Ireland vs All Blacks (2018)
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Some thoughts on the game on the morning after..
Our tactics were poor with too many ineffective kicks and we rarely seemed to get decent possession when we went for the high ball option - yet we continued to kick right to the end....normally straight into the hands of an Irish player.
Did we do our homework? Wales have shown Ireland are vulnerable if you play wide and outnumber them at ensuing rucks. We didn't.
There were too many silly errors and some dumb penalties. In the past the team would reset by a few phases of fail-safe rugby to get their mind-set right. That didn't happen. Read and the leadership group need to re-focus.
Our scrum has gone backwards. It was pretty dominant in the RC but was poor in the 1st half. Improved when Nepo & Ofa came on.
We are definitely missing Sam Cane who may well be the key player for us next year. That said, Ardie has been immense.
Execution has been generally poor by AB standards this year. It's almost as if there's some collective lack of confidence going on.
The DMac, Beaudy, Mo'unga, Ben Smith conundrum. Hansen has so much talent but at some stage we need settled combinations. I think the best option is BB starting with Ritchie and DMac coming on for impact. That said, I'd love to see Ritchie starting a test or two with BB at fullback, then DMac on and BB moving to 10.
4 years after Conrad & Ma'a and we are still buggering about with midfield combinations, FFS.
We didn't think on our feet in this game and that's the really, really worrying bit. The game was there for the taking in the last 20 minutes and we went into panic mode, were impatient and flustered.
No need to panic and better a crap performance exposing issues now, rather than in RWC2019, but there's a lot to work on.
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@mofitzy_ said in Ireland Vs All Blacks:
and got extremely lucky with England
I don't think it was luck. We reset our thinking and pulled ourselves back against England in poor conditions and hung on for a win, even when we weren't playing well.
That didn't happen against Ireland.
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@victor-meldrew said in Ireland Vs All Blacks:
I don't think it was luck. We reset our thinking and pulled ourselves back against England in poor conditions and hung on for a win, even when we weren't playing well.
That didn't happen against Ireland.
An important point. Read got the plaudits after the England win by going for the scrum at the end of the 1st half instead of settling for a penalty. So he needs to cop any criticism in this loss because there was a lack of leadership and direction out there.
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@akan004 said in Ireland Vs All Blacks:
They should have brought him on much earlier than they did and it should have been for Read.
Yeah, I couldn't believe they waited so long to bring Todd on. Just to change things up, even if it meant subbing BBBR or Whitelock and moving Barrett into lock.
He's no longer the ABs good luck charm now.
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For those advocating for Laumape for Crotty, while I understand the sentiment, particularly offensively, it's worth a 2nd viewing of the first half of this game. Crotty was an absolute machine on D. Absolutely everywhere, must have had 12 tackles in the half
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Agreed. Crotty's (and Goodhue's) defence kept us in this game at times
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@bones said in Ireland Vs All Blacks:
@nta the first scrum penalty against us looked wrong I thought. ABs all pushing straight and remaining that way, with Ireland shearing off towards their loosehead side.
It happens a fair bit - refs are often happy to go with "team moving forward" in this cases.
The only way to combat it: shear back.
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@dejo said in Ireland Vs All Blacks:
Pre match fern thread dominated by frivolous argument over whether Smith would have dominated in Marshall’s era and vice versa. Nothing like a loss against worlds best to get people talking about reality again.
Fucking Ferner Internet Warrior Fluffybunnies not focussed enough.
I blame YOU TSF!
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@mofitzy_ said in Ireland Vs All Blacks:
I'd say the reality is most AB fans have been acutely aware of the slide since we lost to then barely scraped by SA and got extremely lucky with England. Realistically we could have lost all those games.
If the loss to England a few years back was a pebble under the towel, this is a stalagmite.
Monolith
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If we are bringing back Nonu, we should really bring back DC.
I’ve never seen a 1st 5 that has the kicking game off both feet and the purchase he would get. We needed a player with that skill set last night.
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@act-crusader if we're bringing back Nonu and DC we may as well pull thr old fella out of retirement too. Come Richie your country needs you.
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@dejo said in Ireland Vs All Blacks:
Pre match fern thread dominated by frivolous argument over whether Smith would have dominated in Marshall’s era and vice versa. Nothing like a loss against worlds best to get people talking about reality again.
This week’s episode on TSF reality bites will feature, “If only Taine Randell was playing in 2018”
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@act-crusader said in Ireland Vs All Blacks:
@dejo said in Ireland Vs All Blacks:
Pre match fern thread dominated by frivolous argument over whether Smith would have dominated in Marshall’s era and vice versa. Nothing like a loss against worlds best to get people talking about reality again.
This week’s episode on TSF reality bites will feature, “If only Taine Randell was playing in 2018”
Dunno if you guys heard first time i posted it but Taine could only so 2 chin ups at Highlanders training which is less than fern fitness enthusiasts @NTA and @Rocky-Rock-Rockbottom
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Great atmosphere in the stadium, seemed like hardly any kiwis there but the Irish were super passionate and good sports. The noise in the last 10 / at the final whistle was immense, meant so much to them.
Overall for me the first 70mins felt like the first 25mins of the England game last week, just passive in everything we did and kicking far too much. Was waiting for the big "flip the switch" moment and it never came really, there was a bit more space in the last 10 and we sort of looked likely but made mistakes at crucial moments. As other posters said, giving Ireland a lead to defend with 10 to go they were always going to become superhuman and that basically happened. I'm sick of us always having to chase the game!
I watch us defend and think, if other teams gave us that much space, we'd score 50+pts every test. I just don't get it, we let teams across the advantage line with ease and then don't compete well enough at the ensuing rucks. So passive. That's way more of a concern to me than our suddenly impotent attack, which could be fixed with a bit more depth and punchy runners in the midfield. We seem too flat and too keen to go wide early.
As an aside, Aviva stadium looks like it's made of wax and one end was propped against an oven. I guess it's the local residents north who complained about their south- facing sunlight being blocked, but the whole thing looks ridiculous. An otherwise enormous stadium with one end having only 10 rows of seats and a cute little perspex window behind them. At least Eden Park / Twickenham aren't the only stadia stupidly located in a residential neighbourhood!
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@tewaio Yeah, really don't understand why we have such a passive line speed when the rush system is clearly a much more effective one. The only reason I can think of is that perhaps it is less taxing and it allows our players to be fresh late in the match, but the fact that most of the top teams employ a rush defence clearly tells you which method works better.
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