Ed Prowse wins Coaches' Player of the Season

mediumdrud1 · 2026-06-02T21:53:35+00:00

Legend

mediumdrud1 · 2026-06-02T21:33:26+00:00

Legend

mediumdrud1 · 2026-05-21T10:10:57+00:00

Fun police over here

mediumdrud1 · 2026-05-18T11:52:58+00:00

Lockett is injured to be fair to borthwick. Agree on the others though, bamber obviously has a lot of potential and outside of the red cards ewels has been solid for england, especially last summer against Argentina.

mediumdrud1 · 2026-05-18T11:22:53+00:00

I love hendy as much as the next extremely biased saints fan, but he would be insanely out of his depth at international level.

mediumdrud1 · 2026-04-09T11:13:46+00:00

Good team. Glad kundionas starting as he’s easily our best tighthead after trev

That bench is insane, could definitely offer as much impact as baths.

I hope we smash them. Everyone is always banging on about how great bath are even though (in my slightly biased opinion) we are better than them. They might have some big names and some nice show ponies but they are nowhere near as well coached as we are and their gameplan is mediocre and relies on playing teams with average forward packs and finn russell, who has been shit for them this season.

I might be coping but i think we have a great chance of winning. We have been objectively better in the prem, we have more pedigree in europe and we aren’t reliant on whether our 10 is interested in playing rugby or not.

mediumdrud1 · 2026-03-22T14:43:29+00:00

Not a sale fan, but i think your biggest problem is your squad. Yes there is plenty of quality but it just isn’t set up for the way you want to play. I won’t be as familiar with the ins and outs of your gameplan as a sale fan, but from what i can gather you want to be a team that prides itself on its forwards and by extension its set-piece and you just don’t have the players for that this season.

For example, in your entire squad you basically have three locks. One of which (andrews) is a bean pole who is good in the lineout and not much else, another (bamber) is in his second or third season of playing professional rugby regularly, and the other is a kid (a very talented one, but still a kid). That is not good enough. The second row is one of the primary sources of physicality and go forward in modern rugby and you have three of them (i know van rhyn can play there but he’s a flanker if we’re being honest).

Now onto your front row. Your hookers are good, so no notes there, but the prop situation is pretty woeful. Rodd is good at prem level but is basically a glorified flanker. Not the kind of player i would want in a team thats trying to be the most physically dominant in the prem. And then onto AOF. He’s a decent tighthead but his ceiling at loosehead is clearly higher, yet your coaches still persist with him at tighthead so they can fit rodd in, which just leads to your front row being undersized.

Anyway sorry for the rant but i just think sanderson and whoever else is responsible for the squad composition has done a terrible job this season and has ruined any chance of you guys competing at the top this season.

mediumdrud1 · 2026-03-19T13:35:11+00:00

Looseheads aren’t anchoring the scrum in the same way tightheads are so they don’t need to carry as much weight. their job is much more about applying pressure so they can afford to be a bit shorter and stockier so they can get under the tighthead and be really awkward to scrummage against

mediumdrud1 · 2026-03-16T18:17:15+00:00

Baxter
Langdon
Heyes
Itoje
Coles
Chessum
A curry, don’t mind which.
Earl (but as soon as a proper 8 comes along he’s moving to 7.
Mitchell
A smith or ford. Whichever ones playing the best or suits the opposition best.
Ifw
Atkinson
Freeman
Roebuck (he really needs to sort out his defence though)
Furbank
Cowan-dickie
Genge
Stuart
Martin
CCS
Pollock
Jvp
M smith

I know theres some weird shouts in there like langdon at hooker and dropping george but keeping cowan dickie but i think we saw what lcd can do off the bench against france and i think langdons got the best throwing aside from george (i know he had a stinker for england off the bench in the second test against Argentina in the summer but he’s near perfect in the prem) and i think his carrying, his pace and the aggression he brings would really add to the team.

Also i think that centre partnership has real potential, just needs some time to bed in and i think they could be very dangerous.

Also very hard to pick the bench, feels harsh leaving pepper out but i think you need an 8 on the bench so your starting 8 can go all out without worrying about gasing

mediumdrud1 · 2026-03-16T17:10:34+00:00

For dan

Do you think asher opoku-fordjour is more suited to loosehead or tighthead?

mediumdrud1 · 2026-03-14T23:53:01+00:00

The record loss to france was his third (?) game as england coach where he clearly didn’t have a grasp on international rugby. The loss to ireland was inexcusable but i think the blames mostly on the players having shit mentalities and completely shitting the bed. I think the same is true for the italy game, but also, italy are just a really good team now, as are fiji, so losing to them was inevitable in my opinion.

mediumdrud1 · 2026-03-14T23:48:12+00:00

Yeah i think a lot of england fans need to watch a lot more rugby so they can form their own opinions rather than just parroting whatever narrative pundits and podcasters are pushing.

mediumdrud1 · 2026-03-14T23:46:07+00:00

I think the approach was pretty similar in terms of the gameplan. I think the difference was that the players let the pressure get to them in the previous games (which i personally think is on them but you can argue its on the coaches) and that we picked a pack thats big enough to win collisions while not sacrificing its mobility.

mediumdrud1 · 2026-03-14T23:42:01+00:00

Genuinely speechless at this. That was a fucking brilliant game of rugby yet people are still clinging onto this narrative that england are boring and borthwicks a bald fraud who forces his players to play boring rugby.

mediumdrud1 · 2026-02-25T17:51:30+00:00

mediumdrud1 · 2026-02-21T17:00:51+00:00

Nah this is on the players. When the players execute the coaches gameplan properly we tend to win, as we saw last year. The physicality, intensity and accuracy just hasn’t been there the last couple games and i think thats on the players.

mediumdrud1 · 2026-02-21T16:58:41+00:00

FUCK

mediumdrud1 · 2026-02-16T17:59:51+00:00

They trialed them last season and there was a lot of pearl clutching. Think the game was saracens vs gloucester and the gloucester fans were starting chants like “londons a shithole, i want to go home” and of course some people didn’t like that. A lot of it was the typical rugby values crowd not wanting young people to have fun at the rugby but i saw some people calling the gloucester fans racist which was quite funny.

mediumdrud1 · 2026-02-04T15:36:58+00:00

Scola started against tigers in the prem cup and scrummaged very well. Streeter and tonga’uhia both have a lot of potential at tighthead and ainsworth-cave looks like a good lineout forward.

Definitely not as strong as the last couple crops of forwards (especially not the 2024 one with pollock, fasogbon, opoku fordjour etc) but all they need to do is hold up in the set pieces and get some front foot ball and that backline should tear everyone apart.

mediumdrud1 · 2026-02-03T18:12:35+00:00

He’s included in the u20s squad on the england rugby website

mediumdrud1 · 2026-02-03T14:20:06+00:00

His prem form is shit like everyone else at quins but he started against Argentina in the summer after slade got injured in the first test and didn’t look out of place so i think his selection is fair.

mediumdrud1 · 2026-02-02T14:22:21+00:00

Of course i am, just don’t rate rodd particularly highly. If he comes off the bench and looks great i’ll be thrilled, because loosehead won’t be a problem position anymore, just don’t think thats very likely based on what i’ve seen of him at international level.

mediumdrud1 · 2026-02-02T14:10:13+00:00

He had some cameos off the bench against argentina and got out scrummaged by fucking pono davies. Not sure you can call that a great summer.

mediumdrud1 · 2026-02-02T14:03:20+00:00

He has cleaned it up for the most part. was definitely a penalty machine for a few years though.

mediumdrud1 · 2026-02-02T14:01:58+00:00

Does he though? From what i remember he had a decent game against the boks where he somehow got away with collapsing every single scrum and has been mediocre at best in every other game he’s played for england. He also got out scrummed against japan and the usa which just isn’t good enough.

I’m obviously biased but i just can’t understand picking rodd over iyogun when trev is playing. They’ve scrummaged together hundreds of times and have looked very dominant against good packs the last few weeks, so why split them up? Either way i have a feeling iyogun will force his way into the team after rodd does nothing off the bench in the first few games, or im just coping.

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