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Video: Former England flyhalf calls out Owen Farrell over questionable hit in Championship debut
By Ian Cameron
Saracens and England flyhalf Owen Farrell has been accused of getting away with another highly questionably challenge in his Championship debut against Doncaster Knights at the weekend.
Saracens hammered Doncaster 15 - 50 and Farrell had a fine game in what was his Championship debut, having not played for the north London outfit in seven months due to England duty and injury layoffs.
However, while Farrell made headlines for having a great performance, eagle-eyed former England stand-off Andy Goode has posted a video to Twitter that appears to show Farrell hitting a Doncaster player high.
"Say what you see, must be different tackle laws in the Championship, no card and no citing," posted Goode on Twitter.
As Goode points out, Farrell makes contact with the head but didn't suffer any consequences for the tackle, either during or after the game.
Farrell's tackle technique has been a constant talking point throughout his career and with stricter laws around tackling being enforced, the Wigan-born star's at times borderline technique is under the microscope like never before.
Following the match, Saracens Director of Rugby Mark McCall in fact suggested that it was Farrell that was the victim of late hits from Doncaster players.
“He was in control of everything out there. He actually got hit late a couple of times and reacted brilliantly I thought.
“He didn’t get frustrated, moved on to the next thing pretty quickly and played beautifully at times.
“There was a couple of kicks he doesn’t normally miss, but I thought he played really well.”
The 29-year-old is chasing a British and Irish Lions spot, a berth which would have been considered beyond questioning prior to the Guinness Six Nations. A below par tournament for both England and Farrell has however questioned the fait accompli status of his inclusion in the tour of South Africa.
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Stephen Larkham, Mick Byrne, Scott Wisental, Ben Mowen, Les Kiss, Jim McKay, Rod Kafer.
There are plenty of great Australian coaches who could do a better job than Schmidt.
Go to commentsThis piece is nothing more than the result of revisionist fancy of Northern Hemisphere rugby fans. Seeing what they want to see, helped but some surprisingly good results and a desire to get excited about doing something well.
I went back through the 6N highlights and sure enough in every English win I remembered seeing these exact holes on the inside, that are supposedly the fallout out of a Felix Jones system breaking down in the hands of some replacement. Every time the commentators mentioned England being targeted up the seam/around the ruck or whatever. Each game had a try scored on the inside of the blitz, no doubt it was a theme throughout all of their games. Will Jordan specifically says that Holland had design that move to target space he saw during their home series win.
Well I'm here to tell you they were the same holes in a Felix Jones system being built as well. This woe is now sentiment has got to stop. The game is on a high, these games have been fantastic! It is Englands attack that has seen their stocks increase this year, and no doubt that is what SB told him was the teams priority. Or it's simply science, with Englands elite players having worked towards a new player welfare and management system, as part of new partnership with the ERU, that's dictating what the players can and can't put their bodies through.
The only bit of truth in this article is that Felix is not there to work on fixing his defence. England threw away another good chance of winning in the weekend when they froze all enterprise under pressure when no longer playing attacking footy for the second half. That mindset helped (or not helped if you like) of course by all this knee jerk, red brained criticism.
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