Agree with all of this. The ball should be turned over more often on the tackle, through handling errors, or most of all more phases rather than two phases and then the defending team overpowers in the ruck.
I haven't experimented with sliders yet, but I will shortly. After that I'll hopefully get a Lions tour up in the dynasty forum.
I'm enjoying the game though. A couple of things that I'd like to see fixed in a patch (excluding the player restrictions which I know is the licensor's prerogative rather than Sidhe's). Note I'm playing on PS3
-a few rules glitches: Sometimes balls kicked into touch are are awarded to the wrong team, and some instances 22 drops are called when there should be a scrum.
-number of balls turned over in the ruck. Already explained above. I'm not asking for pure sim gameplay in the breakdowns, but I think a few changes could go a long way to improving gameplay.
-progression/regression in career mode. This is a big one I'd like to see young players progress more than 1 point overall every three years or so. Would like to see older players regress by the time they reach late 20's/early 30's.
-I'd like long passes and passes by forwards to feel riskier/less accurate.
-maybe slow the game down a bit (though I'm sure the game speed is a well-deliberated design decision.)
-Painfully slow menus. Probably due to the design style, and how much is rendered. See NCAA Football 14. They had the same problem with overly elaborate menus in previous year being slow and unresponsive—this year they went with simple and responsive.
-cosmetic: I'd like to see dirty uniforms back int he game. It looks like player limbs still get dirty, but kits are perfectly clean even in rain games.
It's the best rugby game I've played (and I loved JLR on PSX, and Rugby 06), but there are some really annoying niggles detracting from a game that would otherwise be an all-timer for me.