Hansen
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Laughable. What exactly would they have offered? Franks can usually hold up a scrum on his teams ball...whoop de do. That's about it, he's a spent force at test level.
Their lineout lifting would have been handy today. They would have done a better job of protecting ruck ball to prevent turnovers.
Big lesson of today: don't surrender the advantage up front.
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Laughable. What exactly would they have offered? Franks can usually hold up a scrum on his teams ball...whoop de do. That's about it, he's a spent force at test level.
Their lineout lifting would have been handy today. They would have done a better job of protecting ruck ball to prevent turnovers.
Colour me unconvinced.
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Laughable. What exactly would they have offered? Franks can usually hold up a scrum on his teams ball...whoop de do. That's about it, he's a spent force at test level.
What exactly did Laulala, Ofa and Angus offer today? Penalties and at-best stable scrum ball.
Hah you've just perfectly described Franks' last half a dozen tests.
Edit: at least with the others there's a chance they might do something more.
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@Bones not quite sure Savea is an eight. I’d like to see a bigger body runner. I know he can make the yards but I think we need a big body eight and six in the traditional fashion. Especially when we are playing England and need to win in the forwards. England proved that we can’t get away with that up-tempo game against them.
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@Billy-Tell said in Hansen:
@Kirwan Exactly. And dropping Ioane and Cane was really aggravating.
Every 50/50 selection call had a Crusader bias too.
Seriously?!
This is the conspiracy theory nut job stuff.
Bridge, Reese, stupid Barrett at 6, Richie over BB at ten, broken Read persisted with, Taylor over Coles.
Each selection went the Crusaders way.
The loose forward mix was done so we'd still have an impact 7 off the bench. Frizzell was clearly never in their thinking, and Barrett had shown snippets of quality play at 6. This wasn't a ridiculous selection, but it didn't work out. Bridge and Reece were obvious starters. No one was complaining prior to the game. My only beef is why Hansen didn't manage Ioane better so he was an option. Richie only made one significant error and the Richie / BB combo was the ONLY ONE available to the selectors in their persistence with the dual play maker stuff. Taylor was also there on merit. And Read, well, that'll be debated for ages. I thought he was done a year ago but his form had built nicely this year until he crashed and burned by comparison in this game. Also, a lack of options to replace him (this is a Hansen succession issue, granted).
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@SynicBast said in Hansen:
Oh and by the way, this post 2015 team just isn't a patch on the previous side stacked with all-time greats. No-one could have done any better with the cattle available. Losing convincingly to a very good England side shouldn't be a major surprise to anyone given the patchy form shown throughout the 2016-19 era and the lesser standard of players available in general.
Given that we lost the best ever centre pairing, the GOAT, and two other all time greats after 2015, the level of expectation in terms of dominance was unfounded. I think it is time for a complete change now in AB management, but I will always rate Hansen - He's still one of the classiest people around in the way he thinks about the good of the game at a world level and also the way he has represented the ABs during some very major disruptive events.
Very well said.
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Laughable. What exactly would they have offered? Franks can usually hold up a scrum on his teams ball...whoop de do. That's about it, he's a spent force at test level.
What exactly did Laulala, Ofa and Angus offer today? Penalties and at-best stable scrum ball.
Hah you've just perfectly described Franks' last half a dozen tests.
Edit: at least with the others there's a chance they might do something more.
But they didn't. At all. Franks adds experience and mana.
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This thread has given me some serious PTSD and I’m having flashbacks to 2003!
But seriously, and putting aside the hyperbole (eg Hansen = Satan / Hansen = Jesus), I will look very favourably upon the Hansen era and I do think he has taken the All Blacks to another level, enhanced the legacy and all that other jazz. Simply put, the rugby we played between 2012 to Chicago 2016 was revolutionary and we may never see any team play with such skill consistently ever again. Yes, he’s had the cattle to do it, but his time steering the ship made much better use of the cattle, IMO, than anyone before him (I still think Henry didn’t get as much out of his team as he should have).
That being said, I think Hansen held on too long - he should have gone after the Lions as planned. Since we won in 2015, we’ve obviously had a lot of bad milestones - losses to Ireland, drawn Lions series etc - but we’ve also seen a drop off in skill levels, consistency, muddled selections, poor game plans, lack of calm under pressure and - more worrying than anything - a resignation or “c’est la vie” attitude in defeat. To me, it just looked like Shag had lost that absolute hunger to win and it seems to have rubbed off on his players.
Similarly, I’d argue he’s become a bit bored and overconfident with all the easy wins and has fallen into the habit of tinkering unnecessarily.
Every team at this Cup has a very clear style of how they play. Except for last week, we on the other hand have looked confused and unclear about which plan or style we are playing with in any given match.
I know this isn’t the match thread, but I’d like to make a couple of observations about the match today, which are demonstrative of the issues since 2016 that can be firmly directed at the coaching:
- We looked completely surprised that England started so well and made life very difficult for us - this was evident in the poor decision making and option taking from the start to the end of the match.
- We played with a game plan last week that would have beaten any team in the world if executed well. Yet, we shelved it completely today and went with the side to side shit from the opening whistle, together with stupid options like putting up bombs in their 22. The only time we put together some pods and ran at their forwards, Reece had acres of space, ran into the corner and we scored an easy try from the ensuing lineout. In short, we played into their hands, throughout that match.
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We got smashed up front today.
Leaving Owen Franks and Karl T out of the 31 look to have been massive mistakes.
Did we? I mean we didn’t even really take them on there, really challenge their fatties in the way we did last week. As I said above, the game plan (whatever it was) was absolutely fucked today. We belted the shit out of the Irish forwards last week and they’ve been the worlds best for 3 out of the last 4 years. Why the reluctance to try and do the same to the Poms? We totally could have made them work so much harder than they had to today, but instead tried to go around them without ever sucking in any of their defensive players.
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@sparky I very much doubt anyone in NZ rugby would have made much difference today, that England forward pack was in a different league. It feels like an ambush, keeping their powder dry
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@shark think we'll be fine at 8 with Savea being backed up by the various young guns shining through in super rugby.
So our best openside flanker and essentially the incumbent 6 now needs to switch to 8? No thanks.
Yeah true not like Savea gets much time at 8, I mean the ABs only shifted our best 8 in the last decade so Savea could run off the scrum. Cane is our best 7.
Experience and mana doesn't count for much when you can't keep up with play so just give away penalties instead.
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@junior yeah it was so weird and so frustrating. Like they were deliberately ignoring the space they were making in order to set something up later. That was the only way I could figure for why they were cutting back in, deliberately running down the sideline with no out. But no, guess they just were bottling it.
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@Bones so you'd have Savea play 6 and 8? Because we have issues at both spots. I'd play him at 7 with Cane off the bench. He's serviceable at 6 and 8 but not a long term answer in either position.
I'd go with big bopper 6, probably Frizell. Ardie and Cane.
Start to develop someone like Benn-Nicholas. Etc.
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@BerniesCorner said in Hansen:
@sparky I very much doubt anyone in NZ rugby would have made much difference today, that England forward pack was in a different league. It feels like an ambush, keeping their powder dry
I think that Richie McCaw at the top of his game would have made a difference. We would have been more competitive at the breakdown. We wouldn't have given away 18 turnovers. He would have rallied and focused his troops in the last 15 minutes.
Never saw the pack overrun as it was last night when the GOAT was on the park.
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Well mostly been said above. Absolutely gutted.
Can only hope for a cleanout and a better showing in 2020.
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