France v All Blacks
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When was the last time the ABs had a midfield in which the most experienced player was only 21?
@Stargazer @Tim Taufua looked good at 7 for the Baabaas vs SA. If he has a future at international level, he needs to focus on openside. I think Kaino will come back refreshed next year as the Lions tour is an obvious carrot for the AB veterans. But at 33 next year might be his lot.
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And those fucking jerseys can piss right off!
Wide camera shots I was looking at the wrong team...
Sorry but am fed up with the whinging about the jerseys. It's part of the deal these days, the ABs need revenue to retain their best players and that involves making compromises with sponsors such as AIG and Adidas etc. It's something I can live with if it means keeping someone like BFA in the country. What was wrong with the jerseys anyway? Looked as good if not better than the all white ones imo. As long as the black jersey is not tampered with, people should just chill out.
Being at the game I found the white strip made it easier to discern the players v the opposition so the rationale for the alt strip worked in practise. Tho the strip also resembled the Brumbies kit for what it's worth.
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I don't see why the whole "this is the price we have to pay for the Adidas deal" argument is being used here. I can't believe that the decisive issue in this nearly 20 year collaboration is the design of a jersey the abs might wear once. You reckon Adidas would have walked if the NZRU had rejected the jersey design? Boulderdash.
Personally I think the jersey is shit but it may be popular among others and sell well for its novelty value alone. Hopefully we never see it again.
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BTW fuck the French.
This is the colour of their jerseys:
Well it would be if i could embed a picture ...Not the pseudo black they've tried on with their navy recently.
And I see it's not Nike any more (who made the original change). They've gone back to Adidas. So the conspiracist in me thinks that perhaps Adidas were not that keen to change the French jersey back to the traditional sky bleu.
But I still liked the jersey.
P.S. I googled Serge Blanco to find a picture of a proper coloured French jersey. It appears he has eaten most of Nike.
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When was the last time the ABs had a midfield in which the most experienced player was only 21?
@Stargazer @Tim Taufua looked good at 7 for the Baabaas vs SA. If he has a future at international level, he needs to focus on openside. I think Kaino will come back refreshed next year as the Lions tour is an obvious carrot for the AB veterans. But at 33 next year might be his lot.
Kaino has been near beast mode a bunch of times this season, I'm hoping it was just the injury break early on the tour that effected him (and playing lock) - I'd still take a not 100% Kaino over the contenders.
re: the jersey, I didn't mind it, and if they'd kept everything straigh instead of angled in the top panel I'd actually quite like it.
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Very deliberate plays to repeatedly chip kick, coaches get to see the results of both that play on loop, as well as our defence when starved of possession. It's funny how people screech that we need Pocock as we never have the ball, completely ignoring the amount of times we willingly hand it over.
This.
It's an obvious tactic from the opposition to avoid kicking it back unless absolutely utterly necessary. Given that possession will be minimal, why tf kick it back to them so often. Once or twice maybe. But it must have happened 6 or 7 times, in pretty hand field position. And it was being kicked by the best running flyhalf in the game.
Stoopid.
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@Rancid-Schnitzel said in France:
Very deliberate plays to repeatedly chip kick, coaches get to see the results of both that play on loop, as well as our defence when starved of possession. It's funny how people screech that we need Pocock as we never have the ball, completely ignoring the amount of times we willingly hand it over.
This.
It's an obvious tactic from the opposition to avoid kicking it back unless absolutely utterly necessary. Given that possession will be minimal, why tf kick it back to them so often. Once or twice maybe. But it must have happened 6 or 7 times, in pretty hand field position. And it was being kicked by the best running flyhalf in the game.
Stoopid.
Not stupid. There's obviously a plan to it and sound reasoning, just because Hansen and co don't share it with regular Joe doesn't mean it's ill conceived.
Seems they were comfortable in winning, so turned to certain plays to see material effects to me.
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@pakman Yeah it seemed we won those T/Os with ease, and the French were all at sea at the b/down. From my dodgy stream, it was like we flicked a switch tried a different tactic of putting less bodies in at the b/down just to even things up.
The concern for me was that the French seemed to find space relatively easily and flooded those channels which we found difficult to cope with, our scrambling D saved our bacon on more than one occasion. -
I may have had second thoughts about subscribing to that sports channel in the UK just for this one game if I had been warned in advance that I would be watching an Irish TV feed with a commentary team cheerleading for France.
Right from the kickoff they were claiming AB foul play that wasn't there and didn't even bother hiding the fact they wanted the ABs to lose. -
Cane v Todd is now a very real conversation. Todd is better on the ground, and his link play is superb.
Cane is more physical on both sides of the ball, and we've needed that this year with both Read and Kaino being up and down.
Savea is busy, but not physical enough, prone to defensive lapses, not as effective at the ruck, but a good power runner.
I would imagine all 3 are given a solid list of work-ons for next year
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BTW fuck the French.
This is the colour of their jerseys:
Well it would be if i could embed a picture ...Not the pseudo black they've tried on with their navy recently.
And I see it's not Nike any more (who made the original change). They've gone back to Adidas. So the conspiracist in me thinks that perhaps Adidas were not that keen to change the French jersey back to the traditional sky bleu.
But I still liked the jersey.
P.S. I googled Serge Blanco to find a picture of a proper coloured French jersey. It appears he has eaten most of Nike.
fixed. This was last year's shirt I believe
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This has an easter egg.
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re: the jersey, I didn't mind it, and if they'd kept everything straigh instead of angled in the top panel I'd actually quite like it.
Same here. I thought it looked ridiculous when they launched it but I didn't mind it once I saw it on the field, probably because I couldn't see the angled emblem/logo.
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Was it the bit that sounded a lot like "F@ck yeah boys! C@nts!" at around the 30 second mark?
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@Rocky-Rockbottom said in France:
Those 2 spastic amish prudes who snitched on A.Smith for airport bog rooting should be shot for fucking treason. Hope they were watching the EOYT and were delighted with their highly successful emasculation project.
They wouldn't have been watching. She would have been busy sucking lemons and he would have been busy holding her tampons. Seriously though I'd be surprised if Nugget's mind was completely on the job. The atmosphere at his house must be a bit uncomfortable to say the least, and him being away on tour doesn't give him many chances to build bridges does it? There can't be much worse to look forward to than the daily phone call to a woman you publicly humiliated.
But boy we missed his passing this tour. Hope he gets his head right soon.
