All Blacks v France, 2021 NH Tour
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Well, that was shit eh.
I quite like Havili as a player. He's generally smart and skilful and versatile. But he showed last week that in this ABs team, playing catch-up footy, he is prone to panic. So Foster puts him on the bench, and brings him on in precisely that situation again. A bit predictable, and unfortunate.
Mo'unga was rubbish, but he's a good player. I think maybe the 4 playmaker model may be affecting his confidence...
Barrett was rubbish, but he's a good player (now).
Ioane remains a good winger, but getting in a gap and throwing a dummy and gassing it to the line doesn't make him a centre.
Bridge was okay.
Tupaea was okay.
A week ago we kept TJ on the entire game when he was ruining our attack. This week we sub Smith at 60 mins... Webber was pretty good, but somehow last week we needed leadership but this week we don't?
Coles/Samisoni and both locks were good.
Ardie as usual had a couple of highlight moments and a fair bit of shit, including the game losing YC. Cane was solid. Akira nothing special.
Props nothing special. I thought we had slightly the better of both the French and Irish scrums, but who gives a shit if no penalties are dished out. -
@kiwiwomble said in All Blacks v France, 2021 NH Tour:
We’ll shit, there was some awesome rugby played from both teams…but that hurt
Two big things for me, that counter attack from their own goal, we were very much in the ascendancy but that changed everything, we went down a man and 3 points and they got their tales up for the final 20mins
And richie/Jordie/smith have no faith in each other, so many times we’d go one way from the break down and Richie or Jordie would step straight back behind the breakdown….there was one early in the second half when hot on attack, smith goes left/blind….Richie just runs back right behind the breakdown and passes to QT…who steps back left…the French forwards have very much come through by then and we loose it….take the fucking hit Richie!
This has been one of his biggest issues in test footy, IMO. Too often he looks like he isn't ready to receive the ball or doesn't want it in his hands. Hence, we see a lot of him shovelling shit outside or inside to someone flat footed and in a worse position. More concerning, it says either he's flustered and doesn't want the ball or that he's not communicating well enough to his 9 as to when and how he wants the ball.
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I don't mind our attack, as its clear when we play direct up the guts forward play before spinning it wide, we do well. You know, the sort of thing that has worked in test rugby for over 100 years. That, and not kicking it away aimlessly. Simple stuff.
What has consistently annoyed me since about 2016 is our defence. Every good team in the world, especially those that beat us, employs a rush defence. They kill our time and space. We let teams run at us and gain easy meters. When I watch the ABs defend, I wish that the opposition would defend like that when we had the ball, as we'd carve them up.
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@tewaio said in All Blacks v France, 2021 NH Tour:
I don't mind our attack, as its clear when we play direct up the guts forward play before spinning it wide, we do well. You know, the sort of thing that has worked in test rugby for over 100 years. That, and not kicking it away aimlessly. Simple stuff.
What has consistently annoyed me since about 2016 is our defence. Every good team in the world, especially those that beat us, employs a rush defence. They kill our time and space. We let teams run at us and gain easy meters. When I watch the ABs defend, I wish that the opposition would defend like that when we had the ball, as we'd carve them up.
Agreed.
It was sort of working until last year as we would often not give up enough opportunities, but since teams have started pushing for tries (rather than taking the 3), they’ve been getting over the magic number for beating the ABs (which is about 20) as they can defend us around that and still get a win.
We gave up 40 today, so clearly its not working anymore.
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Old Barnsey is a funny ref aye?
I liked how he may as well not have even had a TMO, unlike old.mate last week
And we got the rub.of a couple of pretty serious moments that last week I am sure would have been reviewed
But there were two crucial calls he fucked up in the first half that cost us massively. The first was that obvious obstruction that led to the big line break
The 2nd was the penalty on whitelock on their line. We contested the lineout. They won it, but we held up the halfback under the poles on the 5m mark and would have got the scrum. Instead he penalises whitelock for grabbing the arm in the air despite replays clearly showing the opposite.
Both huge calls Both went against us. And I think directly led to us playing catch up.
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@mariner4life said in All Blacks v France, 2021 NH Tour:
Old Barnsey is a funny ref aye?
I liked how he may as well not have even had a TMO, unlike old.mate last week
And we got the rub.of a couple of pretty serious moments that last week I am sure would have been reviewed
But there were two crucial calls he fucked up in the first half that cost us massively. The first was that obvious obstruction that led to the big line break
The 2nd was the penalty on whitelock on their line. We contested the lineout. They won it, but we held up the halfback under the poles on the 5m mark and would have got the scrum. Instead he penalises whitelock for grabbing the arm in the air despite replays clearly showing the opposite.
Both huge calls Both went against us. And I think directly led to us playing catch up.
And it had absolutely no effect because the contact with the arms was after the French had tapped the ball back.
He is a real pain in the arse, is Wayne. He lets so much go during a match but when he does blow his whistle its often for meaningless shit like that.
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@mariner4life said in All Blacks v France, 2021 NH Tour:
Old Barnsey is a funny ref aye?
I liked how he may as well not have even had a TMO, unlike old.mate last week
And we got the rub.of a couple of pretty serious moments that last week I am sure would have been reviewed
But there were two crucial calls he fucked up in the first half that cost us massively. The first was that obvious obstruction that led to the big line break
The 2nd was the penalty on whitelock on their line. We contested the lineout. They won it, but we held up the halfback under the poles on the 5m mark and would have got the scrum. Instead he penalises whitelock for grabbing the arm in the air despite replays clearly showing the opposite.
Both huge calls Both went against us. And I think directly led to us playing catch up.
I think the touch judge called that on whitelock. But I might be wrong.
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@nzzp said in All Blacks v France, 2021 NH Tour:
@chimoaus said in All Blacks v France, 2021 NH Tour:
This one is fucken terrible, this is the leadup play to the French try. The two lazy runners have no intention of catching the ball, they continue moving forward and the lock actually moves forward into the defending player (he actually moves to his left on purpose into the defender). the French then target the channel he is blocking which leads to the break.
are we ... GAGR?
Is running into your own player no longer accidental offside?
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@tewaio said in All Blacks v France, 2021 NH Tour:
I don't mind our attack, as its clear when we play direct up the guts forward play before spinning it wide, we do well. You know, the sort of thing that has worked in test rugby for over 100 years. That, and not kicking it away aimlessly. Simple stuff.
What has consistently annoyed me since about 2016 is our defence. Every good team in the world, especially those that beat us, employs a rush defence. They kill our time and space. We let teams run at us and gain easy meters. When I watch the ABs defend, I wish that the opposition would defend like that when we had the ball, as we'd carve them up.
We have a fixation that we can still attack best off turnover ball so our defence tries to suck runners into isolating themselves with the rest of their players out of a defensible pattern.
It simply doesn't pay off as teams are smarter now and will take a tackle then drive until support arrives and a recycle can happen.
The only time we see this ploy work now is if the opposition is chasing the game and not patient. -
Well, its' time to sit back and take stock after this test.
What was clear over the last two games is that we are done, toast for 2021. There has been a huge fall off in decision making & tactics. Physically, we have showed at times vs both Ireland & France that we not too far off the pace. But mentally, we have been way way off. I give the team huge credit for Q3 in the French game where a couple of subs / game plan change really gave us a chance to win it. But I think we are just mentally fragile. No way Ntamack should have been able to get out of the in-goal which changed the game. We should have been all over him to ensure he forced the ball - these are game standards that we used to be the pinnacle of. Ntmack hit that ball at pace from the side, the cover attack/defence should have been moving across to the right earlier.
The intercept was hard to accept & it killed the game off as mentally we just couldn't come back.
All in all, it's a great young French side and it's a poor tired AB side.
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@crucial said in All Blacks v France, 2021 NH Tour:
@tewaio said in All Blacks v France, 2021 NH Tour:
I don't mind our attack, as its clear when we play direct up the guts forward play before spinning it wide, we do well. You know, the sort of thing that has worked in test rugby for over 100 years. That, and not kicking it away aimlessly. Simple stuff.
What has consistently annoyed me since about 2016 is our defence. Every good team in the world, especially those that beat us, employs a rush defence. They kill our time and space. We let teams run at us and gain easy meters. When I watch the ABs defend, I wish that the opposition would defend like that when we had the ball, as we'd carve them up.
We have a fixation that we can still attack best off turnover ball so our defence tries to suck runners into isolating themselves with the rest of their players out of a defensible pattern.
It simply doesn't pay off as teams are smarter now and will take a tackle then drive until support arrives and a recycle can happen.
The only time we see this ploy work now is if the opposition is chasing the game and not patient.It feels like a lot of what we do is built around what we get results from playing Australia , because we play them so often it becomes habitual
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@kiwiinmelb said in All Blacks v France, 2021 NH Tour:
@crucial said in All Blacks v France, 2021 NH Tour:
@tewaio said in All Blacks v France, 2021 NH Tour:
I don't mind our attack, as its clear when we play direct up the guts forward play before spinning it wide, we do well. You know, the sort of thing that has worked in test rugby for over 100 years. That, and not kicking it away aimlessly. Simple stuff.
What has consistently annoyed me since about 2016 is our defence. Every good team in the world, especially those that beat us, employs a rush defence. They kill our time and space. We let teams run at us and gain easy meters. When I watch the ABs defend, I wish that the opposition would defend like that when we had the ball, as we'd carve them up.
We have a fixation that we can still attack best off turnover ball so our defence tries to suck runners into isolating themselves with the rest of their players out of a defensible pattern.
It simply doesn't pay off as teams are smarter now and will take a tackle then drive until support arrives and a recycle can happen.
The only time we see this ploy work now is if the opposition is chasing the game and not patient.It feels like a lot of what we do is built around what we get results from playing Australia , because we play them so often it becomes habitual
The last time we crushed a good side in the forwards might be Ireland in the 2019 QF? It's not like we shouldn't have it in us, we just aren't playing right
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@canefan said in All Blacks v France, 2021 NH Tour:
@kiwiinmelb said in All Blacks v France, 2021 NH Tour:
@crucial said in All Blacks v France, 2021 NH Tour:
@tewaio said in All Blacks v France, 2021 NH Tour:
I don't mind our attack, as its clear when we play direct up the guts forward play before spinning it wide, we do well. You know, the sort of thing that has worked in test rugby for over 100 years. That, and not kicking it away aimlessly. Simple stuff.
What has consistently annoyed me since about 2016 is our defence. Every good team in the world, especially those that beat us, employs a rush defence. They kill our time and space. We let teams run at us and gain easy meters. When I watch the ABs defend, I wish that the opposition would defend like that when we had the ball, as we'd carve them up.
We have a fixation that we can still attack best off turnover ball so our defence tries to suck runners into isolating themselves with the rest of their players out of a defensible pattern.
It simply doesn't pay off as teams are smarter now and will take a tackle then drive until support arrives and a recycle can happen.
The only time we see this ploy work now is if the opposition is chasing the game and not patient.It feels like a lot of what we do is built around what we get results from playing Australia , because we play them so often it becomes habitual
The last time we crushed a good side in the forwards might be Ireland in the 2019 QF? It's not like we shouldn't have it in us, we just aren't playing right
We were pretty good vs SA in the pools too
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Watching a replay now, and during the first 25 minutes you would have to say that we played OK.
So, until 27:00 on the game clock (current status), there were two contestables that didn't look like a good idea, but generally speaking we've been seeking to use space around the ruck them attack wide and have been doing quite well with one great break that nearly led to a try (some Jordan magic here was very useful).
Bridge has been good, but his lack of size and , just poor luck, sees him dropping the cross kick from Jordie and getting taken into touch when we were hot of attack. I can't help but think that Jordan (or in the past, Jane) would catch those, not because they are more highly skilled, but just because they have that edge at that level that sees them make those plays.
From the ensuing lineout, Whitelock was very unlucky to be penalized and the French have done well to get territory and try to turn that into points. That leads us to the things which are letting us down:
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Skill execution under pressure. It's like having first season Jordie Barrett back. He has had two terrible kicks, both of which have led to French points. I have to call out our maul defense as well, as the French see something there to exploit, and have done so well.
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Keep the ball in front of the forwards. Smith, Mo'unga, and Barrett looked like they have just met, they are constantly changing the attack from one side of the ruck to the other and losing us ground, so the cleaners have to track back (or across) due to their indecision.
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Our attack is too predictable. You see the defender just blitz past the pod forward when we set up our attack structure. There are no bodies in motion and it's obvious that the playmaker drifting across will get the ball (and therefore defender) at the same time. We don't have any runners who could hold the defense and seem to want to stretch them then go as wide as possible. It's ugly to watch.
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