England win European u18 tournament

Second year running.

AER

England have a decent group at u18 level this year. Watch out in particular for:

Tompkins (centre)
Fowlie (wing/centre)
Townsend (SH)
Ewels (lock)
Boyce (LH)
Walker (hooker)
Herron (injured 10/12)
Chisholm (no. 8)

Highlights:

England vs France

England certainly have a mobile front row at this level - the TH's run and try is reminicent of Joe Marler for the u20's a few year's back, and the hooker can do more than just push and throw too.

The big thing is Dave, though bringing those abilities to the next level (senior level). I would say Marler is not doing so at the moment...

Every year the U18 team pretty much refreshes. Many will never gegt a sniff of the full England team and most will never be stars.

We should be good at age group rugby due to sheer numbers playing tehy game. The key thing is to identify which players have what it takes to progress - and it may not always be the ones who are best now.

This game was on today

http://www.irishrugby.ie/rugby/28873.php

LondonTiger wrote:Every year the U18 team pretty much refreshes. Many will never gegt a sniff of the full England team and most will never be stars.

We should be good at age group rugby due to sheer numbers playing tehy game. The key thing is to identify which players have what it takes to progress - and it may not always be the ones who are best now.

Exactly, its not really worth drawing too much from these games other then we still have a lot of youngsters to choose from.

As to Marler, he put in a trademark shift against Glos. At least 4 massive tackles that stopped opposition forwards in their tracks and some nice carries in the tight areas. He's not playing out wide like he used to now though, he's a lot tighter and mainly used to defend and to offload (something he does exceptionally well). I think it's very unlikely that we'll ever see 30m+ breaks from him again, but then again except when playing Namibia when do props ever do that at Int level? He's lost the flamboyance but become a lot more solid, and now he gets stick for it!