Sharks vs Blues
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@KiwiMurph said in Sharks vs Blues:
It's fairly well known that MacDonald and Coventry had bugger all influence on the squad.
Of course, regardless of whether MacDonald was appointed Blues head coach the day following their last game of the season or November when the switch was made the die was already cast in regards to recruitment. By the time MacDonald was announced as assistant in late May how many contracts were left still available? Five? Watch the exodus thread this year by mid-June it's all over aside from a handful of contracts. There was not much left for him to have a say on; but what was left I'm sure he did.
And of course he inherited a squad, that is what happens when you take over a team in a professional sport. It's hardly unique. I guess the subtext is if he had full control of recruitment from the end of last season the composition of the squad would be markedly different. I fail to see how.
I understand the timing and nature of his appointment was a bit strange, but I'm yet to have explained what tangible changes (even in a best case scenario, with a crystal ball to predict M10 Cup performances) in recruitment could have been made post-July that would change the Blues fortunes. I would like to be enlightened though...
Regardless - early days it's second round with a youngish side and an early trip to South Africa I am holding off too much judgement until somewhere between rounds 5-7.
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The tight five was passive for the first 40mins. Most of the problems flowed on from that. Thats mental shit.. I think Coventry is more likely to fix it than Jackson was.
Maybe some high profile casualties would help. Start Hodgman and put Li on the bench to put a rocket up Karl perhapsUnfortunately TJ defended about as well as I expected at 13. He's a 12 and nothing else at this stage.
I can imagine us spending all year chopping and changing the midfield trying to manufacture a centre pairing out of 3 12's. I hope we give Tele'a the 13 jersey in Argentina and against the Sunwolves.
If that doesn't work out then we can go back to picking 3 12's in a match day 23 after the bye.On a positive note, Robinson continues to go well. Always busy and he has a strange knack of consistently making half breaks
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@chchfanatic Ahhhh ok......
Don't know why you feel the need to come on to this thread and brag about the Crusaders when it has nothing to do with them but yeah ok.....
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@African-Monkey wasn’t bragging about crusaders. I was telling you how shit your players are. I was saying how the crusaders system works. Harry Plummer will be a great player but you’ve already chucked him in. At the crusaders he would’ve been left to develop for a couple of years. Like Richie m was.
How did you let chay funaki and tamati Williams go. 2 stars of the future signed by the crusaders. -
@chchfanatic Blues recruitment has been awful for 10 years. Blues fans know this. But thanks for adding so much value to this thread....
Also i'm pretty sure his name is Chay Fihaki...
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@chchfanatic Yeah we know we have shit players signed on long term deals from previous management. Nothing we can do about it now. Most rugby fans know how good the Crusaders systems are as well. On Plummer, chuck him in now I say, would you rather see Dan Kirkpatrick instead? The reason why Mo'unga was hidden away was because you had 3 AB first fives ahead of him at the time, a luxarry we don't have at the Blues, and on the young players mentioned yeah well, you can't keep them all, it's the way the cookie crumbles.
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@chchfanatic said in Sharks vs Blues:
@African-Monkey wasn’t bragging about crusaders. I was telling you how shit your players are. I was saying how the crusaders system works. Harry Plummer will be a great player but you’ve already chucked him in. At the crusaders he would’ve been left to develop for a couple of years. Like Richie m was.
How did you let chay funaki and tamati Williams go. 2 stars of the future signed by the crusaders.Richie M only had one year in the WTG; not years (plural). The main difference with Plummer is that in that year in the WTG, RM had great first fives to learn from. Ideally, Plummer would have had time on a development contract first, but what could they do otherwise? No classy first fives to learn from; no good first fives to do the job while he spends time developing. They had no choice but to throw him in straight away.
The Blues have a very bad record of hiring bad first fives, or coaching all the good potential out of promising first fives. Let's just hope Plummer doesn't share that same fate.
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@Duluth just watched the game and I agree with much of your sentiment ..sometimes it’s best to read all the coms and then watch the replay already knowing the score and taking any emotion out when watching it live to make a judgement
The stats from the first half where all the damage was done,
The sharks with close to 250 carry’s and the Blues with under 90 much of them around poor ball control and a miss firing lineout.
Even the most experienced guys that you don’t expect to make mistakes were making mistakes .If you give a home team in South Africa that much ball there gonna make you pay.
On saying that our inability to hold on to the ball means we ended up making heaps of tackles in energy sapping conditions.best exemplified by a knock while driving at the line just before halftime.Thought we were better in the 2nd half , but on many occasions failed to find support players or recognise space..
Could think of 3 or 4 occasions when either a break was made or there were players ignored on the outside or the support players did not get the person making the break quick enough.
Biggest issue for me apart from the obvious ones is our out of the hand passing and that’s across the board..pretty much summed up by the last intercept try with a lobbed pass that put the receiver under a ton of pressure.The set piece scrum apart from one penalised scrum was good.
I found it really close to decipher my man of the match for the Blues..but all I could say maybe a choice between Tom Robinson and Dalton Papalii..if we 6 other engines in like these 2 in our forward pack we would be unbeatable..Robinson as I have always known has big engine and was still going strong at the end.
Papalii also has a similar engine..I think Micheal Collins time at the Blues after this mornings performance could be coming to a close sooner than we think.
Just one other thing,someone needs to tell James Parsons he’s not a channel 1 runner,gets rag dolled every time which means slow ball can’t fault the guys endeavour and willingness but he’s no Cody Taylor or Dane Coles. -
I'm starting to get concerned at the NZ sides(Excluding Crusaders) in the first 2 rounds so far. Our execution of the basics has been absolutely dire, I would hate to see lineout completion stats for the NZ sides, just fucking terrible. The amount of dropped balls and pushed passes is too much.
We are not respecting field possession and territory, perhaps we have relied on our supreme counter attack ability and individually brilliant players. I think what the rest of the world are doing is focusing on excellent D and linespeed forcing the opposition into mistakes and allowing the attack to come.
I really hope we can turn it around but geez a few of these games have been hard to watch.
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@Kirwan said in Sharks vs Blues:
@chchfanatic said in Sharks vs Blues:
@African-Monkey wasn’t Akira also going to dominate super rugby and force his way into WC squad.
Blues you have shit halves. Ruru and Pulu are provincial players at best. Black is average too.
Can sometime tell me how reiko is a superstar for the all blacks but average for the blues.
Why are the crusaders good. Because they develop these kids from 17. Get them into the culture early. Their fitness levels are crazy already.
Good luck blues your fun to watch.Akira dominated your mob, fairly comfortably. Remember that game? You had to rely on a friendly ref and our kicker to miss the last kick to win that one.
By your logic, does that mean the Crusaders suck?
Troll posts are boring.
- No, he didn't. Wishful thinking.
- Sore loser alert.
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@Stargazer said in Sharks vs Blues:
@Kirwan said in Sharks vs Blues:
@chchfanatic said in Sharks vs Blues:
@African-Monkey wasn’t Akira also going to dominate super rugby and force his way into WC squad.
Blues you have shit halves. Ruru and Pulu are provincial players at best. Black is average too.
Can sometime tell me how reiko is a superstar for the all blacks but average for the blues.
Why are the crusaders good. Because they develop these kids from 17. Get them into the culture early. Their fitness levels are crazy already.
Good luck blues your fun to watch.Akira dominated your mob, fairly comfortably. Remember that game? You had to rely on a friendly ref and our kicker to miss the last kick to win that one.
By your logic, does that mean the Crusaders suck?
Troll posts are boring.
- No, he didn't. Wishful thinking.
- Sore loser alert.
Yeah he did. Watch him brush off good defenders like Todd like they weren’t even there.
Richie won’t have fond memories of being swatted away either.
Sore winner alert.
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@chimoaus if rest of the world you mean T14, GP etc, then I would disagree. Some of the rugby on display in those comps is pretty dire at times, particularly the defence.
If you are referring to test rugby then trying to compare a couple of Super rugby rounds at the start of a RWC year, is probably not fair.
No doubt there are some issues to sort through, but it’s only two rounds.
