Asian and Muslim populations for example, are being reached out to, and all this is before we reach the national age groups, which the RFU have been funding seriously right down to U16 and below – may well end up having obvious benefits further down the line. Player welfare is obviously a huge priority that needs solving but the idea that central contracts are a cure-all and the only way to do things isn’t right for mine, and it seems to be born from the fact that the Irish clubs have had a good season in Europe.

Yes, through birth – he was born in London. Given that Jones doesn’t seem to like scrum halves not called Youngs or Care though I’m not sure he’d have any more opportunity here than in Australia however.

In regards to point two, I think there is scientific research into the matter that shows a possible link between cocaine use and quicker recovery from injury. Wouldn’t be surprised if players use it to try and recover from niggles and strains.

Kind of has happened already – both Ireland and England have specific laws in place to encourage the promotion of England/Ireland-qualified talent over overseas players. If he sees this then Poth Ale will be able to tell you much more about the scenario in Ireland – basically, you can only sign a limited number of overseas player per team, and there has to be a balance; if one of the provinces has a non-Ireland qualified fullback for example, then none of the others will be able to sign one. Special dispensations are made for designated ‘project’ players, although with the increase in the number of years served for residency qualification this will likely take a back seat, if it hasn’t already. In England the RFU heavily incentivises the clubs based on the number of EQ players in a match day 23 – if you have under a certain amount you get nothing, then it works in tiers until it tops out at something like 60 or 70% of the match day squad. For a lot of teams, the money they get from it is a lifeline. Both nations – and you can chuck Scotland into the mix here too – are very clever when it comes to signings from the south though; it’s rare, certainly in England now, for a team to sign a player from Super Rugby that doesn’t turn out to be England-qualified.

2010/11 France weren’t a poor side – Grand Slam winners in 2010 (albeit in a relatively low quality edition of the tournament) and a World Cup final. They’d certainly take that now – it’s telling that they look miles off even a 6N win anytime soon. Usually you could ink France in for the title the tournament after a Lions tour, but they could well be scrapping to avoid the wooden spoon.

More than just the Saxons – he was capped fully on the tour to Argentina (although he only got a couple of minutes at the end of the first Test).

Haven’t you got France? They’ve only managed to draw with Japan this evening…

Not just the Scots – the Welsh have had an ‘Exiles’ programme for a while now, which is where the likes of Cuthbert and Francis came from, while Ireland have appointed Joe Lydon – a former English rugby league international no less – to help them scout the world (which tends to mean predominantly England in this scenario, given that it’s fairly convenient) for IQ talent: Treadwell, who’s already been capped, and Mitchell and Parker, who both jumped ship to Munster from Sale over the summer, were all playing for England in a JWC final less than two years ago. In fairness it’s beginning to work both ways, although it seems sometimes that’s seemingly forgotten – there was a bit of a reaction over the Severn in the summer when Max Clark (another finalist with the England U20s from the same team as the now Irish trio mentioned above) turned down a Wales call–up, and over the Irish Sea there was quite a bit of soul searching over Tadgh McElroy, England-qualified, moving to Saracens. But you’re right that there’s no central policy. The clubs are highly aware of who they’re signing though – unless it’s a marquee signing like Kurtley Beale, if an English club signs a player from Super Rugby nowadays I tend to assume they’re England-qualified, like Brad Shields or Jason Woodward, as someone like Ruan Ackermann, who would have to serve the qualification period, is rare nowadays.

You’re already blaming the ref in a hypothetical game!

RE: your criticism of Simmons, in England we call it “doing a Haskell.”

One thing I was impressed about with England compared to their performance against Argentina last week was how good the forwards looked on the carry, even if they weren’t making massive ground. They’ve often been a bit guilty of giving it to Billy and telling him to work miracles but Lawes, Launchbury, Hughes and even Robshaw and Hartley were willing and often ekeing out tiny but vital gains yesterday. Hanigan could do with watching footage of Lawes from a year or two ago and footage of him now – they’re not dissimilar in build but every criticism of Hanigan when it comes to carrying the ball I read on here we said about Lawes in the not too distant past.

Hooper wasn’t warned specifically but there was a team warning given to him, and in those scenarios the next player to infringe often pays for the sins of those who have gone before him, even if he was squeaky clean himself up to that point. Always seems harsh but at the same time at least you can always say you took one for the team and tell everyone else to buck their ideas up!

Not as if England weren’t missing players either tbh – B. Vunipola, Nowell, Te’o and Sinckler were all good enough to be picked as Lions but were missing from this game, while half the bench had less than 10 caps going into the match. Wasn’t as if this was a full-strength England side (although given that they had the luxury of leaving Itoje on the pine it was still a pretty strong one!)

Scotland also lost to Fiji a week after beating Australia in the summer. It’s as if they’re so desperate to prove they’ve ‘arrived’ or what have you that they take their eye off the ball for so-called lower key games.

Regarding my first point, I’ve just seen your comment regarding the title, Jack. A right stitch-up and no mistake!

‘Let me preface all of this by stating that I do not contest that England just about deserved to win the game.’

Having submitted a piece for The Roar before I realise they do some minor tweaking here and there and that may not have been your original headline, but yeah, your headline literally says England didn’t deserve to win the game.

‘Let’s move onto the second half, and the Elliot Daly try. I’m not going to argue it wasn’t a try – the video official took long enough to work out that it was. However, in the previous phase of play, Samu Kerevi had broken through the English line and bar some slippery hands from Kuridrani, Australia would have found themselves a score up.

Instead the loose ball was collected, England counter-attacked and, with the help of a brain-fade from Beale when he tried to let the ball bounce out and misjudged Daly’s pace, scored to put themselves 13-3 up. Small margins, and it could so easily have been very different.’

It could indeed have been different, but again, all you’re pointing out there is that Australia weren’t good enough to take an opportunity, and England were, that Australia weren’t switched on and England were, that Australia eased off and England didn’t, and that Australia assumed and England never gave up on a lost cause. That strikes me as being quite a big part of winning games. Indeed, if you don’t take your opportunities, you don’t really deserve to win games. The decisions will be and already have been done to death but the fact that the strongest argument seems to be ‘they were correct but they could have gone the other way’ doesn’t seem to me to be ironclad reasoning, either. And then you lash out an opposition player who had a big influence in determining the course of the game in the final act, scoring one try and creating another. Is this an article or is it just the frustrated ranting of Michael Cheika’s raging subconcious?

IMO it’s telling that Joseph’s become less of an attacking threat playing outside Farrell for England. Not that Farrell is poor or anything, but just don’t think it’s a complementary partnership, at least in attack. JJ’s best form for England has come outside a bigger ball runner in Burrell, or for Bath outside Eastmond, who wasn’t a big carrier but made metres on the gainline regularly through his footwork and acceleration through a half-gap. He needs someone to create space for him really, which England, who haven’t got enough big carriers in the side at the moment, are struggling to do – England’s attack has been a little too lateral this year. Would like to see him outside Te’o or Tuilagi at some point for England but if Farrell’s the man at 12 for the WC then I don’t see JJ in the best starting XV.

Not sure where you’ve got that from, Hughes jumps pretty regularly for Wasps and takes some lineout ball for England too. He’s not a primary target but he’s a decent secondary one, shown by the fact that he’s even filled in at lock for Wasps at times. Robshaw also jumps and has turned himself into a solid secondary option.

England were turgid last week but I think a lot of credit goes to Argentina for that – they came with a simple, back-to-basics gameplan, picked a massive pack (Kremer at 7!) and turned the game into a stop-start slugfest. Australia could learn something from that but Cheika would rather take a cheese grater to his naughty bits than do something similar, and to be fair it wouldn’t be playing to his team’s strengths. For all their size and power it was quite telling that Argentina didn’t manage to dominate the gainline though, and especially in defence England didn’t look like conceding for the vast majority of the game. Given Aus are coming with a big beefy centre pairing that doesn’t necessarily bode well, and I reckon Koroibete and Beale could be in for an Ireland-esque high ball assault, especially with Watson and May being good in the air. If Aus can recapture the energy they showed against NZ and England haven’t improved on last week though then it’ll be a fairly comfortable victory for the Wallabies.

England team was announced earlier:

Vunipola, Hartley, Cole
Lawes, Launchbury
Robshaw, Underhill, Hughes

Youngs, Ford, Daly, Farrell, Joseph, May, Watson.

Replacements: George, Marler, Williams, Itoje, Simmonds, Care, Slade, Rokoduguni.

Watson at full back is interesting – plays there for Bath but has never started there for England so I’m sure there’ll be nerves, something Aus could exploit. Offers a much different counter-attacking threat to Brown though, and with May and Daly on the wings too any loose kicks could be punished badly, either through pacey counter-attacks or Daly’s monster boot pinning Aus back in their own 22. Prefer the starting front row for Aus – we’re obviously in the Twilight Zone. That England bench is pretty serious – has a bit of everything: pace, finishing, creativity, thunderbeast carrying. Could well swing the game in England’s favour.

Cipriani played a decent amount at 15 too coming through as a youngster, and the caps he gathered under Lancaster were predominantly as an FB.

Owen Williams is a fly half predominantly, so Wales are going down the two fly half route and definitely looking to make a break from Warrenball. The Aussie midfield is looking more typically Gatland in this one!

Of some interest to you Roarers:

R. Evans, Owens Francis, Ball, Jones (c), Shingler, Navidi, Faletau

G. Davies, Biggar, S. Evans, O.Williams, J. Davies, L. Williams, Halfpenny.

Subs: Dacey, Smith, Brown, Hill, Cross, A. Davies, Watkin, Amos.

Tasty looking backline – Owen Williams is overrated and I’d have gone with Watkin but he’s certainly a signal that Wales are looking to play differently. Also interesting how Gatland was willing to back Liam Williams at full back against the world champions for the Lions but he’s reverted to Halfpenny here. Watch out for Steff Evans – arguably the form wing in Europe; a constant menace, always looking for the tracking run ala Chris Ashton but also adept at offloading and picking good lines. Starting pack looks good too outside of Navidi, who’s a versatile player but lacks a bit of oomph in any area of his game to truly stand out for mine, although Wales’ injury list at openside is fairly brutal and leaves them with little choice. Shingler’s another Scarlet who’ been in excellent form and is quicker and more athletic than Lydiate or Warburton say, so again it’s a pointer as to how Wales are looking to play. Back replacements on the bench look good – Watkin is a phenomenal talent – but the forwards look both inexperienced and lacking in impact. Sam Cross is a Sevens player who’s pretty much only played two games of 15s. Aus probably got the bench depth to take it if it goes close but it’s a strong looking starting 15.