“Life’s a game of inches, and so’s football. In either game, life or
football, the margin for error is so small: I mean, a half a step too late, or
too early, and you don’t quite make it; one step too slow or too fast, you
don’t quite catch it… The inches we need are all around us. They’re in
every break of the game, every man we see. On this team, we fight for
that inch. On this team, we tear ourselves and everyone else around us
apart for that inch. We claw for that inch. Because we know, when
we add up all those inches, that’s gonna make the f***ing difference between
winning and losing

Quality film !! Any given sunday

I often get told "those extra inches do the trick". So agreed.

Usually followed by the words 'that's what she said'

I'll bet he screams that as he bites down into the headboard.

You too should be ashamed of yourself, this is a family board.

I was only referring to my Taylor when fitting in to new trousers.

...and that's what I was referring to

What did you think I meant?

Could Ablett off the bench have offered something?

England were the better team so to come up short after a titanic effort will be a bitter pill to swallow.

The big talking points at the crunch was Georges high swinger and Sinfield missing his one on one. All fair points in isolation...but thats probably been discussed to death.

I'd like to discuss the belief. After that penalty NZ had around 50 metres to go and a full set to score to win. You just knew what was going to happen. England knew what was going to happen. It wasnt shock or surprise etched on their faces it was grave disappointment.

It was one set to defend. The ultimate black ball game. They could have killed the clock....thrown a cheap penalty away (ball steal...lying on) there was none of that. They let NZ play the set and it cost them. That is what killed us.

THere were less than 20m to go in that last set after the penalty. We were hanging on, and just came up short. I think that Sinfield was offside when he set off, and had he have made the tackle there would probably only have been time for one drive or a kick. As it was he missed, and the cover wasn't there. There was an overlap, and I guess he felt it neccessary to shut down the space. No one went with him, and the gap was there.

Personally, the thing I didn't understand was not kiking the ball dead on the last set of possession we had. If a scrum would have had to be formed, there would have been a a few more seconds taken off the clock as the forwards got back for the scrum, and given us a vital breather. All ifs and buts

I understood this decision perfectly. The New Zealand defence covered the touchline well, and had it been drilled to touch, it couldn't have gone further than 5 yards. Yes it would have wasted time for the scrum, which would have been on the New Zeland 40, but really how long do you think it would have taken to form that scrum? 10 seconds maximum and the clock would be stopped. There were still 2 and a half minutes left of the game.

He chose to kick longer instead, and unluckily found the New Zealand winger straight away, but he still only got to the 20 metre line. So they started further back with the set, but still managed to get to the other end of the field.

Agreed. It was not a disaster kick, and certainly from where on the pitch Sinfield was it made sense, it would just have been nice to get the ball out or bouncing. Not to be unfortunately

Yup. If he'd have gone deep looking for touch, he may have been concerned about hitting it out on full.

Or go short and drill it, like Gotcha said, wouldn't have made much ground.

Shame he hit long straight into Kiwi arms.

To extend the "game of inches" theory, if Ben Westwood doesn't have his arm hit as he's reaching out to ground the ball, the last two minutes of the game would have been about the Kiwis searching for an irrelevant consolation score.

...or if Ryan Hall had just had half an inch more of his hands on the ball for that intercept he'd have scored at the other end.

Despite the result it was a great performance and one that many said we'd got no chance of putting in at the start of the tournament.