All Blacks 2021
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@voodoo one assumes Kefu asked him to play for them a few weeks back when assembling the side for Saturday, and you'd have to assume he said thanks but no thanks?
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@taniwharugby maybe, who knows, does that change anything?
I'm just saying it doesn't look great from a pure rugby poaching perspective. Captains his national schoolboy side and we say "damn, you're pretty good, we'll have you"
Obvs there are all manner of co soderations, did we give him and his family a better life blah blah, I'm just saying from a pure rugby perspective, it's hardly to argue we poached him innit?
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@voodoo oh I'm on the side of the fence that reckons Sivivatu, Reece, Tamanivalu, Fekitoa and all those who came here for high school should have played for their country of birth, but at the end of the day it is their choice.
I think the countries that cry the loudest about 'poaching' are the ones who sholdnt be in recent years anyway!
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The way I see things is that both Tonga and NZ are benefiting from the current system. We 'poach' 1 or 2 talented players and develop them into ABs. We also develop a larger number of NZ-born Tongan players who go on to represent Tonga.
Both teams benefit from the other country, and I don't think we really need to feel guilty about this.
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@kiwiwomble said in All Blacks 2021:
@bobily2 except if those players are holding off committing to Tonga because they're still hoping to play for the AB's
I'm not talking about a theoretical benefit, I'm saying that they are benefitted already, as shown by the number of Tongan test players who are NZ-born.
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@bobily2 but isn't that the rumor? that the better tongan qualified players (nz born or otherwise) didn't want to commit because they want to hold off and have a shot at the AB's...hence all the talk of club players and tradies?
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@kiwiwomble said in All Blacks 2021:
@bobily2 but isn't that the rumor? that the better tongan qualified players (nz born or otherwise) didn't want to commit because they want to hold off and have a shot at the AB's...hence all the talk of club players and tradies?
This game isn't really a good example of the usual, so I'm not sure it's worth looking at too intently (except for the people who organised it - it was foreseeable that a lot of the European players wouldn't be available).
My comments were more in relation to a lot of people wanting to change eligibility rules (as a country) based on this (perhaps more on FB than here).
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@crucial said in All Blacks 2021:
@bones said in All Blacks 2021:
@kiwimurph that doesn't really strike me as anything new though? Squire, Fifita, and plenty of others (I can't remember the one who got the most grief) have got grief for it in the past. Read used to do it a fair bit before he got cake.
With Read in his peak it was planned. With some others it was shirking.
I don't think that is true in the slightest. A loosie doesn't just stand out wide in a test if it's not the game plan.
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@nepia said in All Blacks 2021:
@crucial said in All Blacks 2021:
@bones said in All Blacks 2021:
@kiwimurph that doesn't really strike me as anything new though? Squire, Fifita, and plenty of others (I can't remember the one who got the most grief) have got grief for it in the past. Read used to do it a fair bit before he got cake.
With Read in his peak it was planned. With some others it was shirking.
I don't think that is true in the slightest. A loosie doesn't just stand out wide in a test if it's not the game plan.
Fifita.
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@crucial said in All Blacks 2021:
@nepia said in All Blacks 2021:
@crucial said in All Blacks 2021:
@bones said in All Blacks 2021:
@kiwimurph that doesn't really strike me as anything new though? Squire, Fifita, and plenty of others (I can't remember the one who got the most grief) have got grief for it in the past. Read used to do it a fair bit before he got cake.
With Read in his peak it was planned. With some others it was shirking.
I don't think that is true in the slightest. A loosie doesn't just stand out wide in a test if it's not the game plan.
Fifita.
If it wasn’t the game plan to have roaming wide like Read was in some tests then the the coaches are idiots. Why on earth would you bring in Fifita and not use his best abilities?
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@crucial said in All Blacks 2021:
@nepia said in All Blacks 2021:
@crucial said in All Blacks 2021:
@bones said in All Blacks 2021:
@kiwimurph that doesn't really strike me as anything new though? Squire, Fifita, and plenty of others (I can't remember the one who got the most grief) have got grief for it in the past. Read used to do it a fair bit before he got cake.
With Read in his peak it was planned. With some others it was shirking.
I don't think that is true in the slightest. A loosie doesn't just stand out wide in a test if it's not the game plan.
Fifita.
not liking the game plan, and not being in the game plan are not the same thigns. I'm with @nepia - it used to be Coles, then Read, and now others (Dalts at the weekend)
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Tonga and other PI countries would benefit more from being able to use ex-ABs and Wallabies after a stand-down period, something Kefu alluded to. But there are a couple of Home unions who are vocal in their opposition to that. The same countries who have/had plenty of NZ and SA-born players in their team.
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@nepia yea this is retarded. every team in NZ plays either 1-3-3-1 or slight variations of that.
so at any one time you have 2 guys playing that spot out wide -
@muddyriver said in All Blacks 2021:
yea this is retarded. every team in NZ plays either 1-3-3-1 or slight variations of that.
so at any one time you have 2 guys playing that spot out wideI'm amazed at how many people think this is something new
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@duluth said in All Blacks 2021:
@muddyriver said in All Blacks 2021:
yea this is retarded. every team in NZ plays either 1-3-3-1 or slight variations of that.
so at any one time you have 2 guys playing that spot out wideI'm amazed at how many people think this is something new
From 2018 and we’d been discussing it for ages before then.
Analysis: The two shapes the All Blacks are developing for the Rugby World Cup
They realise that most teams who have beaten them since 2012, have had the fundamental approach of aggressive rush defence firmly in hand to do it. As such, Hansen and co have been introducing different approaches to counter this since 2017.
