Borthwick slams the "Negativity Committee" as England dodge disaster

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0:55Hello everyone and welcome back to The Ruck, the journalist's rugby podcast from The Times and The Sunday Times and Alex Lowe and I, what an afternoon we've had, what an evening we've had. So we've watched England 31, Pumas 24, one of the craziest games we've seen since the last crazy game we saw, probably in France, in Paris, and your on-the-whistle-match report carnage. And after it, you'll probably be able to tell that we're not still in Santiago del Estero because you can hear chintzy lift music in the background because we're back in Buenos Aires already because we had to leg it to the capital, back in time for the football.

1:33but let's roll back the clock a bit Alex to about four hours ago and just go how on earth do we unpack one of the maddest test matches you've had to write about yes where do we start so we could

1:47Alex Lowe: start at the end so we could start at the very end so the very end was Felipe Contopomi storming out of his post-match press conference because England had refused to turn down the music and the singing from the changing room he felt it was a sign of disrespect that it was interrupting his press conference so off he stormed so another clash between Contopomi and England Steve Borthwick then came in like he was he was like a coach who had I think probably like seen the fear of what might be about to happen got away with it and then came out really punchy in a way that like I actually don't mind you in a way that that we haven't seen from Steve like highly emotional like kind of Eddie Jones like almost in um firing barbs at us the media for daring to ask questions about England having four yellow cards in the second half which made it 14 in 10 tests in 10 tests so we're kind of working worst discipline in the world but so he came out pretty punchy wanting to only accentuate the positives of a performance which jarred with the initial live take of of his players who saw it very differently and the reason they saw it differently let's go to the game England excellent first half delivered everything they would have wanted but potentially could have had a try or two more but they had three tries 19 three up Argentina weren't great but England were very very good they played exactly how they would have wanted to play sparky running attack moving the ball didn't rely on the boot anywhere near as much as we all thought they would as much as they did out here a year ago they were they were getting the ball into Manny Faye with both those hands and he was just electric swerving pinballing his way through um genge had a few issues in the scrum but the moment they absolutely needed to nail it with a five meter scrum they shoved the pumas back over their own line first half everything england could have wanted now you knew that the pumas would react because they'd been they had been poor they come out firing they win the third quarter they're back to within a couple of points and now you're going right 1917 it got to yeah you're sort of thinking football world cup semi final you're thinking uh-oh are England just going to crumble here they'd had a couple of yellow cards through that period that Argentina dominated to come back in then there was a real almost like a hydration break moment there was a long TMO the TMOs oh my god the second half took 67 68 minutes long TMO where they're trying to find a neck roll on Guy Pepper England used that stoppage to regroup and impressively so they the England could go again they score a couple more tries they open up like playing good rugby Pollock comes off the bench and he's been desperate to be picked from the start because he wants to make an impact when the game is live and recently he's been sent on either with the game lost or the game comfortably won he came on I thought he made a big impact in that huddle he was leading the chat he was vocal he had a couple of really big interventions a scything run which led to a try from i think it was a mark smith's try third try manny faro boso scores a try that he deserved because he was excellent on both sides of the ball and england are now 14 points ahead and game is done and benard yancey van rensberg with 90 seconds left suffers a nasty injury the stretcher's on the game stops again but there's 90 seconds to go England cannot mess it up from here can they?

5:40Or can they?

5:41Alex Lowe: They end the game with two more players in the sim bin they concede Pollock was a team pen Pollock was a team pen for multiple offsides and then Manny Eogel on his debut was another offsides They were clinging on at this point Arm was out for advantage at most phases Argentina are throwing everything at England. England are clinging on. The discipline collapses again. A central failing of their Six Nations campaign has still not been fixed. But even then, there's 90 seconds left, 14 points cushion. England have bounced back from losing that third quarter. They're in control of the game again. And then suddenly they're not.

6:24Alex Lowe: They are clinging on. They're down to 13. we think 12 at one point because of substitutions but definitely two men in the bin the Pumas score Picardo, nice line slices through, back within 7 and then the Pumas come again and it's actually they'll be kicking themselves that they didn't finish it break down the right wing England down to 13 and so right, let's go through it we won't do it as long as they did on the TMO but just to play the context here England have had the game won with 90 seconds left we get to the last play of the match which could have been a penalty try which would have guaranteed a draw or it could have been a try with a conversion for the touchline for a draw and if England, if that had happened it would have been a disaster for England's C4 As you outlined, that would be throwing away not just the 16-point half-time lead, but the 14-point lead as well.

7:32Alex Lowe: Yeah, so Kalori, who's just come on, is sort of a seatbelt tackle over the top of Delgy, but he doesn't stop him, he doesn't pull him down. He doesn't scrag him or grab him much, he almost misses him. He sort of slips off him, but he is over the shoulder, seatbelt tackle-like. He slips off him, and then Henry Slade comes in. With the finisher. With the finish and bangs him to the point where the ball is grounded on the whitewash and therefore out. It depends what nationality you are, I'd say. Well. Whether you see the ball hitting grass, then white line, or whether you see like the TMO saw, which was simultaneous corner flag, white line.

8:16Alex Lowe: So we had another long review. I should have timed it, but it must have been three minutes. It was minutes, definitely. Maybe longer? They had some comms issues, but multiple replays. And the longer they replay it, and at this point I've lost, I can't hear what's happening between the TMO and the ref. The longer they replay it, the more I'm thinking they might do Noah Kalori for an over-the-shoulder. It wasn't dangerous, but it was the kind of seatbelt tackle thing. If they do him there, that's a penalty try, or potential penalty try. But then it becomes clear they're just looking at the grounding.

8:57Which is, like, I know we're saying, look, the game took far too long, like it did last week. But that is one of the most nightmarish TMO slash refereeing calls of all time. Like, that's impossible. It's like Cueto 2007. It's like, you basically see what you want to see in that, don't you? And the interesting thing is Angus Gardner gave it as an on-field try. He was determined. He was determined, yeah. I won't read you the full transcripts, but on-field decision is a try. Can you check the touchline, please? Okay, Angus, this is the TMO. It's extremely tight, so bear with me. There's a lot of back and forth.

9:35Pablo Matera tries to step in because he's looking at it going, that's clearly grounded. Then there's a basically, the TMO is convincing Angus Gardner, look, I'm going to go through this frame by frame and I'll pause it. To me, it looks like it hits the ground there first, mate, says Angus Gardner. tmo the ball is not on the line that looks a try to me mate says angus gardner again have you got an hd screen i'm going to show you another camera angle says the cameraman it has to be conclusive evidence to overturn conclusive evidence to overturn a try repeats gardner then another angle that looks like a try to me mate but you you're the closest to the screen he's telling him angus this is clearly grounded on touch and goal line and try line simultaneously it's clearly grounded simultaneously against both says the tmo okay so you're telling me that it's no try and that's the end of the game is that right yes that's correct there's a clear and obvious grounding between the post and the trial and at the same time which makes it touching goal no try so and argentinians go mad and englishmen go wild and he

10:46Alex Lowe: He sees it as a try. It's fascinating, actually. He sees it as a try, and even at the end, he still sees it as a try, and he's deferring that final decision to the TMO, knowing that he's in the middle of this cauldron, a stadium that was deathly quiet. It was bizarre. It was so weird, wasn't it? When England had the ball, when England scored, you could have heard a pin drop. 25 ,000 people in that stadium. There was a really good comment that David Flatman made, who was also in the stadium, on telly. he was like it's like they're playing in lockdown in covid yeah and there's no one here yeah when england scored tries it felt like they were disallowed or something because it didn't happen it reminded me of anthony gordon putting england one nil up on on wednesday night didn't it and we were in the fan park did that count because no one's done anything it was actually very similar you'd never i thought on wednesday night when anthony gordon's gone like you'd never heard 25 000 people so quiet and then it's like well there's another lot of them but then the second half it got loud and the fans are jumping and they're singing and all the all the football songs come out and got Anthony Gardner standing in the middle Angus Gardner sorry standing in the middle of it of all of this having to well he ends up ceding the final decision to the TMO knowing that he disagrees with it and knowing that he's the one who's going to get pelters and and he does and the Argentina players are jostling him and their reaction is, I think they'll be in some disciplinary trouble.

12:14Alex Lowe: As Gardner walks off, he's being jeered and whistled and booed and at least one fan throws something at him as he walks off. There's a video that's gone around social media and it looks like Gardner was hit by a bottle or something. It's hard to tell, and he doesn't flinch at all. He kind of just walks into it, but that's appalling. He looks like he's fuming, actually, as he kind of storms off. He's not storming off, but as he marches down the tunnel. So, yeah, so you talk about dramatic England-Argentina games, and we've had two in a week. Yeah, man. This one, England did their best to throw it away and eventually clung on.

12:52Alex Lowe: And I mentioned Steve being put out by the fact that he was being asked questions about the yellow cards. And I don't really know where that comes from because England came through... England's Six Nations was their worst ever Six Nations. And of the three key issues that undermined their championship, they believe the biggest of them all was the discipline, penalties conceded, and yellow cards. It was a record. It was the worst ever Six Nations performance for cards, eight cards. Eight cards. One of which became a red. They are armed with the data that will show that when England had 15 men on the field, they were more effective in attack than any other team in the championship.

13:40Alex Lowe: So England had their problems taking their chances and all of that, we know that. But they would say with 15 men, England showed what they could do in that Six Nations. The problem was that they couldn't keep 15 men on the field. So the core issue in the minds of the England management as to why they failed in the Six Nations was discipline, penalties and yellow cards. and we're now three games through the summer and the the problem has not been solved i think we've had six in three tests this summer yeah so it's now as we said before 14 14 cards and 10 tests and and also by the way only one of those tests they've had no cards and that's fiji last week so they're basically in a game going down to at least 14 in every test yeah and and so we've talked about kind of the process of our job a little bit and I'm sitting we're right on deadline I mean the game has already overrun by like 15 minutes by 15 minutes we're not actually helped the football the third place playoff was on at the same time which was later we weren't actually helped by that because they need to send the pages they don't just send all the pages off to the printer in one go they try and have a steady flow of pages so we were filing live as in everything you're writing and you're emailing to the office is going basically straight into print straight and being printed for everyone's newspaper on sunday morning so as angus gardner is studying this replay i'm having i'm starting to write an alternative top to the match report which is that england have blown it four collapsed utterly killed by their own um ill discipline yet again and chickens home to roost.

15:28Alex Lowe: Their inability to keep men on the field. They have thrown away a 16-point lead and a 14... Well, it says a 14-point lead with 90 seconds to go would have been criminal. Extraordinary. I think it could have been terminal for the Steve Arthur coaching regime. He would say, it's on the players. They've got to manage this better. But he's the head coach and it's not changing. That's the thing. It's not changing. Now, that's why I think he was probably more bullish than he has been because he may well have thought the same thing. It's very difficult to outline the progress that he had been commanded to make post-Six Nations through this summer.

16:08Alex Lowe: If they get heavily beaten in South Africa by a team that's too good for them, they then cruise to an 11-try win against Fiji, who never... Sorry, it's not that they didn't show up. England attacked them at their source of weakness and killed them off very early in that game and then stuck 11 tries on. So England did all they needed to do, all they could do, but they weren't tested by Fiji. So you couldn't really conclude anything about whether England had made any progress. This was the telling game, as we discussed on the pod earlier in the week. This was always going to be the telling game.

16:40Alex Lowe: And if England blew it in this pretty decisive game as a yardstick of progress, I think it would have been very very difficult for the RFU to have to have been confident that the progress was being made if this if they're being killed by the same issues now they got away with it they got away with it and and a win is critical and they would I repeat I know both believes now that we in the media are what do you call us the negativity committee yeah so let me But I will, I just want, before you come in, I will highlight that they were very good. There's lots that they did in that game that was very good.

17:23Alex Lowe: And what annoys the players is that they themselves nearly blew it. They undermined a lot of the good stuff by falling back into these traits that are letting them down time and time again. So for those of you who haven't read it yet, because everything was quite late, we're four hours behind you guys. and so by the time these things went online you might not have actually seen it and hopefully you have now bought your Sunday Times or read it online so you might have seen these quotes already but for those of you who haven't this is essentially what Borthwick said we asked him a few questions about the game generally and the fact that they fought for it and all that and they can sign off their summer however discipline rears its head yet again asked Jamie George about that and he gave a decent answer about the fact that it was the same old thing again followed up with Borthwick why do you keep conceding all these cards essentially and he said you have to put a plan in place and you adapt thereafter clearly what we're doing has not got the result you wanted but I don't think tonight is the night to dig into that I don't think tonight is the night to dig into that again you guys like to talk about the review a lot so I'll review again and come up with a different plan that will be more effective for the autumn.

18:41As ever, you guys concentrate upon the negativity. I love it. You're my negativity committee. It's lovely coming in and talking to you again. And look.

18:50Alex Lowe: It's quite an Eddie Jones offer. It was straight out of the Eddie Jones playbook. You guys are so negative. It's all you guys. You guys, you guys. And firstly, not offended in the slightest, it was very entertaining. and actually we've sat through plenty of banal Steve Borthwick press conferences and also some interesting ones which the fans don't see and I think I've said that on the pod before is that the fans see him before and after games on ITV or BBC and they go, poof, difficult to understand what's going on there but we get to see him more regularly and in a more relaxed setting and he can be very closed off but he also can provide interesting information today he decided to be chippy and aggressive and i'm fascinated to know whether that was natural or whether that was kind of a ploy designed by the committee of advisors that we know that he speaks to regularly to go if you're going to go down Steve you're going to have to go down fighting and actually maybe the advice was fans will relate to you if you show more of your personality which is actually something that we've probably said before it's like if you've got an opinion about something Steve and you're trying to fight for like better access to your players or a better pgp or to be able to pick the french base players whatever come out and bloody say it because otherwise you're going to lose your job over this stuff and you're just going to drift off into the sunset and everyone's going to go well he didn't even fight for anything so actually on that front i think interesting to start with and the second bit of it is you go i wonder whether like fans didn't see that but they did see the itv interview that he gave before the game which makes me feel like it was a ploy yeah because you go it can be it can be a natural reaction after the game to be like wow got away with one and right i'm gonna come out and be like you all wanted me to get sacked here you go you're all negative look at us backs to the wall in argentina playing against this mob who are in our faces and everything else we're flying over the win we but because he did it to quite straightforward fair questions from david flatman a guy who's known for 30 odd years on the telly beforehand you go that to me felt like he was coming in with a strategy of being like I'm going to be sort of chippy Steve today I don't know what you thought about it yeah I think he struck me pre-match as being very anxious tense nervous because I think he knew the size of the game I think generally it seems like the coaching team do get very nervous around I think they build themselves up.

21:46And let's be fair, I don't think this is an unfair thing to say, because it's just a fact. They're all really inexperienced at test level. They're all kind of in their 40s. Borswick's the one who's actually done a fair bit of test rugby, but a lot of the others haven't. And so we follow them regularly, and it seems the closer they get towards the weekend, particularly in away games, they get really uptight and tense. And I feel like Borswick wears that more than anyone.

22:12Alex Lowe: Yeah, I think it does. and I think post-match like I say a lot of it was a reaction to how close it was and his instinct his instinct is always publicly to accentuate the positives and I think it's wrong I think if his advice has been try and show a bit more emotion a bit more passion then I think if he can do that that is a good thing to do because the game the job is more than how he interacts on in tv interviews and in post-match interviews but if you're struggling for results and you can't connect then it's doubly bad so so i i got i got a very distinct impression i know he's been working on that side of his of the job the the communication side the the sort of interview so the media side the conveying messages side how he speaks internally and externally has been a big project for him.

23:14Alex Lowe: I just felt tonight that he picked a wrong thing to kick off about because it's not like we were trying to... Anyone in the room was trying to dig up negatives that didn't exist and trying to be negative just for the sake of it. I mean, sorry, four yellow cards in a game is nearly unprecedented. and and like statisticians will tell us the other times it's happened that i haven't looked up yet but that's incredible yeah and it's not like it was a one-off like he was a one-off he would go he'd be with his rights to go like it was just one of those crazy games and it nearly cost us but we won the game but the very fact that and i know last week he's like oh you guys look like looking at the past and we we will look to the future again it's very convenient to take a position that you don't ever want to look back at the past.

24:07He liked looking back at the past when the past was winning 11 games in a row.

24:13Alex Lowe: But you have to put these things in context and it's not negative. They nearly lost the game. Sorry, yeah, they nearly failed to win the game. Because of their chronic lack of discipline. Chronic lack of discipline when under pressure. There's no other reason. It was an utter collapse. He picked the right for me I'd be all up for him I don't like if I ask him a question and he wants to challenge my question great like those are the best interactions you have it's much better than getting a brick wall isn't it 100 % the we were talking to one of our journalist friends from Argentina on the airport on the way back over here they have a phrase for a player or a coach who just sort of goes through the motions they call him a cassette a cassette tape in the like the old school cassettes you just put stick him in press play and put them in the walkman and get the same the same answer yeah so i'd much rather robust conversations challenging conversations um i just feel that he was he sort of picked the wrong subject because it was fundamental to the fact that they nearly failed to win that game and it's so connected to this trend that england have been on this year the central theme of it has been yellow cards and it's an issue that he raised himself when we were talking to him between the Italy and France game and said what's gone wrong during the Six Nations and he went through his three-point thing and one of the major things was discipline and it's that leads to the other bloody obvious because you just go well you're getting card every bloody game yeah so I think he I think he picked the wrong thing and and I think we said on a pod or I said on a pod recently somewhere on this summer that or there was a perception that we want negative that we're trying to be negative about everything and the piece I had started writing the match report live match report was like this is the at half time here's the England we've been waiting for this is the England team that everybody back home we reckon what 20 England fans in the stadium but I counted them everyone back home this is the team that they want to see this is the team that the England players want to be it was all those things particularly in this week against that Argentina country wearing that kit the 86 kit they've just done for a laugh to be two fingers up to the whole Maradona thing they're singing about the Malvinas in the stands and it's and there's all a bit of aggro and they're going like yeah and we've got we're 93 up at half time here we go we're here to tell we want to tell the story of the day so the more things that happen the better the more drama aggro feistiness you tell a really good story that's what the fans want too and all the research about where the Prem's going and everything sells you that sells everything everybody wants the drama the rivalry the kind of the angst the aggro that's what we love about sports that's what captures us but from a fundamental telling the rugby story point of view at half time I was like this is people who haven't watched this game will read a match report and for the first time in a meaningful match because the Paris game was a bit like the third place football in New York it was like this is what we can all do where there's no pressure This is a meaningful game.

27:32Alex Lowe: And for the first time in a long time, in a meaningful game against good opposition, England at halftime had turned in a performance that reflected everything that they want to be as a team and that their fans want to see from their team. And I was like, you can write this. And you've got Manny Faye Woboso carving up. Henry Slade playing brilliantly outside centre again. Yeah, awesome. Genge like Busting Joe Hayes is really good as well Mopping stuff up Everywhere Oli Chester like you've got so many examples of I thought Marcus was pretty good in attack as well It was a first half performance JVP sniping a bit Yeah exactly and they were playing quick and a quick ball they weren't leaning back on a box kick contestable game it was everything that the team wanted to be And they were actually solving problems too like Finn Smith goes off for an HIA Marcus is at 9 Slade's at 10 and it's all kind of still working and you're going like, God, these guys have found some resilience.

28:33Look at them.

28:33Alex Lowe: Yeah, it was really positive to kind of counter Bortha's perception of us. And it was exciting and it was great to be able to see a team essentially delivering what they want to deliver, which is, can you get your best players to bring the best of themselves onto the test stage? Which is what you say constantly. It's what they say constantly and they've been struggling to do it. They haven't done it. And certainly for the first half, they did do it. So at halftime, I'm like, wow, they're 19-3 up. Could have been. They probably should have scored again. Could have been a couple more, but that might have been greedy.

29:11Alex Lowe: So I was like, this is positive. There's so much positive here. So there'll be no need to write anything negative. This is a very long-winded point to both of us. Nobody's out there looking for it. When it slaps you in the face, it's like we can't ignore the four yards. Argentina will have a purple patch because that's just test rugby. They will come back. You knew that was going to happen. They come back and they come back close. But England, around the hour mark, they then regroup and they go again. And they've taken a few punches. It's back close again. They then pull away and the game should have been done.

29:49Alex Lowe: And that whole sequence would have been positive. It would have been Argentina, purple patch, come back, and England work out how to respond again. The problem was that you couldn't write that fully positive story. It doesn't reflect the fragility and carnage. They then completely unraveled again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're clinging on at the end. He can flail and have a pop up as the negativity committee, but we're really only calling it as we see it. Fans have got eyes. Come on, they see it. Everyone at home has got that. And more to the point, the England players know exactly how that game unfolded.

30:29So we're going to finish this little bit on that in a sec, but I just do want to make that point clear, is that I think that whether it's performative or not, whether it's a kind of very easy populist thing to do, which leaders of countries, the first thing you go to is the media because they're the bastards that do you down. Fine, whatever, we'll take it, doesn't matter. we're still going to all be friends at the end of it but the thing I think that's interesting here on the sort of team dynamic side of things is that I think I'm now really noticing a quite a clear divide between the young players your Finn Smiths of this world probably the guys that think like Northampton Saints and the older senior player Saracens led guys who are very close to Borthwick played with him acolytes of his and see the game in a totally different way and the the way they're projecting their messages is diametrically opposed so those who told us and told their fans because let's not forget with all of this they're not just talking to me and you Alex they're talking to everyone else because the fans who pay the money and come here those 20 guys who made it all the way to Santiago de la Stara who've broken the bank to be here don't get the opportunity to ask questions and we do it for them and it all sounds a bit worthy and whatever but that's the truth is like they're talking directly to their supporters and so when you say that supporters have seen something that they haven't or they don't know what they're talking about or they they are the negativity committee all the people that desperately want England to be better than they are, then I'm afraid you're mugging them off.

32:20And that's not good enough. And the other half of it is that the players don't think like that because we speak to them afterwards and they're going home being a bit, yeah, I guess pretty good in patches, but man, it's the ill discipline, isn't it? Like unprompted player after player post-match mentions the ill discipline and somebody will read about it tomorrow but fin smith's one of them going like i've played what six or seven of my last few tests and like 50 60 percent of it is down a man and what am i going to do with that and you're going and he would say like lots of them that the expectation around the england team is that they should be winning regularly they should be a powerhouse nation they should be dominant in the world they should be challenging the best in the world And it sounds publicly now, regularly, like the head coach and some of the senior players think the standards are too high, the expectations are too high, and winning 57 % of your test matches is good enough.

33:22and I'm afraid if that is the reality then they're going to need some different leaders and head coaches because that's never going to get England out of this two decades long 25 year cycle of being happy with mediocrity and I've made that point so many times before but it's amazing that you still have to say that yeah and I'll go back to you know I think if Steve

33:51Alex Lowe: wants to be animated and start showing a bit more passion or emotional then great because because i think that'll help him but he has to pick the right target and i think it would have landed better tonight if he had just made all the all the points that we've made that like brilliant first half but my god we got away with it because we've tried to kill ourselves again with discipline and it's just not good enough and you know be be passionate and and frustrated because he will be that inside he will be frustrated but it's kind of he obviously just feels a need to put on a a front or face and and i think you personally i think it would serve him better to be just just call it as he sees it because i think these players that's what the players are doing and that's you know and that's to their great credit.

34:44Alex Lowe: Most of them are quite out-garded. I will say that the challenge that Borthwick was set was to demonstrate progress these three weeks. One of the areas where I think there has been growth in this team is in its leadership group. I think you're starting to see, and it's not just conversations, interviews, but you're starting to see influence from increased influence from players like Finn Oli Chessom obviously he is a vice captain he's taking over the captaincy in game you know Marrow's not here but I think I think where previously it's been I think Geng still does the sort of tub thumping chats beforehand I think he's very good at those but players who have been vice captain or even captain this team like tom curry are not the senior and not the key leaders at the moment like henry slade's been a vice captain don't cry's been a vice captain george ford i'm not saying they're not important figures in the squad and influential and and respected and all those things but the personality of the team is starting to shift a bit and refresher to be around those younger guys and that is good that is a real positive i think that's come out of this campaign because the more you can tap into that freshness and allow these younger players, and they're not young now, certainly not like Oli Chessom to Test Lion and Finn was on that tour.

36:19Alex, this is a young England team.

36:22Alex Lowe: Yeah. As we are told every week. Which begs the question, why don't you pick the older players like George Ford? Yeah, exactly. It doesn't have to be a young England team. They're just the best players. But I think that has been a positive development over the last three or four weeks. Just the shape of the leadership within the team, the character. And I think the performance that we saw from them today, the positive elements of what we saw from them today, all feeds from the influence of the players that we're talking about. JVP at nine, Finn at ten, Chesson second row. those guys, Manny on the wing, allowing them to put their stamp on this team has delivered all the good things that we saw today.

37:10Alex Lowe: And so back to my long-winded point, it isn't just negative. There was a lot of good stuff, I thought. It was just undermined by the same old bad stuff, which they have to eradicate because they won't get anywhere. You've got the end of the Nations champ and then the Six Nations. like they've got to be fixing that the negative stuff now because it's killing them and it's undermining the the emergence of some good stuff yeah let's have a tiny pause because i'm sure that alfie's going to want to put a lovely advert here so we'll do that and then we'll reflect on argentina santiago del estero because that's a mad old place and the nation's champ as a whole from england after this

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38:37Right, so we're right at the end, Alex, of our odyssey, our 25 slash 27 ,000 mile odyssey between London to Joburg. I actually nipped down to Durban for a bit, back to Joburg, then up to London, then to Liverpool, then to Manchester, to Madrid, you went to Amsterdam, then to Buenos Aires, then to Santiago del Estero. How are you feeling? How are you? It's been a... Do you know what? It's been mental, but we started this sitting in Santon going, ah, three test tours, that's a real shame. and like we do miss that a bit because as we said we would have loved to have got under the skin of south african rugby a bit more we would have loved to have gone to fiji let's say we would have loved to have spent more time assessing the amateur scene of rugby over here and eating more steaks although we'd probably coming back with gout from south africa and argentina but the three test thing and the going to outposts thing has actually been quite fun like it's been quite weird yeah but it's been entertaining and it's been kind of like wow this is completely different hostile territory like yeah and we've watched like we've been lucky and we've been here in the week that Argentina made the world cup final and might win it on Sunday and like I don't know it's just been it's been quite an enjoyable but quite weird three weeks yeah okay I'm I from a storytelling

40:09Alex Lowe: perspective missed the opportunity to be in one country and get under the skin of that country for a few weeks and go and meet people. Or build themes like you get in cricket series where you go like, ah, Warner's always getting out to Broad and all that. But it has thrown up other experiences. Now, I thought Liverpool, the Fiji game at the New Everton Stadium, what a stadium, what a setting for rugby. And my understanding is that that game was originally going to be in Port Elizabeth where they'd have had nobody watching them. Would have been dreadful, yeah. Fiji have made around a million pounds from having that game in at the Everton Stadium.

40:49I mean, that translates well to Fijian cash.

40:52Alex Lowe: Which is, it's just a shame they were so uncompetitive. They were much better this week against Scotland, but that was probably the biggest earner of the three, the Liverpool game, because the Wales game didn't sell very well. Yeah, Cardiff City was like 16 ,000, 17 ,000. But Moorfield looked like a decent crowd. I don't actually know the attendance, but it looked decent from what I could see. And And so that money, providing we trust that it's going to be spent effectively, which we really hope that it will be, it's crucial for Fiji. So, and they're, you know, they obviously we'd prefer it if they were playing at home.

41:30Alex Lowe: They're actually comfortable not being at home, suited them to be based in the UK. And they've made vital, vital cash. So that's been really good for them. It obviously helped England a bit to be playing in the north of England because they could touch communities that they don't normally touch. I think everything other than the 80 minutes was awesome. Yeah, I agree. It was a great spectacle. And it showed what could be done. Could they take, in inverted commas, the fourth autumn game up? Not always through Everton, but other places. Why not connect with a wider fan base? Brilliant. And as we mentioned from the ground there, Prem semi-final, I know there's issues with that, but it gave them a chance to do something a bit different.

42:13Alex Lowe: That was fantastic. And Liverpool City is great fun. And if you like music like I do, then it's a perfect place to go. And on the Sunday before flying out, we sat in the Cavern Club for a few hours and had a couple of pints and listened to some Beatles music before live. It was magic. So yeah, as you say, going to a different place, unusual place to go and watch Test Rugby. And it worked brilliantly. then we jump out here and we have all the talking of unusual places well we have we have the Wednesday we have the football world cup every final which was just an extraordinary experience to be here um in Buenos Aires where probably a million on the streets we've just got back to the same hotel which is now sold out because people have booked to be in the middle of the city for the World Cup final in case Argentina win and then as the lady in the bar upstairs who just served us a couple of beers said the party will go on for three days.

43:18Alex Lowe: And you're like, oh, if you win. If you win. She's like, she just kept saying, no, the party will go on for three days. That's been quite good. So we've had the whole romance and excitement, electricity of the Football World Cup being in this country for that, which is fantastic. and then the experience of going to the oldest city in Argentina Santiago del Estero this strange sort of when I say backward I mean sort of it's like being in the 1970s it's like they turn back the clock a bit yeah they I mean they live everywhere shut between one and six and as Fernandez Lobbé explained on our pod often that's because of the heat yes but also it's just a way of life tradition and you walk down the high street and it's it's it's a proper high street with independent clothes shops and toy shops a shoe shop a toy shop and no barbers vape shops M &S vape shop yeah barbers charity shops and like at home and it's also a city small city only three hotels 250 ,000 roughly people but it's it's a hugely important cultural city for sort of the ancient culture of Argentina and um they had a sort of fiesta what would you call it well they went well they had a what they call the feria which was running for a few days and had live music and stuff like that slightly out of the central town but in the central town itself today they had this parade of the bombas which was people banging drums and if people have looked on my social media my instagram and things like that they would have seen some videos of people whacking drums and pouring wine onto a drum so that when you whack it more liquid goes up and it was yeah it was just a celebration of like argentinian culture and i was thinking about it sort of like the welshesteadford kind of that preservation of your indigenous culture and it's classic because like england were also in that square where that was all kicking off having been in a square in buenos aires where it was really kicking off for the football so they've really gone around and like curves the argentinians england made a big thing of saying yeah no we're gonna we've moved hotels for sunday night england coming back here sunday night for one night before flying home it's like oh we've moved hotels so we're not trapped on the by the obelisk uh on sunday night i'm like it doesn't really sunday night's okay it was wednesday night when you were trapped there with fireworks going off at 4 a.m that was probably the bad bit of planning not not the sunday night thing when all the boys are going to be out on the lash but like Santiago de la Estera was one of those places where you're a bit like, there is no reason to ever go there.

45:56No. But I'm really glad we did. Oh. Because it was, and like people were really, really hamming it up as one of the worst places of all time. Like it was like living hell. And we were like, how bad is this going to be? We were told by, well,

46:08Alex Lowe: one of our colleagues was told by someone in South Africa, Alfie may need to bleep this out, I'm not sure what the policy is. But it was the, this former South African player had told him that this was the biggest shit hole he'd ever been to. And it's not. It's not at all. It's not. I mean, the hotel wasn't great, but it's fine. We had two nights. It's fine. But it was full of character. The place was full of character. It was great. Yeah, I enjoyed it. Orange trees lining the streets. I mean, some amazing steaks we had. Steaks were out as well. And they cost us, what, seven quid or something?

46:39Alex Lowe: Yeah, 450 gram sirloin for seven quid. Bife de chorizo. That's really extraordinary. It was enormous. But it was a place full of character and colour. and then and it's sort of it as you say it's it's sort of dropped in the middle of the plains there's nothing around it so i know that the referees for example were staying um in a hotel on the highway which leads you towards the termas de rio hondo which i went to and let's say it was underwhelming and um if you kept going that way you get to tucuman and salta and then bolivia and they were on this highway and their hotel was just it's like a five-star hotel just plonked in a potato field in the middle of nowhere and that was a bit like the stadium so yeah we watched the stadium it's like this you probably saw it on telly if you're watching it but it's sort of like this big circular ufo style building with like multi-colored seats that make it look a bit like the gabba or brentford as we were saying and then around it is nothing nothing there's like a hippodrome there's a race there's a horse racing horse racing track over the other side which looks like it was last updated about 40 years ago incongruous sort of japanese style modern stadium it was yeah um and super modern with lifts everywhere and kind of yeah and you're just thinking like why is this ground here it's very weird very very odd but loads of fun like loads of fun like i was i was thinking oh my god i'm not i'm not looking forward to this leg at all it sort of made it it was great everything that we'd heard and that probably helped because I was going in thinking oh and actually loved it full of character people are great loads of like local culture with really rich and vibrant um as you say like the the parades and the drumming and the music and we actually sorry that we saw in our famous steak restaurant we saw Pedro Delgado the Harlequins prop is from Santiago de la Estera and it was such a lovely scene so his family were all there and they'd invited Marcus Smith's mum and dad and Marcus out for dinner because they played together at Quinn's and stuff like that and they sorted them out from tickets and you just thought isn't this like the nice bit of rugby like everyone's at each other because it's Argentina England all week but they're all kind of mates and stuff and it was great it was it was lovely to see and um it's yeah it's I think what you've what we've lost out on in terms of not having a test series has been made up for with other experiences that have been enriching from a rugby and a cultural sort of journalistic perspective of coming over and telling different stories in different parts of the world and seeing test rugby being played in far-flung corners of Argentina that you would never as you say you would never have been to so I think England England, Scotland and Wales all drew the short straw for this first iteration of the nation's champ.

49:36Alex Lowe: It's been tough travelling for all of them. Probably none of them have performed across the three how they would have wanted to. The travel is tricky. We've done it as well, but it just gets in the way. It interrupts training and all those things. Much harder than France, Italy and Ireland's route in the southern hemisphere. I mean, particularly Ireland, who just went Aussie and New Zealand. Aussie, New Zealand. But it's been, and I think from what I hear from back home, the idea of Super Saturday with all the games. Like wall-to-wall rugby. Has worked really nicely. We said that at the top, didn't we?

50:14We said it would be a good TV event. Like you sit down and be like, right, I've got a game at 8am in New Zealand. I've got an 8pm game in Argentina. I'm just going to kind of sit here all day.

50:23Alex Lowe: We set the alarm at four o 'clock this morning. to go down into the lobby of our hotel and watch New Zealand Ireland thinking this could be a humdinger and you couldn't get a coffee so we're kind of sitting there watching this game and it really unfortunately did not deliver what we hoped it would deliver as a contest New Zealand look good let's not go too much off over the ground that the lads will cover on Monday's pod but New Zealand are starting to hum quite nicely aren't they and I think Ireland are sounds like Ireland um that Andy Farrell was pretty blunt about Ireland's performance which brings us back to England and interesting how blunt do you want to be about um so he was disappointed with the fact that they got beaten by 20 odd points more than banner the man that unforced errors I think he was canny in not answering the questions about refereeing I think there were a few big calls that went against them Jacobson tucked arm was a bit Jacobson tucked arm that should have been 20 minute red and there was was it Quinn Tupai the diving sort of Superman one handed intercept deliberate knock on I sort of hate deliberate knock on but that was a proper one like if JVB's is the same yeah exactly England had two England had two today Coles was a massive flap to be fair but yeah but Tupaya was Tupaya like died Superman like one handed knocked it on the ones I hate are when they genuinely I know they go like oh genuinely attempt to catch whatever but they assume that no one could possibly catch the ball one handed and you're like of course they could of course they could but I think it's not I don't think it's unreasonable that Islander hacked off with a few of the decisions in that game but that wasn't why they lost they lost because their basic skills the catch pass decision making under pressure just wasn't good enough so many basic errors prendergast throwing a couple into touch gibson parks did service wasn't what it normally is they've just careless drop balls whereas new zealand's they're just so slick they're sort of back being this you know they were punching holes down the middle they were moving when they get a chance they do finish it off just yeah they were playing some good rugby um but it's just interesting that of course yeah they lost by 20 he's going to be disappointed but i think he was particularly hacked off at the um their own errors that led that led to the situation it wasn't that the unforced errors some errors are forced these i think ireland committed too many unforced errors and i think he's been pretty blunt about it which I would always say is absolutely the right way.

53:18Yeah, well, there you go. Well, look, we've pulled it back. We started off being the negativity committee and I reckon we've become the positivity committee by the end of that. We like the travelling around the world and we like Santiago de l 'Estero and we're probably quite happy to be finishing our season. This is it, Alex. This is it. This is our last pod, me and you, because we're going to go hand back to Alfie and the lads for the Monday wrap-up of the Nations Champs. But this is it. it's been emotional

53:45Alex Lowe: maybe till rugby's greatest rivalry we might get a podcast yeah should we do that so that's what August September yeah yeah we should do that great let's do that rugby's greatest rivalry stuff I reckon specials to get us going into the new season my season where did yours start well you did a bit more women's world cup than I did so at my start do you know what mine started Friday night Newcastle Saracens with a little known teenager called Noah Calori scoring and look at him now well there you go right at the launch seatbelt tackling the bloke and getting away with it one of the stories of the season right from the outset well there you go I mean it's been fun hasn't it cracking we do millions of pods but for now from Buenos Aires we're going to head to bed because what's the time now it's 1am Argentinian time so Alfie's going to get this at 5am his time but he's got young kids so he's alright we've got a big day tomorrow and then we've got a massive day I've got to file my Sunday for Monday piece and then it is the Mundial, the World Cup final, Spain, Argentina.

54:49Who's going to win? Last prediction of the season.

54:56Alex Lowe: Spain. I'm going to go, here's my incredibly overly detailed prediction. It's going to go to penalties. Messi is going to miss a penalty. Oh, imagine. But Argentina is still going to win. Imagine. I think for the because we're here and we'll be watching I don't know why I've gone that specific by the way an Argentina win would be would be perfect for us just for the experience of seeing it this mad football culture just explode with joy that an Argentina win would suit our be a perfect way to sign off this trip yeah just because of what we'd get to witness just for everyone else back home they're like we can't have them I suspect everyone else wants Spain.

55:43Anyway, tomorrow.

55:45Alex Lowe: Right. Well, that's been the rugby. That's been Alex Lowe and Will Keller signing off the Nations Championship Odyssey over three weeks. I hope you've enjoyed it all. Thanks for reading all of our stuff and listening. And a treat for you all. You're going to get Alfie Reynolds and the gang wrapping it all up on Monday. But for now, from us, from Buenos Aires, it's buenas noches and good night. Keep your wellness routine going strong all summer. Cachava's new travel packs help you stick to your daily ritual even when you're on the go. Just one packet of Cachava's all-in-one nutrition shake provides complete nutrition wherever you are.

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