hi Paula

You are right about the slow ball. It looked to me as if it was a deliberate ploy.

Over the years England has had a policy of "crash-ball centres".
This entails that the ball is not whipped out quickly to the wings through the centres. This tactic suposes that they have very hard strong running centres and a speedy back row.

At the moment we seem to have a slow but big back row with centres that like to run and make breaks.....we are in the middle of a change but we just haven't got the players in the right positions at the rightmoments.

A little bit like Eric Morcambe in his reply to Andre Previn who told him he was playing all the wrong notes. Morcambe's reply was " I am playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order".

Regards

Mike