Rugby World Cup Blog

At this moment in time, it isn’t the best time to be an English sports fan. The football team have only just started improving after failing to qualify for Euro 2008 and the cricket team have forgotten what it is like to win a test series.

However, worst of the lot is the English rugby union team. After a run of five defeats in their last seven tests, England have dropped to eighth in the world rankings. This is their lowest ever position and highlights the problems the team is having right now.

The latest defeat was suffered at the hands of Ireland as England went down 14-13 at Croke Park. Martin Johnson’s men managed to claw themselves to within a point of their opponents, but again rued indiscipline as Danny Care and Phil Vickery were both sin-binned.

Johnson was clearly furious as he believed the actions of his player cost the rest of the team victory. He said that he ‘told the guys that it has cost us a test match’ and that all the work that was put into the game was ‘wasted’.

It is, of course, not the first time England have played with a disadvantage in this Six Nations. They were forced to play 20 minutes of the game against Wales with 14 men and had two players sent to the sin-bin during the first match against Italy.

Johnson went on to say how his team works on their discipline ‘all the time’ and that all of the players know ‘one of the fundamentals of the game is not to be penalised’.

It doesn’t seem that this is the case though does it? The players seem to be unaware of the importance of discipline and are paying the price for it. Johnson has since admitted that the penalty count against England was ‘twice as high’ as it should be.

Overall, as much as the players have to be blamed for the recent displays, the coach has to get some criticism as well. What does it tell you when the players are seemingly ignoring instructions from their coach about indiscipline? It certainly doesn’t suggest that all is well.

Many have questioned whether Johnson is out of his depth, while others have sympathy for him because of the player’s failures. Personally, I am slightly torn between the two.

So, what is next for the eighth best team in the world? Well, it is a game against the seventh best team in the world – France – at Twickenham. Many expert betting tips are suggesting that England could lose this one as well, something which would plunge them even further into a crisis.

By Thomas Rooney – A sports writer who blogs about England Rugby

Brian O'Driscoll scoring a try against the English at Croke Park