Australia has just about the best defence around, absolutely ironclad and well drilled. It needs a special skill to unlock it, and that's just what JSD has in greater abundance than anyone else in the northern hemisphere.
Don't blame Varndell. He's simply too young and green to have been thrown into such a cauldron at this stage in his career, and it showed. His nerves must have been twanging like piano wires, and it remains to be seen what harm the experience has done to his confidence, and how long it will take him to shake off the effects.
I don't know what to make of Sinbad's latest injury. The frequency with which he has such a setback just before being due to appear on the international stage is now too great to be a matter of sheer coincidence. Perhaps he should be let off full contact training immediately before such matches to avoid any further problems in the future.
But how did the other Gloucester boys fare? Peter Richards seems to have been involved with just about everything the side did that was good, and to have put in such a typically rumbustious performance when faced with the 119-cap George Gregan, still probably the best scrum-half in the world, was quite a display. Of course, what he really needed was another man who wasn't there, his old oppo Andy Hazell, on his elbow when making a break.
The line-out creaked, and Alex Brown was replaced late on. Nevertheless, no lesser an expert than, our old bugbear, Gareth Chilcott, remarked on the radio that he had done well and 'Coochie' knows a thing or two about forward play. Alex also put in a thundering, try-saving tackle in the first half, so he was getting around the field a bit.
Our new boy, Iain Balshaw, certainly showed us glimpses of his class, and was a shade unlucky not to have scored a try, although it didn't really seem like a legitimate grounding to me. Perhaps an answer to England's woes might be to play Iain on the wing, where I suspect he may be deployed at Kingsholm, and bring in Van Gisbergen at full-back.
But even if they do that, I fear for England next week. I really do.
