All Blacks 2021
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@dagrubster Spot on. Great analysis. Best post I've read on the Fern in a wee while. Thank you!
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@kiwimurph said in All Blacks 2021:
To me ABs look better placed going into round 1 TRC this year than last year.
If you look at the likely AB starting XV for Bledisloe 1 it looks stronger than the same team for Bledisloe 1 last year with the exception of loosehead prop. Compare the outside back 3, midfield, loosies, locks.
Don't disagree, but the first 25-30 minutes of Fiji 2 show the weaknesses of this side. Our skills execution is patchy, and our lineout was terrible. I hope we show up and smash them, but if we don't go well, I suspect we'll see the same again from this side
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@booboo said in All Blacks 2021:
@nzzp said in All Blacks 2021:
@bones said in All Blacks 2021:
@kiwimurph Jesus what a shit show. I guess Fozzie thought what's good for the goose and decided to air his opinion publicly too. But probably a pretty poor option when you've just selected that guy in your team. Fucken hell.
Was a terrible decision by Foster. No winners are ever going to come out of that. Best you get is throwing a senior all black under the bus.
Molehill, meet mountain
It is an unusual u-turn for Foster and his "coaching" team, normally they prefer to select man-mountains and turn them into molehills.
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On a more serious note, the 'let them bash us up and then we will fix it for the second game' mentality has been happening since we've been playing Deans (anybody remember him?) so I think it was even pre-Foster. But I can't tell you how the coaching has greatly changed not just since Foster took over but also when he joined, (well perhaps some position / selection decisions are more farcical) so I'd also question whether continuity has actually been good for the ABs.
But yeah, I wonder where all the strategy/ideas are, we seem to have some for key games then let the other team bash us up every second or third game...Rope-a-dope? Wrong sport to try it in the knockout part of a RWC...As a point of difference though perhaps the forwards are as good as they can be and our real bone of contention should be the increasingly hit and miss backline? Because there we really should have enough talent. For knockout RWC games, apart from not picking Cane to start, and playing a non-specialist 6 against England in 2019 (and check out all the still-familiar names https://www.allblacks.com/news/all-blacks-team-named-for-semifinal-against-england/), was there much the coaches could do? Were there other forwards who could have/should have saved the day? From memory Jacobson was picked to be at 6 (but injured) not 8 so we didn't really have an alternative for Read, A Ioane was out of favour, in the backs R Ioane was out of favour (I think)...we perhaps don't really have depth in the forwards regardless of coaching...
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@nostrildamus said in All Blacks 2021:
was there much the coaches could do? Were there other forwards who could have/should have saved the day?
Losing Luatua overseas a couple of years earlier by selecting Elliot Dixon and Jordan Taufua over him comes to mind...
In the 6 jersey post RWC 2015 behind Kaino they basically put all their eggs in the Squire basket and then couldn't land on an alternative option - they selected a whole bunch of people but for a variety of reasons (sometimes injury) these players never ended up decent game time (Evans, Akira, Taufua, Dixon, Jacobson, Frizell, L Whitelock etc etc).
Basically the same story with Read and the 8 jersey (though more understandable as he was captain).
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@kiwimurph thanks for that, a name I forgot. I liked Luatua (and Vito, but perhaps he was going to leave anyway), and I think they have done ok overseas but not sure they would have made a huge difference. We are light in depth in props (who can scrum and make metres) and locking depth (here is hoping Retallick gets back up to speed, Whitelock can't do everything on his own and the miles on the clock would slow down a lesser mortal)..
Edit: and yes I never quite saw a longterm option in Squire, he was also a bit of a penalty magnet as I recall..
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As far as props go one guy I would like them to try is alex fidow. Dont play him but bring him into the squad to learn of some of the best. He offers something no others do. If they/ someone can teach him how to scrum he could become a weapon.
Having Franks next year hopefully will help tho...
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@mackerzzzz surely the likes of Norris, de Groot, Williams coming through are more worth putting work into?
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@mackerzzzz said in All Blacks 2021:
As far as props go one guy I would like them to try is alex fidow. Dont play him but bring him into the squad to learn of some of the best. He offers something no others do. If they/ someone can teach him how to scrum he could become a weapon.
Having Franks next year hopefully will help tho...
He would certainly need to learn how to scrum hes pretty shit at that.
I think you will find the 20 year old Crusaders props Williams and Newell have been targeted as future ABs a few years back.
They might come into contention in 2023. -
@nostrildamus Squire wasn't physical enough for an AB starting 6. He had a real super rugby style of play where he was like an early version of Luatua with how wide and loose he played. He was great when we were going well and loved getting his hands on the ball when we were on the front foot in games, but couldn't play tight enough when required and would go missing in bigger tests when the going got tough.
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@canes4life said in All Blacks 2021:
I said the same thing with Beaudy and Brodie but unfortunately we just don't have enough world-class players in those areas to ease them back in.
I wonder if Foster & co are so worried about the gap between Nugget and the rest ( I sure am) they thought including TJP was the best option.
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@victor-meldrew maybe so, TJ wasn't in the best form last year but he's better than Weber and Christie in my view even when he's not at his best. Aaron Smith is by far in a way our top option there so let's hope he remains relatively injury-free for most of the year.
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@african-monkey said in All Blacks 2021:
@nostrildamus Squire wasn't physical enough for an AB starting 6. He had a real super rugby style of play where he was like an early version of Luatua with how wide and loose he played. He was great when we were going well and loved getting his hands on the ball when we were on the front foot in games, but couldn't play tight enough when required and would go missing in bigger tests when the going got tough.
Yes and he was also carrying an injury and may have felt some social pressure but regardless I always had a hunch (says I with hindsight) his AB career would not be a long one. Definitely looked like a bruiser though.
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@canes4life said in All Blacks 2021:
@victor-meldrew maybe so, TJ wasn't in the best form last year but he's better than Weber and Christie in my view even when he's not at his best. Aaron Smith is by far in a way our top option there so let's hope he remains relatively injury-free for most of the year.
Speaking of halfbacks, has Tawera Kerr-Barlow retired or still playing in France? I think he is only about 30..
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@nostrildamus TKB is still contracted to La Rochelle.
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When the 3rd halfback is fucking Weber who is barely Super standard then it's hardly surprising they immediately throw TJP back in given his experience.
I'd have given the 3rd place to Christie, at least he's young and has the potential to improve. Weber is a waste of space.
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@dagrubster said in All Blacks 2021:
It’s really hard to gauge where we are at against the opposition we have faced over the last 2 weeks. But I guess most countries are in a very similar position in that regard.
The forwards have been the biggest issue for 3-4 years now and we seem to be in gradual decline there still, even though we have publicly acknowledged this is the area that we are focussing on to turn around and bring physicality back to our pack.
I haven’t seen any real evidence of this and I do wonder what would happen if we meet South Africa on a day when their pack is on fire.
Oh no, not those South African forwards again…
We’ve have many test matches against the Boks across a number of different coaching setups where their forwards have fronted and may have even had the upper hand, yet our backs have seemed to pull something out to get us the win.
And when we have had seemingly less physical packs than the Boks (Bakkies, Matfied, Venter, Burger, Smit etc) and yet we still win test matches.
I think the South Africa line is overplayed.
Agree with a couple of other things in your post though. And welcome back!
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Thanks!
I understand what you are saying and I agree with you. We have been able to hold our own and then some against Sa forwards for a long time. We just don’t produce the size they do on a regular basis.
The current SA team has been talked up to mythical proportions, mainly by the Uk press leading up to the lions tour and the fact they haven’t actually played since winning the rwc final.
But, it is not just them of course. I wonder where a neutral would rank an All Black pack in relation to the other top 10 sides
We have had a gradual decline in the quality of our forward play and forwards over the last 4 years. I haven’t seen any real signs of improvement yet.
Having said that, we clearly haven’t put out or best pack yet. If we manage to do that, I think it could be pretty competitive.
I am really looking forward to matching up against them as it will show us where we are at. Hopefully they can have most of their top squad available
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My thoughts on Bok forwards, is they tend to be bigger at times, but definitely more physical when they step up to test rugby compared to how same players go in super seemingly. In saying that perhaps they pick the more physical players for tests. For some reason we generally also tend to lift physicallity against the Boks, maybe it a mental thing? We don't often get a combo of raw physicallity and skill we had in the 2013 test(i think it was) where both teams seem to have it all(still probably best test I remember seeing since the turn of the century)
When we have struggled we have tended to still do alright because we have played at a probably higher skill level, which is a slight concern for me at moment, I am not convinced our players have shown the real high skill level at Super rugby the last year or 2, you can't learn it at AB level, you need to already have it. We just haven't seen teams play the quick passing game on the short side it seems.I will add the player we might miss a hell of a lot against Boks this year is Sam Cane, who plays the physical hard style required by the loosies against them, Jacobson will be good, I not sure about Akira or Frizell?
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Hey Danny, yes he will be a big loss against them. I thought he was very good last year as AB captain and is that type of player who will really lead from the front and put players on their arse time and time again. He even developed a bit of a running game too.
Papalii is a player in that mould as well and I think he would relish a chance against them.
Savea, papalii and Jacobson would be a good back row to match up against them.
The 2013 test was one of the best in recent memory for sure.
