Re: Can England beat Tonga? : Sun Nov 19, 2017 8:52 pm  

Sir Kevin Sinfield wrote:

Have you watched any of the Tongan games in New Zealand? I don’t think you have, as you wouldn’t be describing it as crap. The same goes for the games in PNG.

It won't be the least bit intimidating to England. There will be plenty of red, but there won't be the chanting in sync with venim and hatred that England players are used to from English crowds. It's like comparing a Leeds man United game to Wimbledon. It'll be powderpuff.

Because England nearly always play below par against australia, the ocker fans always underrate England when playing SH opposition to the point any team with but a smattering of nrl players is highly favoured. Anything pommy is bad. They are morons.

Despite conditions that heavily favoured PNG England swatted them aside whilst turning in their most error strewn performance of the comp. Providing England play anything like, Tonga should be disposed of.

Re: Can England beat Tonga? : Sun Nov 19, 2017 11:32 pm  

Lebanon gave a blueprint of how to beat Tonga. NZ for 50 minutes and now Lebanon showed that if you move the ball around the Tongans are hugely vulnerable. They were physically spent 15 minutes from the end vs a very brave but limited Lebanon team who England beat easily. In fact if we had Farah and Moses I'd genuinely give us a chance in the competition - they played with far greater control than England's halfbacks have so far shown.

England need to hold onto the ball but also move it around a bit - if we try to go set for set in the forwards we'll lose IMO.

As suspected, PNG were pretty rubbish really, having only beaten Championship standard teams clearly made some people ridiculously overestimate them. Fiji OTOH would probably have beaten England yesterday. Again, NZ showed how not to play them by going up the middle. Australia will move the ball around and wipe them out by a fair margin IMO.

Re: Can England beat Tonga? : Mon Nov 20, 2017 1:09 am  

BrisbaneRhino wrote:

Lebanon gave a blueprint of how to beat Tonga. NZ for 50 minutes and now Lebanon showed that if you move the ball around the Tongans are hugely vulnerable. They were physically spent 15 minutes from the end vs a very brave but limited Lebanon team who England beat easily. In fact if we had Farah and Moses I'd genuinely give us a chance in the competition - they played with far greater control than England's halfbacks have so far shown.

England need to hold onto the ball but also move it around a bit - if we try to go set for set in the forwards we'll lose IMO.

As suspected, PNG were pretty rubbish really, having only beaten Championship standard teams clearly made some people ridiculously overestimate them. Fiji OTOH would probably have beaten England yesterday. Again, NZ showed how not to play them by going up the middle. Australia will move the ball around and wipe them out by a fair margin IMO.

Agree with all of that. PNG were pretty poor; well, they must have been, to lose by such a score-line to a side that barely completed over 50%. Moses was great for Lebanon. And yes, England don't want to make it the Sam Burgess v Jason Taumalolo Show.

Re: Can England beat Tonga? : Mon Nov 20, 2017 7:55 am  

If Tonga lift & play smart & put everything into this game then they may just win, especially if England make as many errors as they did against PNG

England really need to play smart, compete their sets & out endure Tonga because they will fade, a whole team full of Polynesians will invite fatigue, they arent built for endurance, but excellent in power & short sharp aggressive plays, so England have to weather the storm

Re: Can England beat Tonga? : Mon Nov 20, 2017 8:25 am  

Call Me God wrote:

If England beat PNG then they will lose to Tonga. I called an Aussie v Tonga final at the start and I stand by it........Tonga v England at Mt Smart will see a packed house and 99% of them will be Tongan

I think you may be disappointed.
Despite the worst completion rate in living memory, England look to have plenty of points in them.
If they complete at anything around 80%, they will beat Tonga and they may just push The Aussies.
However, we all know that Australia have yet to break into a sweat and they look nailed on Champions, again.

Re: Can England beat Tonga? : Mon Nov 20, 2017 10:11 am  

If you look at the conversion of completed sets to points, England are looking pretty good. It's keeping hold of the ball that is the problem. Get to 80-85% completion and we will beat Tonga, and give it a good go against the Aussie's and shut Kimmorley up

Re: Can England beat Tonga? : Mon Nov 20, 2017 3:13 pm  

JEAN CAPDOUZE wrote:

Don't be so detached from reality.....

Brilliant. Keep em coming

Re: Can England beat Tonga? : Mon Nov 20, 2017 11:36 pm  

I think England will win. We have that bit more quality in the pivotal positions. Though I'd probably say there are more superstars in the Tonga team than ours.

Re: Can England beat Tonga? : Mon Nov 20, 2017 11:47 pm  

The Tongans will have a problem with stamina if we can do (sensible) offloads to make them double up on tackling, and I'd want to see plenty of dummy half running as well, because that's where their tired forwards will try to hide. The other weakness is Tonga's kicking game, which can be patchy at times. I think they'll give England a massive game, which lets be honest we need if we're to challenge Australia.

Apart from dropping the ball under no pressure, the other thing England absolutely have to do is show they can play for 80 minutes, Our best isn't as good as Australia's, but our worst is terrible, and if we switch off for 10 minutes even against Tonga we could leak a lot of points. The only chance we have against Australia is to play basically at our best for 80 minutes and get some luck go our way (which I've rarely seen vs Aus).

Re: Can England beat Tonga? : Tue Nov 21, 2017 1:14 am  

If England can play mistake free Rugby for 80 minutes they will win. If they can't they could have problems