All Blacks v England
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I could wax lyrical for hours about the Twickenham hospitality experience. It genuinely is one of, if not the, best experiences of my entire privileged life. Most of the people who work there are ex-BA first / business cabin crew so they absolutely know how to offer the best service. Completely unobtrusive but always there when you need them and up for a bit of a banter if you want it.
Turns out our lunch was prepared by Tom Kerridge too, who I got to meet and have a chat with. Absolutely sterling bloke too, which was nice. He's indirectly been a massive part of my life since we moved here, so was so good to learn that he's an awesome fella. A fucking monster too.
All in all, absolutely superb day, top notch.
Was there a rugby match on?
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Would love to see Stevenson and Zarn in the AB mix somewhere. Having watched Stevenson in the ABs Xv he needs to fix defensive issues and concentration lapses first. That said he is a weapon and adangerous with ball in hand. Have watched Zarn a handful of times and each time he has been impressive.
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Ok, of course there was a rugby match on. Thoughts from the game
- Rugby as a live spectator sport is a bit fucked. Although it was good to see some moments of magic (The pass to Ioane for his try was not too far in front of us), you really spend most of the match not knowing what you are watching. Game is full of technical infringements that you can barely tell on TV ... how can you tell at the ground?
- Twickenham experience not changed much. You need to be sitting around the rugby clubs for banter, and try and avoid the old farts who are just horrible.
- I was giving it a bit large to my buddies at one point, and my buddy called me, in jest, a kiwi piston wristed gibbon ... about 5 people told him his language was unacceptable. Odd.
- Lots of people have ref link now to hear the ref. Whats the point in going to live game to listen to an ear piece?
- God Save the King was spine tingling.
- Still don't get swing low, but then I guess I'm not really supposed to ...
- The England comeback was awesome. Stadium went completely fucking mental. You could see we had no leadership and simply couldn't contain it. Needed to make some pretty boring decisions to quieten the crowd down & close it out. We didn't.
- Took a piss beside Lewis Moody. Eyes stared straight in front.
All in all we completely owned them for 70 minutes, then they destroyed us for 10. We've done that to so many teams (especially SA) over the last few years, so I guess a bit of comeuppance.
Still, at around 5pm, our lovely Scottish hostess came round with a paper and pen and asked what drinks we'd like at our table for half time and full time. So that was neat & that is my over arching memory of the day.
One of the greats.
EDIT! How could I forget this one
- Smith kicking the ball out is one of the lamest things I've ever seen. So glad he got boo'd for it.
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@Bones said in All Blacks v England:
@MajorRage said in All Blacks v England:
Eyes started straight in front.
The suspense is killing me
"...and as the streams met, so did their eyes..."
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@Canerbry said in All Blacks v England:
@Bones said in All Blacks v England:
@MajorRage said in All Blacks v England:
Eyes started straight in front.
The suspense is killing me
"...and as the streams met, so did their eyes..."
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@Chris-B said in All Blacks v England:
@TheMojoman said in All Blacks v England:
@ARHS said in All Blacks v England:
@TheMojoman said in All Blacks v England:
It was a fitting end to a disappointing season, prob the worst I can remember for a long time. A 6-4-1 record is abysmal for the AB’s considering we’re up at around 80% in the professional era.??? I thought All Blacks won 8 matches this year? Which are you not counting?
My bad, just checked and it's 8-1-4. Marginally better but still a disappointing season.
On the plus side, we beat everyone we played, except England and we didn't lose to them.
Ireland sort of feel like they might have our number and will be tough - but, they've got to worry about getting past their QF hoodoo!
Some perspective, that is Japan - just, Scotland - just and the team that lost to Georgia.
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@Catogrande said in All Blacks v England:
@Chris-B said in All Blacks v England:
@TheMojoman said in All Blacks v England:
@ARHS said in All Blacks v England:
@TheMojoman said in All Blacks v England:
It was a fitting end to a disappointing season, prob the worst I can remember for a long time. A 6-4-1 record is abysmal for the AB’s considering we’re up at around 80% in the professional era.??? I thought All Blacks won 8 matches this year? Which are you not counting?
My bad, just checked and it's 8-1-4. Marginally better but still a disappointing season.
On the plus side, we beat everyone we played, except England and we didn't lose to them.
Ireland sort of feel like they might have our number and will be tough - but, they've got to worry about getting past their QF hoodoo!
Some perspective, that is Japan - just, Scotland - just and the team that lost to Georgia.
Ireland, SA, England, Argentina too …
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@MajorRage said in All Blacks v England:
@Catogrande said in All Blacks v England:
@Chris-B said in All Blacks v England:
@TheMojoman said in All Blacks v England:
@ARHS said in All Blacks v England:
@TheMojoman said in All Blacks v England:
It was a fitting end to a disappointing season, prob the worst I can remember for a long time. A 6-4-1 record is abysmal for the AB’s considering we’re up at around 80% in the professional era.??? I thought All Blacks won 8 matches this year? Which are you not counting?
My bad, just checked and it's 8-1-4. Marginally better but still a disappointing season.
On the plus side, we beat everyone we played, except England and we didn't lose to them.
Ireland sort of feel like they might have our number and will be tough - but, they've got to worry about getting past their QF hoodoo!
Some perspective, that is Japan - just, Scotland - just and the team that lost to Georgia.
Ireland, SA, England, Argentina too …
Well, when @Chris-B said “we beat EVERYONE we played”, I assumed that meant on the tour rather than during the year, cos that ain’t the case. 😀
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@Catogrande said in All Blacks v England:
@MajorRage said in All Blacks v England:
@Catogrande said in All Blacks v England:
@Chris-B said in All Blacks v England:
@TheMojoman said in All Blacks v England:
@ARHS said in All Blacks v England:
@TheMojoman said in All Blacks v England:
It was a fitting end to a disappointing season, prob the worst I can remember for a long time. A 6-4-1 record is abysmal for the AB’s considering we’re up at around 80% in the professional era.??? I thought All Blacks won 8 matches this year? Which are you not counting?
My bad, just checked and it's 8-1-4. Marginally better but still a disappointing season.
On the plus side, we beat everyone we played, except England and we didn't lose to them.
Ireland sort of feel like they might have our number and will be tough - but, they've got to worry about getting past their QF hoodoo!
Some perspective, that is Japan - just, Scotland - just and the team that lost to Georgia.
Ireland, SA, England, Argentina too …
Well, when @Chris-B said “we beat EVERYONE we played”, I assumed that meant on the tour rather than during the year, cos that ain’t the case. 😀
Nah he's (almost) correct. ABs beat everyone they played, just not necessarily every time. England would be the only exception, with a draw.
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@Chris-B said in All Blacks v England:
The Major is correct about what I intended to mean. We beat everyone we played this year (except England), even though we also lost to Ireland, SA and Argentina.
We surprisingly had a crap 2022 home record or is that a 2022 pre-Jason Ryan record?
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@nostrildamus said in All Blacks v England:
@Chris-B said in All Blacks v England:
The Major is correct about what I intended to mean. We beat everyone we played this year (except England), even though we also lost to Ireland, SA and Argentina.
We surprisingly had a crap 2022 home record or is that a 2022 pre-Jason Ryan record?
Yes. And Schmidt hadn't come on board in a full capacity? Except the first Ireland test when Fozzie was out with covid19. And we won.....
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@canefan said in All Blacks v England:
Yes. And Schmidt hadn't come on board in a full capacity? Except the first Ireland test when Fozzie was out with covid19. And we won.....
I didn't think we were allowed to mention that
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@canefan said in All Blacks v England:
@nostrildamus said in All Blacks v England:
@Chris-B said in All Blacks v England:
The Major is correct about what I intended to mean. We beat everyone we played this year (except England), even though we also lost to Ireland, SA and Argentina.
We surprisingly had a crap 2022 home record or is that a 2022 pre-Jason Ryan record?
Yes. And Schmidt hadn't come on board in a full capacity? Except the first Ireland test when Fozzie was out with covid19. And we won.....
just quietly, if Schmidt is in charge of our attack, then he is failing because our attack fucking sucks
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@mariner4life attack strategy = do something amazing and score....if cant, kick away
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@mariner4life Said it before, ABs attack becoming predictable and pedestrian - treading an eerily similar path to Ireland when Schmidt was in charge there
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@Kiwiwomble said in All Blacks v England:
@mariner4life attack strategy = do something amazing and score....if cant, kick away
to be fair that is a strategy that most top teams play to now as, apart from set piece manipulations, it is getting harder and harder to break down defences and phases run risks of random penalties. Look at England's reasons for not having a crack at the end of the game. The short kick down the middle put them in an awkard situation of having to run some phases to get aligned for an attack and the risk of turnover or penalty was too high.
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Not saying improvements aren't needed but before Schmidt, the try do anything from everywhere approach that was in place before he came along was a complete failure, we couldn't even maintain our own ball. We were not able to consistently even score tries from lineout drives.. which we can now.
It does appear that the limited game plan revolves around an improved forward play and a 10 that can steer us around the park.. and sometimes that works, but with an inconsistent 10 that doesn't help either.
I loved that try from the kick pass against England to put Reiko away (although I don't know how many failed kick passes I have seen this year), but the set piece try from the lineout against Japan was pretty spectacular. Would love to see more of that
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@mariner4life said in All Blacks v England:
@canefan said in All Blacks v England:
@nostrildamus said in All Blacks v England:
@Chris-B said in All Blacks v England:
The Major is correct about what I intended to mean. We beat everyone we played this year (except England), even though we also lost to Ireland, SA and Argentina.
We surprisingly had a crap 2022 home record or is that a 2022 pre-Jason Ryan record?
Yes. And Schmidt hadn't come on board in a full capacity? Except the first Ireland test when Fozzie was out with covid19. And we won.....
just quietly, if Schmidt is in charge of our attack, then he is failing because our attack fucking sucks
Just loudly, attack under Foster hasn't been that wonderful for any stretch either.
