This cannot be so. Defending as a 13 takes years of experience to sharpen your instincts. It's all about covering space, not directly about making tackles or spectacular plays. As I noted earlier, if you spin out of position to make what appears to be a sensational hit and thereby open up your channel, the effect is devastating if you opponent manages an offload, wiped out of not. Simply by knowing your position you stunt the opponents ability to execute in a particular space, without even having to make a tackle. What cannot be so is that a Welsh midfield composed of players who've Union experience since minis so they simply know what to do by instinct would be a good match for someone who's played the game for all of eight months and, on top of that, isn't even being used in his club position. Playing Burgess simply gifts Wales a focal point to attack. It's a complete mismatch, whoever plays 13 for Wales.[

Yes, 1/2p is a big loss for Wales. How much of the ball do you expect Brown, May and Watson to see if Faz, Barritt and Burgess are 10-12-13? Not much, I would guess.

Edited by sydtheeagle (23 Sep 2015 6.51pm)

Sydenham by birth. Selhurst by the Grace of God.

The Farrell-Burgess-Barritt triumvirate better hope Jamie Roberts has one of those games where he witlessly and simply just runs straight at the opposition and tries to steamroller his way through rather than play with any guile - If Wales move the ball around in the 3/4 line I can see a few holes between 10-12-13 in that England defence.

I see Wales have been doing some subtle rule-breaking and have got away with just a slap on the wrist.

I think it will be very simple. Will Wales have a big enough lead by the 60 minute mark that their bench can protect it against a better England bench for the last 20 minutes? The answer is probably "yes". Lancaster has thrown away four years of good work with a series of mind-numbing selection mistakes.

I am not pessimistic, by the way. Just realistic about the information in front of me.

Edited by sydtheeagle (24 Sep 2015 3.43pm)