All Blacks 2023
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Two Cents paints a good picture of how all the halfbacks are tracking.
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@Canes4life as soon as he said he's looking at five players and only looking at one guy from each team I bowed out.
Hope Mitch Drummond wins.
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@Bones yeah Drummond is an odd one to be fair but the stats show who's in form. Fakatava probably hasn't played enough rugby this year to be in the frame.
I'd take Smith, Weber as the top 2 and then Roigard because he offers something different. I think if Perenara was fit and played this year, he'd be the third due to experience and that point of difference to those smaller halfbacks.
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@Victor-Meldrew In fairness between 2016-19, Liam Squire played 24 tests and was very good.
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@friedrugby said in All Blacks 2023:
@Victor-Meldrew In fairness between 2016-19, Liam Squire played 24 tests and was very good.
Fair to people who overrate Squire. A handful of good, a couple of very good, mostly "meh" like most of the other options since Kaino.
If he was very good then so is Ioane.
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@friedrugby said in All Blacks 2023:
@Victor-Meldrew In fairness between 2016-19, Liam Squire played 24 tests and was very good.
No he wasn't. He feasted on a Wallaby team that had a huge player exodus following RWC 2015 and a Bok team in shambles under Coetzee in 2016-17 til Rassie was parachuted in to save the day.
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@Bones What a load of nonsense. Squire was consistently awesome and started when fit, unlike Ioane who has been in and out because he has been everything but consistent. You say I overrate Frizell, Squire etc. you majorly overrate Akira Ioane.
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Cooked takes!! Get your cooked takes here!
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@Stargazer said in All Blacks 2023:
@Bones So
sportsforums, byyourdefinition, are repetitive?Yes.
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@friedrugby said in All Blacks 2023:
@Bones What a load of nonsense. Squire was consistently awesome and started when fit, unlike Ioane who has been in and out because he has been everything but consistent. You say I overrate Frizell, Squire etc. you majorly overrate Akira Ioane.
I think you're missing the point, I don't really rate Ioane at all. In fact, I rate him about as much as Squire. Someone wise once said "let's not rewrite history"....
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@KiwiMurph Haha if ever the term 'flat track bully' was to be used on someone, it was Liam Squire. You'd see him everywhere when the side was up by 40-50 points, but couldn't find him when the side really needed him to stand up.
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My abiding memory of Squire was the 2016(?) loss to Australia in Brisbane, where he barely hit a tackle, did nothing at the ruck, just stayed on the sideline and was just ghosted on the ruck fringe. Probably the worst AB performance I have seen. Well, outside of Frizell against Argentina in 2020.
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My take on squire ,
Although he was starting ,he felt like a project ,an unfinished product, the cupboard was a bit bare and they thought he had all the physical attributes they wanted and would develop as they went .
Then it started to become obvious the graph wasn’t really going up much
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@kiwiinmelb said in All Blacks 2023:
Although he was starting ,he felt like a project ,an unfinished product, the cupboard was a bit bare and they thought he had all the physical attributes they wanted and would develop as they went .
Not just Squire. That epithet could apply to any number of ABs in the 6 role for the last 8 or so years.
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@Kruse said in All Blacks 2023:
@Stargazer said in All Blacks 2023:
@Bones So
sportsforums, byyourdefinition, are repetitive?Yes.
Yes.
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@nzzp said in All Blacks 2023:
@Kruse said in All Blacks 2023:
@Stargazer said in All Blacks 2023:
@Bones So
sportsforums, byyourdefinition, are repetitive?Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
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@Victor-Meldrew said in All Blacks 2023:
How long have we been looking for a new Kaino or have had a settled 6 - let alone a settled 6/7/8 combination? Beggars belief.
Does it though?
The way I see it is that they’ve tried a number of players, some given pretty decent stints to come good or fit in. Poor form, injuries, changes at 7 and 8 have all been contributing factors to why we haven’t settled.
Balance of the trio is important and physical attributes are critical, but IMO the blindside position has become the most difficult position to fill in a pack because there’s this mentality of “flexibility” in the position or a horses for courses approach. So often we hear, should it be a bruiser, a workhorse, a 6.5, a lock/6 type because of the lineout, a ranging ball runner.
Look at all the different players we have started there since 2000, Thorne, Randell, Flavell, Collins, Gibbes, Kaino, Lauaki, Rodders, Thomson, Read, Messam, Vito, Luatua, Dixon, Squire, Fifita, Frizell, Akira, Ardie, Barrett, Blackadder, Jacobson.
And not to mention the one offs like Tiatia, MacDonald, Holah, Masoe, McCaw, Papali’i.
Not just the sheer number of different players but the variety of skill sets is pretty different too.
