BLOG POSTS ARCHIVE - February 2007
Posted Feb 12th 2007, 2:14pm by james evans
Jamie Noon interview
Jamie Noon interview I did prior to the Italy game.
What would be be saying now?! (Will find out next week!)
Jamie Noon Piece ... (Scotland / Italy)
“While it was a shame not to be involved with the full England set-up last weekend for their opening Six Nations clash with Scotland, my path to recovery saw me lead the Saxons team out on Friday night for an A-game with Italy in Exeter.
It was a massive honour to lead out an England team. To me, it doesn't matter at what level, as to Captain your country is really something special. We were left with a mixture of experience and youth after a few disruptions with players being called into the main squad, plus Mike Catt withdrawing. So at the end of the night to put on an entertaining performance was great, helped in no small part by some excellent facilities and a terrific crowd of 8,500. I thought Shaun Perry was excellent and he is really hitting some form at the right time.
Of course, that was just a prelude to the real business which came on Saturday afternoon, and what a great win against Scotland it was. It goes without saying, I'm bitterly disappointed that my ankle injury has held me back so far this year, but I was delighted for the guys because on the back of all the bad stuff that happened during the Autumn internationals, this was a great way to draw a line under things.
I believe England will certainly have harder matches. If you analyse the game properly you'll see that our forwards were allowed to dominated, and I was surprised the Scots didn't put us under more pressure for sustained periods of the game.
Certainly, allowing us to play that way gave Harry Ellis a great base to play off and a real chance to express himself, and the rewards were there for all to see.
We made the win look pretty easy in the end, and that was the England of old, so hopefully we can carry it on this weekend when we'll be favourites to emerge from Italy with the win.
The opposition will be smarting from their heavy defeat to France last weekend, and will come at us with a point to prove, and knowing that there is a lot of publicity around the England team at the moment they'll be even more keen to take a scalp. True, most of that media attention seems to surround my Newcastle Falcons team-mate Jonny Wilkinson, and it was a great return for him after such a long time out.
I don't think he'll get such a smooth ride against the Italians as he did at Twickenham on Saturday. Maybe Italy aren't the bully-boys of old, but they certainly know what they're doing and will be keen to despatch a few early tackles – the kind of tactic I was sure Scotland would pursue, but surprisingly didn't.
Italy have some good experienced characters, are typically passionate, but also physical and very fit, and although we typically emerge from these Six Nations clashes having racked up a good number of points, it has been said before that sometimes the scores haven't reflected the amount of pressure we've been put under. I've no doubt England will do well in this game, but they'll have to fight for it.
Italy are a good example of a side who have developed their game to suit the conditions of the Six Nations. When the tournament was changed to welcome them in they were still quite unknown, but now in this professional era they have players spread across Europe and are a lot closer to knowing how to hurt their opponents when it comes to it.
If you look at our performances against Italy in the Six Nations over the last three or four years, there's a rough trend of us scoring less and them scoring more, and I think last year's 31-16 win – even though we were playing away from home – was the first real time we knew we'd been in a battle. Their defeat to France may well spur them to make this weekend's match another tough test.
Coach Brian Ashton has kept faith with the side, just making two slight changes with Iain Balshaw and Nick Easter coming in. From my point of view it's obviously disappointing and very frustrating as I would have loved to have been involved, but there's an element of responsibility to the players, which is right.
Competition is always good and I think we are beginning to see a real fight for places develop with the World Cup on the horizon. I can only carry on and work as hard as I can, and wait for my chance to get back in.
That's the way it has to be, with the team picked on merit, and where reputations count for nothing. There are real foundations to build on now and these are certainly exciting times once again for English rugby.”
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