To be honest, I'm not really that surprised. I have made mention to anyone who would listen that the Poms can execute a simple 10-man game plan and win. I was wrong about one thing: they didn't just play 10-man. They threw it around with the wild abandon of a team who knows they're on a hiding to nothing, and gave it everything they had in the physical contest, where once again our lot were sorely lacking. It is little comfort that we're typically ordinary at quarter-final stage, or that at last we're rid of Knuckles as our coach. The bald fact is our squad performance since the first 40 minutes against Wales has deteriorated, and this decay has been compounded by some very ordinary selection calls. 

For starters, the English must be thoroughly congratulated for winning the game across the park. They knew that our defensive structure would be good, and tried unpredictable things in order to keep us guessing and remove us from the comfort zone. The short kicking game of Catt early on put a few jitters into the Wallaby line, but it was their willingness to have a go from anywhere that set us back on our heels. Ewen McKenzie wrote a good article on rugbyheaven today about the two teams changing personality, and he was close. Where we tried to get into field position, the English varied their options but fell back to bashing it up when all else failed. Where their offload and passing game was cohesive and gainful, we slid and stumbled across the field before doing the hard stuff in close.

Our forwards, but particularly our backrow, were absent for most of the game, and when we did make breaks we failed to cover them up and let the English have the ball back. Throw in some crucial penalties against us at vital moments and you have a recipe for disaster. I guess for me the biggest thing was the squad selection policy leading into the game - it was quite clear that Knuckles et al don't understand the need for combinations or "tapering" into important games. Was it the Wallabies holding something back for next weekend? Bigger fools them if so.

For me it comes down to a couple of simple rules with rugby coaching: When its coming up to finals time, you get your best team on the park. Against Wales - bar the late withdrawal of Larkham - we did this. The team looked confident and powerful right up until Mortlock left the field and the Welsh remembered how to play rugby. The signs were all there, but Knuckles continued with his desired selection to play most of the First XV against Fiji's tailenders, and put the second side out for a run against Canada a week later. I was critical and believed that having the First XV, as a unit, sit around for two weeks or more with nothing to do was a big mistake when we could come up against a fired-up Pom or Tongan side. I would have played the second XV against Fiji and brought the full might of the first crew back against Canada. Would it have made a difference today against England? Maybe not - we did get rather badly smashed through the forwards (which is putting it lightly).

On that point, our offload game totally disappeared tonight. It was like we were too scared to try anything, but also came from the English forwards hovering near the ball carrier to prevent such advanced tactics. They played it far smarter than we did, and as a unit - something we've failed to do in quite a while. Despite the fact that we've got stand-up Queenslanders like Foley and Knuckles on the team, we've completely failed to engender a pack mentality in our national side, though of course the provincial coaches have to bear some of the blame there, as well as certain players who now have an extra couple of weeks to head down the beach with the rest of the seagulls and fight over chips.

The backline doesn't really prompt much discussion. There was some reasonable stuff in there, but again too much lateral movement and not enough teamwork. At points the complete lack of draw-pass was shitting me and though our kicking was good, we did a bit too much of it early on rather than proving the English defenses. The failure to get the ball wide quickly resulted in a lack of penetration through a fairly ordinary English defensive midfield, and Gregan quite frankly has to wear the blame for that. His passing was similar to the last few years, either too high or wide on crucial occasions. With Barnes back in the pocket because of the rogering our forwards copped, we needed one of those moments where the backline clicks and we get serious gain-line breach. And that happened on several occasions, but Gregan dithered, allowing a Pommy boot or hand to interfere with the pill. 

The big thing for me is that we lost our composure, and several senior players went missing or gave away stupid penalties at bad moments. I wouldn't be calling for wholesale changes just yet, but an attitude change is required in the team and the childish antics at the ruck when the Poms started playing their niggle game is something I'd not expect of the blokes playing in my 2nd Grade side. Not if they were interested in winning, that is. It was very interesting to watch England in the last 20 minutes - whenever we looked liked approaching the invisible circle 45m out from the goal, they'd back right off at ruck time and wait for their chance, then pile in and take the ball. Or we'd just give it to them, whatever.

If there is a bright side, I guess its that I didn't really expect us to get past the All Blacks, and that we no longer have Knuckles holding us back. I get to sit down and just enjoy the rugby for rugby's sake, without having to analyse the opposition players and what they could do to the Wallabies. Hopefully all our provincial coaches - including Wallabies coaching hopefuls - can take a few notes.

On the other side of things, and to coin the old cliche: I think England just played their final. If the All Blacks get through as expected the men in white will be roadkill. Then the "95" factor comes into play - in 1995 England beat Australia in the quarter final and met the All Blacks in the semi, who went on to meet South Africa in the final.

So with all that in mind, and as I sign off on my last article here on TSF, there are only two things left to say. Go Argentina, and does anyone want to take a call from a "Suzie" on Line 2?