Magpies v Otago
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Quick call the ambulance I think the scoreboard attendant is in danger of having a heart attack resulting from the unimaginable happening of HB scoring a converted try. It is something that you could put in the miraculous category if the play I have seen had mirrored the 20 minutes I had missed.
HB 07 - 31 Otago after 33 minutes
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Man, this is so depressing. Shit game, shit season. And we all knew it in advance. But what can you expect with an 11 men injury list and shit recruiting.
The early replacement of Falcon and Rakete-Stones didn't look to be caused by injury. Is this Philpott's way of punishing his players? Then why is Vaega still on the field?
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I know how you guys are feeling..this was Northland in 2015/2016,we had a lot of young guys,with not a hell of lot of experience,and when you consider the super rugby personal you have unavailable ..!,5 in the pack that I can think of.
You have got 3 or 4 under 20 boys,it would have been a hell of a lot better,to have introduced them with some experienced guys around them..
Look at Canterbury,similar number of under 20 guys,but if you can slip into an environment with guys Bird,Hodgeman,Jager,Princeep,Whitelock in the pack,Drummond,Mounga,Bateman and Bridge to name a few,all with super rugby experience,
As a Northlander,I have soft spot for Hawkes Bay,as when teams were looking to be culled many seasons ago,Hawkes Bay were one of the few Unions that supported the Taniwha..
So hang in there..! -
I don't know where we go from here. The usual comfortable four or five pointers you could rely on from Northland and North Harbour are now no longer realistic probabilities and not having Auckland on the fixture list is also a blow. Is there any possibility we might scavenge a bonus point or two somewhere along the line?
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@Higgins To be honest,unless you can get some more experienced heads back on deck,I don't see a win coming anytime soon.
The problem I can see,some of the heads are are starting to go down,even though the Bay were beaten by Wellington,I thought they showed some ticker,Set piece is a real issue,and the tackling today has been very poor..What's happened to Mark Abbott...?
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Abbott is off overseas already
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@Stockcar86 thanks for that,I was looking through your injury list,by my reckoning looks like you have almost a full playing XV,and McNicol looks like he now has rib damaged..probably sums things up..
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How was that not a yellow card
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Not feeling confident about us taking The Shield off Counties next week
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Our U20 boys are indeed struggling. I'm not surprised; they have just been thrown in the deep end, esp Pouri and Marino. Devery is also a pup and not up to it yet. I hope this doesn't make them lose their confidence completely, but seeing the look on Falcon's face straight after he was subbed off, I'm worried.
On top of that, we played with 5 players of our development team; Snee was a good replacement at 10, but with all these new additions to the team, we just lack good combinations. Worst thing is that it even affects the experienced players. Bucky had a bad day.
Jonah Lowe gets a passmark for a great try and relentless effort. Weber, too; must have been frustrating to play behind a pack that went backwards in the scrum all the time. Hope Ben May and Ash Dixon are back soon. We need our few big boys.
I also think it needs to be said that we didn't lose because of a lack of effort from the boys. They kept on trying until the final whistle.
And that injury list keeps on growing, despite Wilson now coming back.
Hope the injury to McNicol (rib?) isn't too bad. Braidwood's head knock looked more serious. Not sure what Mikaele-Tu'u's injury was that made Goodin come back on again.Oh, and I can't believe that high tackle wasn't penalised.
I've never thought and said this before, but I wish the season was already over.
Thankfully, we have Hastings Boys' great season to celebrate.
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@Stockcar86 When are they taking it off Canterbury?
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11 of the HB 23 that played today are 22 years old or under.
13 of the 23 are only in their first or second season of NPC.
That is a hell of a lot of inexperience out there today.
Magpies player of the day was Dan Snee who is 33, which I think underlines the inexperience around him.
Mikaele-Tu'u looked okay at the aftermatch, but Sam McNicol is going for X-rays tomorrow.
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Inexperience is often thrown around as a reason why things do not go as you had expected/planned them to. For instance you could proffer that as one of the reasons why our lineout was such a disaster today however every player involved knows how to jump, lift, block or throw the ball in so frankly it does not wash in this instance. OK sure they might not have played together as a combination all that much but they do train together so have the opportunity to rehearse things beforehand.
Funnily enough the same thing happens with high balls. You practice catching them from the day you start playing the game (or at least did in my day when a successful catch in force back gained you a 10 metre advance in the many games we played after school and before dinner time summer and winter). Ditto kicking off both feet when successful shots at goal with the opposite foot were worth double points. Inexperience does not cause you to drop a ball, nor miss a regulation tackle, through a crap pass, fail to pass when you should, kick when you shouldn't or pass when you should kick etc etc Most of the players in our squad will have been playing the game for anywhere between ten and twenty or more years - how much experience do you need?
Our current situation seems to be a combination of many many things like players being selected in incorrect positions, injuries (which never help matters), not having the right players to pick from in the first place, lack of confidence, fear of making mistakes, other teams having better players than us, coaching, game plans not suiting the players involved or not appropriate to the opposition, the inability to change tactics on the field (captaincy or senior players) and the fear of straying from what the coaching team devise for the game and there are sure to others which I have not included here.
We are all expert at analyzing and advising solutions from our seats in the grandstand or the lounge but we are unaware of what is really the reason behind such results we are having to endure eg there could be players out there playing at 80% of fitness coming back from injury simply because there is no one else available. Whatever it is it is making our 80 minutes a very unenjoyable duty that we are obligated to go through and frankly at the moment it is like sitting on a train racing downhill with no brakes and a sharp bend not too far away. Please let our train driver get the brakes working before we hit that bend. -
@Higgins said in Magpies v Otago:
Inexperience is often thrown around as a reason why things do not go as you had expected/planned them to. For instance you could proffer that as one of the reasons why our lineout was such a disaster today however every player involved knows how to jump, lift, block or throw the ball in so frankly it does not wash in this instance. OK sure they might not have played together as a combination all that much but they do train together so have the opportunity to rehearse things beforehand.
Funnily enough the same thing happens with high balls. You practice catching them from the day you start playing the game (or at least did in my day when a successful catch in force back gained you a 10 metre advance in the many games we played after school and before dinner time summer and winter). Ditto kicking off both feet when successful shots at goal with the opposite foot were worth double points. Inexperience does not cause you to drop a ball, nor miss a regulation tackle, through a crap pass, fail to pass when you should, kick when you shouldn't or pass when you should kick etc etc Most of the players in our squad will have been playing the game for anywhere between ten and twenty or more years - how much experience do you need?
Our current situation seems to be a combination of many many things like players being selected in incorrect positions, injuries (which never help matters), not having the right players to pick from in the first place, lack of confidence, fear of making mistakes, other teams having better players than us, coaching, game plans not suiting the players involved or not appropriate to the opposition, the inability to change tactics on the field (captaincy or senior players) and the fear of straying from what the coaching team devise for the game and there are sure to others which I have not included here.
We are all expert at analyzing and advising solutions from our seats in the grandstand or the lounge but we are unaware of what is really the reason behind such results we are having to endure eg there could be players out there playing at 80% of fitness coming back from injury simply because there is no one else available. Whatever it is it is making our 80 minutes a very unenjoyable duty that we are obligated to go through and frankly at the moment it is like sitting on a train racing downhill with no brakes and a sharp bend not too far away. Please let our train driver get the brakes working before we hit that bend.So you are talking about inexperience.
