How many Crusaders in your AB 23?
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Assuming Cane and Savea are locked into the starting line up, we're going to need to be able to create quick ruck ball to make the most of Savea.
1 Hodgman
2 Taukei'aho
3 Tu'ungafasi
4 S Barrett
5 Retallick/Whitelock
6 A Ioane
7 Cane
8 Savea9 Smith
10 B Barrett
11 Clarke
12 ?
13 R Ioane
14 Jordan
15 J Barrett16 Taylor (Coles must be too old for the WC now)
17 Moody
18 Would like to see Newell get a go, otherwise toss a coin for Laulala/Lomax
19 ?
20 Papalii
21 Christie (Weber was good last year, off his game this year)
22 Mo'unga
23 ?It would be great if Tupaea could improve his defence. A lot.
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@gt12 I just shake my head at that team. SBarrett at 6, Cane on the bench, Mo'unga starting, Bridge on the wing. Just so stupid.
On experience, a very big fuckup which doesn't get talked about much in that WC is leaving Ben Smith out of the 23 and instead putting Mo'unga at 10 and Beauden at 15 attempting to implement that "duel playmaker" strategy. Putting an absolute rookie at 10 was a huge gamble which backfired spectacularly. If we wanted experience in the most important positions in the backline we had to have Beauden at 10 and Ben Smith at 15.
And it's not like Ben Smith was out of form either, he carved up the 3rd/4th play off as well just to ram home how stupid it was to leave him out.
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@Chester-Draws Picking a captain who isn't the best player available in their position is a luxury the All Blacks can't afford given the competitive nature of contemporary test Rugby and the likely competitive nature of this series. A captain has to earn their place same as anyone else. Right now, Papalii is clearly the best NZ 7. Leadership in Rugby is about a leadership group rather than one individual these days anyway.
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As a few others have said, I would be interested to see how Papalii goes at 6 in combination with Cane. He has the size to play there, and wouldn't really have to adjust his game from what he does now.
The fact is that if Papalii is the bench loose forward he would probably come on to play 6 anyway. So why not start him there? Savea is regularly used as a lineout option so I don't believe that would be an issue.
The key remains selecting the correct tight five to allow the loose forwards, and backs to function.
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@No-Quarter said in How many Crusaders in your AB 23?:
@gt12 I just shake my head at that team. SBarrett at 6, Cane on the bench, Mo'unga starting, Bridge on the wing. Just so stupid.
Mo'unga had been outstanding against Ireland (QF). Dropping him would have raised eyebrows.
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@sparky said in How many Crusaders in your AB 23?:
@Chester-Draws Picking a captain who isn't the best player available in their position is a luxury the All Blacks can't afford given the competitive nature of contemporary test Rugby and the likely competitive nature of this series. A captain has to earn their place same as anyone else. Right now, Papalii is clearly the best NZ 7. Leadership in Rugby is about a leadership group rather than one individual these days anyway.
Indeed. This is not 2000 and Cane is NOT Todd Blackadder.
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@sparky said in How many Crusaders in your AB 23?:
@Chester-Draws Picking a captain who isn't the best player available in their position is a luxury the All Blacks can't afford given the competitive nature of contemporary test Rugby and the likely competitive nature of this series. A captain has to earn their place same as anyone else. Right now, Papalii is clearly the best NZ 7. Leadership in Rugby is about a leadership group rather than one individual these days anyway.
Let's not go overboard with Papali'i, he had an awesome game but he hasn't been that good all year. Add to that Cane has been great in his last few games. We'll need to see how they both go during the combined comp before declaring Papali'i number 1.
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@Bones said in How many Crusaders in your AB 23?:
@Nepia said in How many Crusaders in your AB 23?:
but he hasn't been that good all year
You really think Papali'i has been as good as he was on Saturday?
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@Nepia said in How many Crusaders in your AB 23?:
@Bones said in How many Crusaders in your AB 23?:
@Nepia pretty much. Has Cane?
B/S, Papali'i is in my 23 but Sat he was off the charts good, he hasn't been that good every match.
He's been off the charts in one or two other games, but consistently high. It's not BS.
I note you declined to comment how good Cane has been.
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@Bones said in How many Crusaders in your AB 23?:
@Nepia said in How many Crusaders in your AB 23?:
@Bones said in How many Crusaders in your AB 23?:
@Nepia pretty much. Has Cane?
B/S, Papali'i is in my 23 but Sat he was off the charts good, he hasn't been that good every match.
He's been off the charts in one or two other games, but consistently high. It's not BS.
I note you declined to comment how good Cane has been.
Cane has been great for a few games running, but we were discussing Papali'i's performance in Saturdays game in comparison to his previous ones.
I'm sure you'll get some support from the Aucklanders in the morning, I'm sharpening my keyboard for the onslaught, and Papali'i has been good this year, but Saturday was another level.
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It realy somes down to how they perform against Ireland. This should be peak ABs vs tired Ireland at the end of a long season. But I reckon Ireland are targetting, and rightly so, a tour win. 2/3. Foster and his band of in crowd clowns are not the coahces to stop that.
I had faith in the plan pre RWC, that they were almost there defeating the NH rush agressive defence teams. After all they same bunch had given us 2 Cups in a row, and maybe it was just a bit of pain in the couple of years leading upto that. But two+ years later they have shown nothing to say they have learned how to cover the weakness and win those games.
So really this is all shuffling deck chairs, IMO, until Foster and his merry band of muppets move on. Without a vision of how to play, the players picked is irrelevant
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@Nepia said in How many Crusaders in your AB 23?:
@Bones said in How many Crusaders in your AB 23?:
@Nepia said in How many Crusaders in your AB 23?:
@Bones said in How many Crusaders in your AB 23?:
@Nepia pretty much. Has Cane?
B/S, Papali'i is in my 23 but Sat he was off the charts good, he hasn't been that good every match.
He's been off the charts in one or two other games, but consistently high. It's not BS.
I note you declined to comment how good Cane has been.
Cane has been great for a few games running, but we were discussing Papali'i's performance in Saturdays game in comparison to his previous ones.
I'm sure you'll get some support from the Aucklanders in the morning, I'm sharpening my keyboard for the onslaught, and Papali'i has been good this year, but Saturday was another level.
Not making a lot of sense to me - he was out of this world on Saturday, but because he was so good, we should exclude all the other games where he was excellent, just because he wasn't as good. Righto.
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@Machpants said in How many Crusaders in your AB 23?:
It realy somes down to how they perform against Ireland. This should be peak ABs vs tired Ireland at the end of a long season. But I reckon Ireland are targetting, and rightly so, a tour win. 2/3. Foster and his band of in crowd clowns are not the coahces to stop that.
I had faith in the plan pre RWC, that they were almost there defeating the NH rush agressive defence teams. After all they same bunch had given us 2 Cups in a row, and maybe it was just a bit of pain in the couple of years leading upto that. But two+ years later they have shown nothing to say they have learned how to cover the weakness and win those games.
So really this is all shuffling deck chairs, IMO, until Foster and his merry band of muppets move on. Without a vision of how to play, the players picked is irrelevant
I think if you offered Ireland a solitary win against the ABs away from home they would take it. I think we will win the series, but probably lose one of the first two tests (I am picking the first). We will definitely win the third because they will be shattered by then (and probably drunk) and we will have had time to gel. In any event, I think we are in for another "first"...
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@junior dunno, Schmidt won't want to be part of that, he will have plenty of info on Ireland, will know what structures he initiated that are still there.
I think 1 match will be very tight but the other 2 will be comfortable.
