v Southland
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@taniwharugby Pickerall doesn’t seem to have a feel for the game. How do you penalise Highland for stopping, turning around and then have a guy jumping over him ?
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@kev he was pretty poor I thought, missed an awful lot, allowed them to lean all over the rucks, but we were pretty poor.
Never been so down after a bonus point win...huge opportunity to make a statement and show our quality but instead we got dragged down by Southland....oh well
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@taniwharugby our set piece was off. Lineout was very poor, and scrum was good in first half but lacked a bit of power in second. We allowed them to turn ball over at ruck time in second so needed to carry a bit better. Confident we will play better next time out.
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@taniwharugby It's not necessarily a bad thing. You don't really want to be at your absolute best against Southland. Take the 5 points and move on. Hopefully Robinson and Goodhue are back soon.
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Not much you can say,but let’s take the 5 and flush the rest down the toilet.
Murray Douglas was excellent in fact our best on the night..Best I have ever seen from Isi Tuangafasi in either a Cambridge Blue Jersey or a blue and white jersey..good shift from the looseheadSam Nock also was very good,amazing when you have pressure from within the squad,
Just want guys to keep their standards,unfortunately the Matt Wright drop under absolutely no pressure set the tone..
Those bloody unforced errors..
Also would have loved to have seen Roberts TeNana on earlier,looked good with ball in hand..Finally I hope Pickerall has another occupation in life,because as referee he has no feel for the game..listened to his coms through our commentary,school teacher would be the perfect fit.
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@steven-harris thought Matiu carried well too, Gregory was very good.
There were some positives, but will need to be much better against HB.
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So after a nice sleep, able to mull over that Bonus Point WIN.
Isi was good, loved what he bought last night, Olsen also does some great work in close. Not sure the line out was so much his fault, we missed Goodhue big time there, it got better with MacNamara .
Rinakama busy as usual.
Douglas was one of our best.
Mayanavanua was busy
Matiu was good on the carry and some strong defence.
Pryor still frustrates me when he forces the pass too often.
Matich busy as always.
Nock seems to be growing this year, pressure from Kitto driving him.
Debreczeni is a bit of an enigma...some good some not
Cooper didn't get a lot of chances but did some good tidying work on defence.
Gregory, this kid has a bright future.
Ranger, bit quiet this week, still a menace on both sides of ball though, copped a filthy forearm to the face when on his back at the breakdown
Hyland, man we need base our game around him, at this level he is a beast.
Wright, a game he won't want a replay of.Moulds was busy off the bench, MacNamara seemed to tidy up the line out. Straker does his job, Atkins looks out of shape but seems to get about. Kitto always looking for chances to snipe, I love what he brings.
Matthews, Thoroughgood, Roberts-Te Nana all limited time.Most of the good work done was on defence, and while disappointing to let in that try, given how much ball we gave back to them, we defended well.
Plenty of positives so focus on that rather than our inaccuracy with the ball...time for the Taniwha to have some magpie for lunch.
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Definitely take that 5 points, but shit we stooped to a low level last night. If it was any other side than Southland we would have had our undies ripped clean off!
Southland were really combative at the breakdown and totally dominated us there. Don’t know how many turnovers we conceded but it must have been high..
We need to pull finger for our trip to Napier or else Hawke’s Bgay are going to tear us a new asshole.
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@taniwharugby it’s quite a rare thing for us Northlanders to whinge about a bonus point win.. embrace this moment!!
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Just re-watched the 10 minutes when we got those 3 tries. That was a brilliant patch of rugby, everyone from 1 through 15 was involved in and had an impact on what was unfolding.
Didn’t bother re watching the rest of the game, happily gave up the remote to Mrs Gunner. -
winning when they are expected to must be a new kind of pressure they are learning to deal with, and add to that most of the remaining top tier players got a decent run they passed the test under more pressure than they have had all year.
the game was hard to watch but when expectations are higher the patients runs thinner quicker. Would like Ranger to let the ball go a little more out side him, with the domination he is showing beating tackles I think he has the defenders on the back foot now so he can put his wingers away.
with some tough matches coming up against good attacking teams will be interesting how they attack the rush defence from northland, might start to see alot more inside balls and Debrec (10) being tested.
pretty sure Konia will be quietly happy with his backs dominating McClouds. -
@nath-jac yeah I think we need to involve Hyland more too, on those big blindsides from a scrum, have Ranger and Hyland on one side, rest on the other.
On paper, assuming we get at least one of Goodhue or Robinson back and dont suffer any key injuries for the remainder of the season, we definitely have the team to win the championship, but still need to tidy up some areas.
Handling errors, rucks and lineouts (although with Goodhue and/or Robinson, they should help both) and exits.
Our defence has been pretty good, and while it sucked giving up that try to Southland, they had a wealth of territory and possession so it unfortunately was inevitable.
I think Debrezceni is being far too conservative with his kicks to touch, he needs to go for distance form our 22, and if we chase hard it isnt a big deal if he peels off 50-60m and it stays in, but putting it out on the 22 and it going 30m into the stands just isnt good enough.
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@taniwharugby yeah that’s my frustration with Debreczeni. Really big boot but doesn’t seem to make much ground with kicks. That said we’re we playing into wind in 2nd half as Kitto struggled as well.
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