All Blacks vs Springboks I
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@frank As much as I'd like us to win the second game against the Boks, it's a dead rubber. I'd like the coaches to try things differently and not just in "easy" games. So not because Akira had a bad game, he's our best 6 at the moment, but just to try another combo. We're building for the RWC. It's not about this year.
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For me, I was glad Havili was there. He didn't thrown any Hail Mary's and generally was tidy under a lot of pressure. Reiko and Havili will be better for the experience. We really need ALB at centre and Reiko at 11 though. ALB has ample experience with limited space and time and that is the key.
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@nepia said in All Blacks vs Springboks I:
@kirwan said in All Blacks vs Springboks I:
@canefan said in All Blacks vs Springboks I:
@kirwan said in All Blacks vs Springboks I:
@nostrildamus said in All Blacks vs Springboks I:
@mn5 said in All Blacks vs Springboks I:
@delicatessen said in All Blacks vs Springboks I:
Where's all the love for Akira gone? And the hate for Blackadder?
The fern is fickle
Each week one Ioane has to get opprobrium on here, it is TSF DNA. The keyboard warrior equivalent of Highlander.
It’s pretty pathetic at times.
Certain posters ignore anything good they do and pounce on any mistakes.
Yet gloss over any mistakes their pet players make.
To be fair you were pretty hard on Blackadder last week and you are pretty gentle on Akira. Not a fault, we all gave our faves...
And as I said last week, when did our standards drop so far that that many missed tackles and penalties gets a pass?
If he did that this week that’s a loss.
Personally I thought you were hard on Blackadder last week (and I think I said not to judge him on one game in the thread) but it is interesting the flak Akira is copping this week for two handling errors in comparison to Blackadder's error rate last week.
Pushing the half back cost 3 points. Just one of many ( Jordie dropping ball when put into a gap ) that stopped momentum.
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@chris said in All Blacks vs Springboks I:
I don’t see how Tupaea gets votes, on the back of one turnover and 9 minutes on the field,he also missed 2 straight forward tackles.
match winning play. Recency bias. Didn't ahve time to cock up properly.
Edit: I didn't vote for him, but contemplated it
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@stargazer said in All Blacks vs Springboks I:
@frank As much as I'd like us to win the second game against the Boks, it's a dead rubber. I'd like the coaches to try things differently and not just in "easy" games. So not because Akira had a bad game, he's our best 6 at the moment, but just to try another combo. We're building for the RWC. It's not about this year.
I see where you are coming from but if Akira is physically OK to play then he needs to start for the same reason. He's still very inexperienced at this level and needs as many tests against the tops sides as possible before the pressure cooker of the RWC. He has the potential to be a very special player.
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@oompb said in All Blacks vs Springboks I:
@canefan not at all. I swear so loud my neighbour phoned the police. Hope they change this. There are world class players on our backline that needs to be unlocked.
I would not expect you guys to play like us. But there have been times over the last 30 odd years when you have been far more positive with ball in hand. And it's not like you don't have the athletes to be more positive. Not good for SA rugby to play like this and the RWC win and Lions series win have papered over the cracks
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@chris-b said in All Blacks vs Springboks I:
Error ridden game - full of terrible catching and terrible passing.
I'm going to give our boys a bit of benefit of the doubt that the ball must have been slippery in the humidity (was it humid?).
Surely it was too awful to simply be incompetence by almost everybody?
When the game was on it was about 23-24 degrees and 83% humidity.
Townsville is shorts and t-shirt all year round
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@nzzp said in All Blacks vs Springboks I:
@chris said in All Blacks vs Springboks I:
I don’t see how Tupaea gets votes, on the back of one turnover and 9 minutes on the field,he also missed 2 straight forward tackles.
match winning play. Recency bias. Didn't ahve time to cock up properly.
Edit: I didn't vote for him, but contemplated it
Seems harsh on Taylor, Jordan etc who did more hard yards than one play, same could be said for Taylor and Jordan without that try Game May have been lost.
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Well, settling down a bit now. Considering how badly we played, the ball we fed to teh opposition, the constant stream of scrum penalties, the number of dumb decisions we took, and the fact that we still won the Boks ahve to be nervous.
Next week will be different. Boks can't expect to even get close with that gameplan, but with Paps and Jacobsen to come back, RM coming out of quarantine, and hopefully ALB, it could be a very very different game.
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@tim said in All Blacks vs Springboks I:
@chris said in All Blacks vs Springboks I:
I don’t see how Tupaea
It was Havili who missed that tackle. I'd recognise that mullet anywhere.
Tupaea's acceleration was good.
No it was Quinn I just went back and looked no. 23
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@tim said in All Blacks vs Springboks I:
@chris said in All Blacks vs Springboks I:
I don’t see how Tupaea
It was Havili who missed that tackle. I'd recognise that mullet anywhere.
Tupaea's acceleration was good.
Tups has a bit of a mullet too.
I thought the vision clearly showed that it was 23 that missed the one on one.
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@act-crusader said in All Blacks vs Springboks I:
@tim said in All Blacks vs Springboks I:
@chris said in All Blacks vs Springboks I:
I don’t see how Tupaea
It was Havili who missed that tackle. I'd recognise that mullet anywhere.
Tupaea's acceleration was good.
Tups has a bit of a mullet too.
I thought the vision clearly showed that it was 23 that missed the one on one.
Yeah it was I checked the footage .
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Had to take an hour break after that to get myself together. Frustration doesn't even begin to start the way I feel about it.
Firstly, hats off the Boks, especially the back row. Kolisi & Smith made turnover after turnover. We obviously weren't expecting that, as we not once changed our approach to the rucks to counter this. Either that or we simply couldn't. Their line out was also far superior to ours, although that shouldn't really come as a surprise - been one of the strengths of their game for as long as I can remember.
On the AB side, Jordie played his best game in black. Diffused the kicks and then nailed it at the end to take the victory. Well played, I'm one of his detractors, but credit where it was due. Little doubt that DMac could have been as effective. Blackadder played well and I thought, line out aside, that Taylor was pretty strong around the field as well. Our ball carrying on the whole wasn't too bad into contact, but we were isolated too often and hence the Box back row coming in.
Reffing wise, it was good to see a much better usage of the TMO. No endless replays of pointless things to make decisions.
It's a shame that's where the positives end.
Firstly, SA, hang your head in shame with your time wasting bullshit. Complete shame. Every single stoppage having your suite of medics, water carriers run on to attend to the latest injury / blood / cramp has gotten incredibly boring. It's not part of the game, it just kills it. I get it. Your boys are fucking massive, and that's basically your game plan, therefore they need those breaks to get wind in the sails again. But that's not rugby, that's American Football. If you want to play that game, then just bloody do so. Complete joke, which Pearce never really got a handle on.
Nice segue into Pearce there, but seriously talk about inconsistent. Starts off being pedantic as all hell, which is not my type of ref, but whatever ... but then to just let shit go right in front of you and apply possibly the worst interpretation of advantages I've ever seen. For a knock on, when the advantage is 10 metres forwards with momentum, that's advantage over. Also, when the AB's have the ball in any spot in the opposition 22 .. never blow your whistle to go back for the penalty. Ever. Thats when holes exist which we want to take advantage. Sorry mate, you looked out of your depth with a complete lack of feel for the game.
As for the rest of the Boks. Why even play a backline? You just kick kick kick and when you do spin it, you look completely amateur. Completely. Balls into touch, passes to nobody ... I think if we'd played Reece we would have got an intercept or two.
As for the All Black's ... I'm not as disheartened as others. I thought we played ok. We generally got go forward ball, made our tackles and outside the one Bridge error, SA never looked like scoring a try. Made some bad decision errors, with not taking the 3's early in the second half. Needed some scoreboard pressure / rewards for time down their end. I doubt we'll make that mistake again. We really missed Aaron Smith, and Perenara was all over the show passing wise, and did little ball in hand. Backline looked better once Weber was on.
I had thought during the Argies matches that all the try-bombing would really cost us against SA, and it very nearly did. So many dropped balls, mistakes when trying too hard. Need to figure out the right time for the off-loads, man off into the gap. There were loads of gaps to be exploited, but our decision making in getting them / taking advantage when through them just wasn't there today. That's credit to SA as much as criticism of NZ really.
All in all, I think we should go better next week. All it takes is some work on decision making & ball retention. The Bok's are not fit at all, they rely on switching out the forward packs and excessive delays to get through the 80 minutes. IF we use that against them, then we should be just fine.
MOTM - Jordie.
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Far out what a tough crowd haha. Of course we weren't at our best, but the Boks didn't allow us to get into any sort of rhythm, with their up and in lines peed and their constant pressure at breakdown time gave us no real opportunity to settle, as well as their up and under tactic which gave us the shits all night and didn't allow us to play on the counter. We all know what the boks are about and their game plan worked a treat where guys like Akira were being forced into working hard in the tight with Savea. Blackadder was obviously our best loose tonight as it was his sort of test where the majority of the play was in the tighter channels. This is a great learning curve for us to not only come away with a good hard fought victory when being forced into playing a different style, but also for our younger forwards coming up against a big physical pack for the first time in their careers. They found it hard, but they'll come out of it stronger.
Something that I didn't like out there was us trying to create something off 1st phase at every set piece. Yes, it worked originally as we tried to speed the game up and caught De Allende and Am folding in on the decoy runners, but once they adjusted, we kept using it as our default play from set piece which the boks read quite easily which ended up forcing us into a high error count. Havili needed to just crash more and set up play in a game like this instead of going through the same set moves which had less effect as the game went on, and he should have been getting the message about that too as Rieko could also have assisted with crashing i feel. We needed to play tighter when plan a wasnt working.
I notice Brad Weber getting a lot of live and he was good too, added a bit of energy out there, but also a special mention to Pat Tuipulotu. He was everywhere on attack and defence, proving that he can be a valuable bench option at test level. Its definitely where he's best suited. Weber, Tuipulotu and Sotutu were easily our best coming off the bench, same can't be said for Ofa though. He gave away penalties at scrum time, stupidly collapsed a rolling maul, and dropped the ball while hot on attack. They targeted him at scrum time and as did a lot if thing for the boks tonight, it worked! He may have played himself out of a spot for next week after that performance with Lomax hot on his heels.
Sadly for fern favorite George Bridge, he was a disaster, one of the worst performances I've seen, possibly the worst since the late Sione Lauaki against the Wallabies in 2008. I have never ever been a fan of Bridge but even I fell into the trap of picking him to diffuse De Klerk, Pollard and Le Roux's high ball tactic and sure enough, it backfired badly. Having said that, I feel Reece would have had just as much of a torrid time out there so yeah, either way it was gonna be a tough night for our back 3, but the try he conceded was unforgivable as well as a few other simple bombs he put down. If ALB is fit next week, then Rieko can move to the left and Reece can move to the bench. I feel Reece could make a difference in the last 15-20 jn tight tests like these going forward. Again, we'll learn from the experience as our back 3 would never have encountered such a tactic of excessive high balls in their lives. Maybe we could use the Boks tactic that they employed against Wales in the 2019 WC semi of surrounding the catchers with about 5 forming a circle haha. We wouldn't dare do it, but we know that its coming, as does the whole world.
What we also have to remember is that this is a win against the World Champs without Whitelock and Aaron Smith, 2 of our most influential players. Smith's service and game awareness alone would have given our forwards an extra split second to crash over the advantage line and negate the Boks speed off the line and would have forced the boks into retreating a bit more, which would have allowed us more time to create some phases, given our cleaners more time to support our carriers and allow us to dictate the pace of the game a bit more. As a result, they hammered us in the tight, we couldn't string more than 1-2 phases at a time and we ended up going backwards a lot tonight as a result. He really is a huge loss to this side.
Huge credit to the boys for finding a way to win that when things were tough. We certainly look a lot more mentally tougher than previous seasons where we can find ways to win even in tough situations like tonight. We're not there yet, but we're slowly building into a world class team again.
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One of the things that was missing tonight was the straightforward ball carries from our forwards, particularly our locks.
It’s the Whitelock bread and butter play where he just takes it from 1st or 2nd receiver and just sucks in 3 or so defenders. Space creating plays. We were a bit lateral tonight.
Something to take away.
