Northland v Southland
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Imagine if we had a player with a decent boot...
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@taniwharugby starts at 10.
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What’s the score please?
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@family-man final 18 to 14 Northland
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We didn't deserve that but I'll take it
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@taniwharugby ....we are big and tough enough to win contact. Defend not too bad. But Hawkins steps crossfield and lacks power in his kicking. Hohaia is not a kicker, and Gregory is so hit and miss as to be dangerous. Hence our game management is awful.
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Massive ticker and massive defence from Northland, though I’m still wondering how we actually managed to win that.
Worst game I’ve seen Northland play in a long long time.
Didn’t respect the ball when we had it, awful kicking, stupid penalties.
Pretty much everything we did only put us under more pressure than was already on us.
Wonder if the heads were already in Napier...
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What was the time in 22 stats? Kara went off at 25 mins and we spent the rest in our 22
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I think a lot of people are underestimating Southland still haha, I'm still stunned as to how they didn't win that. Good on Northland on showing grit out there but geez, Southland really should have won that, they were miles better everywhere apart from the scoreboard and could easily be 5 from 5. The turnaround from Southland this year has been amazing and certainly don't deserve to be 2 from 5 but sadly it is what it is.
We'll done Northland though, 4 from 5 is nothing to be laughed at.
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@African-Monkey Southland are well coached but lack a bit of size and power. Northland invited them to win with some atrocious game management. That they didn’t illustrates their weakness. Ours is at 10/12 where we have other options but It seems don’t want to give them a shot.
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The pluses ,The Taniwha are fit and they have ticker , and the defence was outstanding, the minuses..not enough hours left in the day to key them in..still you take the win
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we made some very poor decisions and poor execution of some basics.
But gotta give props to our defence, which was scratchy on the fringes early on, but jeez they musta been in our 22 for 30+ mins in that 2nd spell, only our try and Rangers break, which was the only time he shoulda off-loaded, and didnt, did we venture out of our 22.
Robinson and Matich were central figures in the defence.
To hold on, especially with 14 men at the time too, awesome.
This side have a bit of steel to them though, not often you attribute winning ugly to us, most often losing ugly or losing with style.
So, take the W and move on to next week.
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Watching how the ABs use Smith to kick from deep, maybe we need to use Nock more here, he gas a great kick, Hawkins doesn't, on line kicks, surely we should be using Gregory more, Hawkins instead of relieving pressure, kept it on too many times.
I'd like Nock to have a crack at quick taps too, he had a few huge opportunities today with the defence scattered and dawdling back, he woulda nabbed easy metres at worst an extra 10.
We just need to be smarter, and 2 guys in Hawkins and Ranger who know better were far from it today.
