Who is to blame?
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@ACT-Crusader said in Who is to blame?:
@Chris-B said in Who is to blame?:
@No-Quarter said in Who is to blame?:
@Bovidae said in Who is to blame?:
@No-Quarter said in Who is to blame?:
In terms of cards we came out better off. Reece committed an obvious professional foul on our 22 in the first half, just flopping on the ball and hanging onto it to stop them clearing. Similar to Koroibete but probably worse and got away with just a penalty.
I said before I'm not a fan of the card happy refs but it didn't end up benefiting Aus.
The red card situation definitely favoured Australia. They only lost Swinton but the ABs lost Ofa and Akira. The consequence of that was that Lomax played much more minutes than he was expected to, and faded in the 2nd half, and it removed one of the better performing players through no fault of his own. Losing a front rower to a red card early in a game is always a double whammy.
That's a fair point. Though we didn't have to lose Akira. We just went with the cookie cutter "sub off your 6 if you lose a front rower" despite Akira being one of our most effective players on the park.
Teams train to play without a 6 though and I'm pretty sure it's been clearly thought through that that is where you can best hide the gap.
I guess you could have chosen Ardie instead, but that would be losing one of our best players over the past couple of years for a guy on debut who had had a bright 20 minutes.
I don't think it's a very valid argument.
And yes Sevu was having a stinker but you don’t replace a back in that circumstance unless you are willing to have a forward defend in the backline at set piece.
we took Kaino off for SBWs explosion against the Lions didn't we? That says pretty much everything.
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@mariner4life said in Who is to blame?:
@ACT-Crusader said in Who is to blame?:
@Chris-B said in Who is to blame?:
@No-Quarter said in Who is to blame?:
@Bovidae said in Who is to blame?:
@No-Quarter said in Who is to blame?:
In terms of cards we came out better off. Reece committed an obvious professional foul on our 22 in the first half, just flopping on the ball and hanging onto it to stop them clearing. Similar to Koroibete but probably worse and got away with just a penalty.
I said before I'm not a fan of the card happy refs but it didn't end up benefiting Aus.
The red card situation definitely favoured Australia. They only lost Swinton but the ABs lost Ofa and Akira. The consequence of that was that Lomax played much more minutes than he was expected to, and faded in the 2nd half, and it removed one of the better performing players through no fault of his own. Losing a front rower to a red card early in a game is always a double whammy.
That's a fair point. Though we didn't have to lose Akira. We just went with the cookie cutter "sub off your 6 if you lose a front rower" despite Akira being one of our most effective players on the park.
Teams train to play without a 6 though and I'm pretty sure it's been clearly thought through that that is where you can best hide the gap.
I guess you could have chosen Ardie instead, but that would be losing one of our best players over the past couple of years for a guy on debut who had had a bright 20 minutes.
I don't think it's a very valid argument.
And yes Sevu was having a stinker but you don’t replace a back in that circumstance unless you are willing to have a forward defend in the backline at set piece.
we took Kaino off for SBWs explosion against the Lions didn't we? That says pretty much everything.
Yep and Laumape came on.
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@ACT-Crusader said in Who is to blame?:
@mariner4life said in Who is to blame?:
@ACT-Crusader said in Who is to blame?:
@Chris-B said in Who is to blame?:
@No-Quarter said in Who is to blame?:
@Bovidae said in Who is to blame?:
@No-Quarter said in Who is to blame?:
In terms of cards we came out better off. Reece committed an obvious professional foul on our 22 in the first half, just flopping on the ball and hanging onto it to stop them clearing. Similar to Koroibete but probably worse and got away with just a penalty.
I said before I'm not a fan of the card happy refs but it didn't end up benefiting Aus.
The red card situation definitely favoured Australia. They only lost Swinton but the ABs lost Ofa and Akira. The consequence of that was that Lomax played much more minutes than he was expected to, and faded in the 2nd half, and it removed one of the better performing players through no fault of his own. Losing a front rower to a red card early in a game is always a double whammy.
That's a fair point. Though we didn't have to lose Akira. We just went with the cookie cutter "sub off your 6 if you lose a front rower" despite Akira being one of our most effective players on the park.
Teams train to play without a 6 though and I'm pretty sure it's been clearly thought through that that is where you can best hide the gap.
I guess you could have chosen Ardie instead, but that would be losing one of our best players over the past couple of years for a guy on debut who had had a bright 20 minutes.
I don't think it's a very valid argument.
And yes Sevu was having a stinker but you don’t replace a back in that circumstance unless you are willing to have a forward defend in the backline at set piece.
we took Kaino off for SBWs explosion against the Lions didn't we? That says pretty much everything.
Yep and Laumape came on.
no wonder we fucking lost.
actually, as another black mark on the many, many marks of TJP's career, if A Smith played 80 that day, we win.
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@mariner4life one thing I faintly remember was when Vunipola got carded in the second half, I don’t think there was a scrum for a while so they weren’t forced to make a sub close to the time before he was able to come back on or be fully replaced.
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@MN5 said in Who is to blame?:
@NTA said in Who is to blame?:
@mariner4life said in Who is to blame?:
Okay I've just watched skinny Ioane carry on after a try, and he's heading for the top of the list.
And he did his stupid put-down again. Did he have a bad experience actually touching the ground as a kid?
If he bombs another try because he drops it in this fashion, does he get dropped for good?
His carry on was enough to make even Jeff Wilson blush.
Cullen just gave a bit of a wink after beating seven Scots defenders back in 96.
But I guess it was only Scotland
We had to put up for years with Wilson carrying on like a twat after scoring tries, with barely a murmur, now a dude with the last name Ioane does it and it's the end of the world.
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@chimoaus said in Who is to blame?:
I blame whoever sorted out the Aussie scrum, it has been a fucken long time since they held their own, and dare I say they dominated a few.
their scrum has been good for a couple of years. The found a bunch of really strong props, and got proper beef behind them. Even as far back as 2015 their scrum was solid. It's just now got even better, even without their premier locks.
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@mariner4life said in Who is to blame?:
@chimoaus said in Who is to blame?:
I blame whoever sorted out the Aussie scrum, it has been a fucken long time since they held their own, and dare I say they dominated a few.
their scrum has been good for a couple of years. The found a bunch of really strong props, and got proper beef behind them. Even as far back as 2015 their scrum was solid. It's just now got even better, even without their premier locks.
True, I also think the scrum penalty they won was with 7 players.
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All I know is that Ardie or Akira would have looked much more comfortable lining up with the backs than ALB looked packing into that scrum.
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@Nepia said in Who is to blame?:
@MN5 said in Who is to blame?:
@NTA said in Who is to blame?:
@mariner4life said in Who is to blame?:
Okay I've just watched skinny Ioane carry on after a try, and he's heading for the top of the list.
And he did his stupid put-down again. Did he have a bad experience actually touching the ground as a kid?
If he bombs another try because he drops it in this fashion, does he get dropped for good?
His carry on was enough to make even Jeff Wilson blush.
Cullen just gave a bit of a wink after beating seven Scots defenders back in 96.
But I guess it was only Scotland
We had to put up for years with Wilson carrying on like a twat after scoring tries, with barely a murmur, now a dude with the last name Ioane does it and it's the end of the world.
People didn’t have the fern or stuff.co.nz to vent their rage at Wilson, they just had to whinge to whoever was standing next to them at the pub
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@Rancid-Schnitzel said in Who is to blame?:
All I know is that Ardie or Akira would have looked much more comfortable lining up with the backs than ALB looked packing into that scrum.
100% - Ardie could have defended in the backline if needed, especially closer in - dare I say it at 12...
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@No-Quarter said in Who is to blame?:
@Rancid-Schnitzel said in Who is to blame?:
All I know is that Ardie or Akira would have looked much more comfortable lining up with the backs than ALB looked packing into that scrum.
100% - Ardie could have defended in the backline if needed, especially closer in - dare I say it at 12...
And date I say done a better job than Laumape... 😉
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@Nepia said in Who is to blame?:
@MN5 said in Who is to blame?:
@NTA said in Who is to blame?:
@mariner4life said in Who is to blame?:
Okay I've just watched skinny Ioane carry on after a try, and he's heading for the top of the list.
And he did his stupid put-down again. Did he have a bad experience actually touching the ground as a kid?
If he bombs another try because he drops it in this fashion, does he get dropped for good?
His carry on was enough to make even Jeff Wilson blush.
Cullen just gave a bit of a wink after beating seven Scots defenders back in 96.
But I guess it was only Scotland
We had to put up for years with Wilson carrying on like a twat after scoring tries, with barely a murmur, now a dude with the last name Ioane does it and it's the end of the world.
Re: Wilson - you weren't within shouting/heckling/mocking distance of our student flat then
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@No-Quarter said in Who is to blame?:
@Rancid-Schnitzel said in Who is to blame?:
All I know is that Ardie or Akira would have looked much more comfortable lining up with the backs than ALB looked packing into that scrum.
100% - Ardie could have defended in the backline if needed, especially closer in - dare I say it at 12...
Looks like Eddie reads the Fern and is going to move a forward into the backs
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NZH Paywall, posted cos the numbers back up my feeling around the ABs. Although I would've gone back to Hansen failing with the Lions and not moving on as originally planned.
Tri-Nations rugby: Gregor Paul - The moment the era of All Blacks dominance ended
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The numbers are starting to tell the story that a great All Blacks era has come to an end. If it feels that the team are struggling to win with the same conviction and regularity as they used to, it's because they are. If it feels like the decline began after the All Blacks lost an entirely winnable test against South Africa in 2018, it's because it did. The numbers produced in the last 20 tests are confirming what has been apparent for the better part of two years now – which is that the All Blacks are experiencing a slow erosion of greatness.
Between late 2009 and September 2018 they produced scarcely believable figures. They were winning 90 per cent of their tests – never lost consecutively and found the most remarkable ways to salvage tests they had no business winning. After losing to South Africa in Hamilton 2009, the All Blacks embarked upon a decade of excellence. Three times in the next four years they came within a whisker of setting a record for consecutive test victories before they finally did it in 2016. In that whole period between the defeats to South Africa in 2009 and the loss in Wellington in 2018, the All Blacks won 108 of 120 tests which meant they were undefeated 91 per cent of the time they played.
The record since the All Blacks lost to South Africa in 2018 is a long way off that. They have played 23 tests, lost five and drawn three. Their win ratio is 65 per cent and if we narrow the focus further and look at it since they lost to Ireland in November 2018, it is slightly lower again. We have to go back to 2008-2009 to find a similar data set to the one produced since November 2018. In 2008 the All Blacks lost consecutive tests in the Tri-Nations and then the following year, they lost to France in Dunedin before losing three times to South Africa. Statistically, at least, it feels as if we are back in a similar zone to the one in 2009 and yet the potential of the current team and some of the rugby they have produced hints at them being a legacy generation.
The All Blacks of 2009 were held together by Richie McCaw, Ma'a Nonu, Conrad Smith, Mils Muliaina and an emerging Kieran Read with a fully restored Daniel Carter dragging them out of mediocrity when he returned from injury later in the year. The potential of that team was hard to see in 2009 and it took the arrival of Owen Franks, Sam Whitelock and the renewed confidence of Jerome Kaino to transform the pack and the selections of Israel Dagg and Cory Jane to give the backs the range of skills they needed to start ripping teams apart. The potential of the current team seems infinitely higher and easier to pick. The results haven't been great and allude to this being a team in decline but maybe it's a case of a team being rebuilt and having been through the difficult process of learning how to win tight games by a process of losing them first.
The All Blacks have been in transition since the middle of 2018. They started to see a handful of players such as Ben Smith, Owen Franks, Ryan Crotty and Sonny Bill Williams regress and the new ones such as Jack Goodhue, Richie Mo'unga, Nepo Laulala and Jordie Barrett battle to find their way into test football. Because of form and injury, they had to chop and change their set-up, never quite sure of their preferred line-up, with the picture further muddied by the fact they were short of a genuine blindside.
The defeat in Brisbane was one of the poorer All Blacks displays of the last two years such was the lack of control, patience and discipline and as much as that illustrates a lack of maturity and mental resilience, it also highlighted that the selectors had overdone the changes in regards to the personnel. And paradoxically, while that cost the All Blacks in Brisbane, it will presumably have the longer term benefit of having established what the first team now looks like and has paved the way for Ian Foster to spend the next three years refining it and building their individual and collective experience.
So the question is whether the numbers point to the nadir having been reached and the future being considerably brighter than it may seem or whether the All Blacks are still in the midst of a decline that has some way to go yet before the collective experience is built to the point where they can win more regularly than they currently are.
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@nzzp said in Who is to blame?:
@No-Quarter said in Who is to blame?:
Overall I think we are still very vulnerable and we don't react particularly well when things aren't going our way. I think teams will back themselves to play basic, aggressive rugby and wait for us to start making mistakes
That is hard to do well for 80 minutes though. Accurate rush defences are bloody hard to break down, but hard to get right. I hope someone will find a way of unlocking them, and it'll be attack happy again, with good rugby being rewarded.
I still think it's Lions 1 - slashing diagonal runs near the base of the breakdown that'll get them. Have supporters, just make the defence go up and back, upd and back
Yep that shooter has to work pretty hard to keep going up and back when he's not the one making a tackle. Eventually, he's likely to find himself offside and conceding points for his team.