Quote: William Eve "I'd agree with that. England's forwards can match theirs at their best BUT... and this is the key point... even at their best they only match their forwards for part of the game. More often than not, it's the final 10 minutes of the first half and the last quarter of the game where a lot of England's forwards go missing, regularly drop off tackles and spend time blowing with hands resting on hips. That's when the Aussies start running riot and scoring tries for fun.
The myth of the English forwards being better (or matching) the Aussie forwards is exactly that... a MYTH.
Kiwis seem to lack discipline way too often but on their day, they are unbeatable. Our record against them during the SL era is skewed somewhat because we hardly ever play them in New Zealand. I think we've played them only 5 times in 20 years there. We lost every one of those encounters.'"
I take your point about fitness/concentration etc and would add it's not just the forwards that suffer from this, as well as the fact it is likely to be made worse depending on the number of subs we play in internationals. (That sentence sounds so stupid but unfortunately it's true).
It's also a sad indication of our game that we've only played NZ etc as many times as wehave. There's faults on both sides of the world when it comes to that but in terms of England I think the only way we can close the gap is by playing the best regularity, same goes in relative terms of difficulty for the lesser nations.
I am actually quite excited by some of the young players coming through but unless they are exposed to a higher level of competition and coaching, with the odd exception (Think of recent SL exceptions like Hall) they will be found wanting.