The Owen Farrell verdict on his kicking display versus Wales
England skipper Owen Farrell has given his verdict on the standard of his kicking in his team’s Guinness Six Nations win over Wales, a victory that was left hanging in the balance until five minutes from time when Ollie Lawrence grabbed the third try of their 20-10 success.
Out-half Farrell had his difficulties with the boot throughout, getting charged down early on, kicking out on the full later in the opening half and eventually finishing up with a frustrating accuracy rate off the kicking tee as he only landed two of his six attempts, scoring five points but leaving another 10 behind him on the field.
It annoyed him that his inaccuracy left his team vulnerable, all their hard work going unrewarded as it wasn’t until very late that they finally could take a breath knowing they were two scores in front and set to take the victory.
“I didn’t kick well, no. That was obvious,” admitted Farrell in the aftermath of what was a win for head coach Steve Borthwick in his first away match in charge. “They weren’t coming off the way I’d like them to but I have been here before, I’ll get out to work again.
“The only thing with that is the team probably deserved to be further ahead and the team worked hard to be further ahead. The fight that they showed to stick at it, especially away from home and in that last 20 minutes to take control of the game like they did, I thought was fantastic. Yeah, I’ll get back to work.”
The victory was the second England win this month, this latest success over Wales adding to the bounceback that began versus Italy following the round one loss to Scotland. What did Farrell generally make of the triumph that keeps them in the title hunt heading into their round four match at home to France on March 11?
“I’m pleased with the performance as a whole. We want to keep stepping forward and that, for the reasons we have just spoken about, was a real step forward. Now we have got a week’s training to get after it and learn quickly again and prepare for a massive Test in two weeks.
“We feel like we are getting better. There are bits of it [the new way under Borthwick] poking through now and, as we have said, the more time we spend together the quicker we want to learn and the more we want to push on.
“With this being the start of our journey we have to make sure we are laying the foundations and we feel like we are doing that but, at the same time, we have got to make sure we are having little conversations and trying to get on the same page to fill the gaps as players. You see little bits of personality coming out and combinations starting to come together within that.”
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Finau is definitely operating on razor thin margins. He hasn’t done anything wrong… yet. But a player going into contact 6 inches lower than he is expecting, without him even knowing, will end in disaster. You can imagine a situation where the pass dies on Edmed and he has to bend down a little lower to catch it at the last second. Finau’s hit would have been catastrophic. The margins are just too fine. He needs to study how PSDT, at 6’7”, manages to drop his tackle height and exert just as much force with close zero danger of taking someone’s head off. Given how poorly NZ has adapted to lower their tackle height, and that this issue which has plagued the ABs for years and played a big part in them not winning the World Cup, I thought NZR and all SR coaches would be prioritising sorting this issue out. If I was Razor I would be on the phone to Clayton MacMillan and Samipeni Finau saying exactly that. Finau is a monster and shaping up to be the closest thing to Kaino since Kaino, but I wouldn’t risk selecting him for the ABs at the moment.
Go to commentsThe surprising stat I saw in the Blues game when showing Sotutu equaling the Blues forwards record was that Akira has not scored a try since 2019. Now my memory is pretty bad when it comes to those sorts of the things, I can remember his AB try though, but anyway I can’t see I can remember his last blues touchdown or any in recent years. Surely that still has to be a bogus stat. Maybe excludes SRA games?
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