All Blacks vs England I
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Now rewatched first half.
Must say that, taken in isolation, most of the Fern whinging is excessive.
ABs ought to have been 10 up after 40. As Ray noted, several opportunities not enforced. Common themes not drawing and passing or passing to someone in worse position. Rieko the chief culprit.
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Q3 rewatch.
Scrappy. Scrum use it own goal. Could have been out of our half. Bad Smith miss.
Then good English period for about eight minutes. Passing straight to two out off rucks found holes twice, and with yardage gained ABs forced to narrow defence, which England took advantage of very well.
50-60 three soft English penalties, one of which led to three points.
DMac high kicks very good except at 60 after his blood nose. Main failing two poor Taylor throw ins, one from very promising position. Bench seemed to add some energy. -
Mounga has now opened up about coming back to NZ and playing for the ABs again.
I’m not sure if he is back earlier than his contract allows but if we can have DM develop as an international 10 with 25-30 starts at 10 under his belt and the Richie comes back to NZ, then that would be a pretty good outcome for us.
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slow motion of the JB cleanout by the way - it looks legit. Was partway through the first half and at the time I thought he may be in trouble ... but it looks like a big bloke smashing a smaller bloke. Chapeau.
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@pukunui said in All Blacks vs England I:
@nzzp said in All Blacks vs England I:
Finau missing by the look of it - confirms the eye test a bit
Worth noting he was only on for 60mins. So would have finished higher on various stats if he kept the same rate up.
Only his second or third test so we shouldn’t expect Kaino mkII straight away.One thing I noted on flicking through the game again was that he was standing just infield of - and was the first to arrive - to congratulate Reece when he scored from the cross kick. So may have been being used out wide a bit.
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While I hate to say it honestly the AB's looked pretty much like the Chiefs did all SR season, a forward pack that can't go forward so the game descends into trying to score from broken play or throwing it to Dmac and hoping that something would happen.
Our scrum was good but our line-out faultered on attack when it mattered to help put the game away.
Seemed to be quite a disconnect between our carriers and cleaners, often the worst thing the carrier could do was get go forward as they'd get isoloated. I hope it's just a team struggling to adopt a new attack pattern and get themselves in the right place - though I saw a lot of this under Fozzie too...
Credit where credit is due Perofeta had a magnificent game, I didn't agree with him being in the team but he was one of our best out there that night.
While DMac's kicking game wasn't good if you've run 10 phases into a brick wall and are kicking to a well set back 3 just sitting there waitng for you to kick then there's not much you can do except try and beat them for distance. He wasn't getting much help from anyone out there.
Our loose forwards were awful I thought, if Papps job is to clear the ruck and make tackles he should be at 6 not 7, Finau was missing, Adrie got 1 for the highlight reels but was missing at the ruck and on defence. Ineffective and garbled I would call it.
But credit to England they played clinically to their strengths (as a smart team should) and didn't let the AB's play well, they put pressure on, got their tries when they were on offer and with a more accurate boot could have won the game.
The AB's have an awful lot to do on their attack pattern and creating go-forward, we got 2 tries thanks to pieces of brilliance from DMac and Perofeta but the go forward and support of the ball carrier needs work on.
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@Windows97
Fair critique, yet we still won.
Wonder what happens when we get it right. -
@reprobate Yeah - for the most part, I thought DMac was very good. A few kicks in the latter part of the second half that were a bit aimless (my favourite play of the match was when he chip kicked and Scott Barrett suddenly realised that he was supposed to be Will Jordan and lurched forward - we somehow won a penalty, so it ended better than it deserved!). DMac's passing was quick and accurate.
I thought Perenara was surprisingly good - not Aaron Smith but there are few who are. Christie had a rough start - the de Groot penalty came from a lack of combination between him and Ardie - hopefully won't happen again. Got better as the game went on and a series of good box kicks towards the end.
It would be madness not to pick Ardie - we are a bit short of magic-makers in the current selection and he is one who regularly does special things. Less attempted intercepts would be good from him - if you go for it, you'd better get it. I wouldn't mind if they transitioned him back to 7, but not in this series.
Injuries will probably dictate who plays next weekend. TJ apparently proclaiming he's feeling fabulous - but, we need to wait to see whether he's Boobie Miles, or not (Friday Night Lights).
Finau with a failed HIA.
I wonder whether Clarke might have played on the left wing if he was fit - and wouldn't mind him there this week if he's recovered.
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@Frank said in All Blacks vs England I:
@Windows97
Fair critique, yet we still won.
Wonder what happens when we get it right.We'll win by 30 if we get it right, the obvious talent and finishing power is there, it's all the hard work required to break the shackles first is the bit we need to work on.
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@Chris-B said in All Blacks vs England I:
I wonder whether Clarke might have played on the left wing if he was fit - and wouldn't mind him there this week if he's recovered.
His owrk in the air, particularly on kickoffs is amazing. He'd be a lock for me to start
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I think it's a pretty simple fix for the AB's though, just get better coordination between our carriers and cleaners and our attack will start to click. I think we just set up too wide and were getting beaten by the english linespeed so the defenders we getting to the breakdown before the cleaners were. When that happends it's always going to be a tough day at the office. If we fix that we'll be golden.
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I am pretty excited to see what we look like with more games under our belts. DMac was putting guys in holes, but as pointed out, our support wasn't quite clicking, and it was clunky when we switched from forwards to backs.
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@mariner4life Yeah - little mistakes killed us.
We gave up several sucker penalties with a dominant scrum. Some lineout glitches also cost plenty of field position. DMac's non-kick. Ardie's forward pass when we'd opened them up. Some fumbles in the backline. Three chip kicks that weren't close to being recovered.
We also got a couple of seemingly fortuitous calls from the ref. I still haven't worked out how we won that last penalty to end the game - but my eyes aren't as fast as they used to be.
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@Chris-B said in All Blacks vs England I:
I still haven't worked out how we won that last penalty to end the game - but my eyes aren't as fast as they used to be.
I think (??!) that the ref considered the tackler moved forward rather than place the ball - which was why Tupou and Dalts fell over. But yeah, it looked weird. We couldn't see if either of them got hands to the ball as the ref was on teh other side of the ruck.
I'll take it though!
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