All Blacks vs Springboks - Twickenham
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@His-Bobness said in All Blacks vs Springboks - Twickenham:
@Dan54 My thoughts too. I knew a pasting was coming while watching the anthems. They weren’t up for this at all. And the Springboks clearly were. Mindset, attitude and mental strength are still the key underlying problems, which gets back to my earlier post about the Foster effect. I think he wants to be everyone’s mate, which is fatal for a head coach.
Ties in with my post below.
Too nice to his squad....Waaaaay too nice to refs both in the build up to and after games. Be magnanimous sure, but we are being led a merry dance by the Rassies, Farrells, Sextons and Eddie Jones of the world.
From the social media account right up to the head coach, we have had 6 or 7 years of sniffing our own farts and falling over ourselves to be the good guys on and off the pitch. Rassies video whether you like it or not, turned that Lions series. Simple things like mentioning how Kolisi was not afforded the same audience with the ref as the opposition captain.
The Mako Vunipola smash on Barrett in the same game as the SBW red in 2017 (with differing sanctions) followed by the "we have a deal" Garces special the following week and the resultant shoulder shrugs from our leaders and coaches showed the seeds had been sewn. We went from a team with a 100 year invisibility cloak on, to one who gets carded more than everyone else in the space of a few years up to and including the Taa'vao/Andrew Porter fiasco which again resulted in another bungled home series. And Foster still had nothing to say.
We have turned the other cheek on and off the pitch for too long.
The coaching should be ruthless and the players should be ruthless. Mark Robinson similarly showed a lack of ruthlessness. Kite flying and taking the temperature of the nation before making decisions. Sack him or back him.
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@Steve Agree. The wanting to be seen as the good guys stems I think from the Silver Lake private equity takeover of the All Black ‘brand’. They’re morphing into a marketing concept masquerading as a rugby team. There’s a lack of smarts from Foster, which as you say stands in stark contrast with the gamesmanship, media trolling and outright skullduggery that his counterparts among the other leading Test nations so readily deploy. We see it on-field too, with the Springboks’ wily gamesmanship on display with the fake injuries, time wasting and, in this last test, the lineout tactic that drew the ABs into getting penalised in their maul defence. The ABs and the term ‘nice guys’ don’t go together, but Foster has been determined to seem reasonable and affable and malleable. That’s infected the entire team’s mentality. No sense of ruthlessness. No hard edges. Just flaccid.
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@His-Bobness said in All Blacks vs Springboks - Twickenham:
@Steve Agree. The wanting to be seen as the good guys stems I think from the Silver Lake private equity takeover of the All Black ‘brand’. They’re morphing into a marketing concept masquerading as a rugby team. There’s a lack of smarts from Foster, which as you say stands in stark contrast with the gamesmanship, media trolling and outright skullduggery that his counterparts among the other leading Test nations so readily deploy. We see it on-field too, with the Springboks’ wily gamesmanship on display with the fake injuries, time wasting and, in this last test, the lineout tactic that drew the ABs into getting penalised in their maul defence. The ABs and the term ‘nice guys’ don’t go together, but Foster has been determined to seem reasonable and affable and malleable. That’s infected the entire team’s mentality. No sense of ruthlessness. No hard edges. Just flaccid.
Exactly, the ticket is 100 quid, the jersey is a 100 quid , the TV subscription is x per month.
Then im sitting there angry about some on field issue and he potters out after the game to say something non committal like "we will look for clarification in that space" instead of saying "Barrett didn't touch Marx's head on any angle I've seen, but yeah I have seen them given, similarly Vermuelen was slapping the head off Jacobsen and the officiating team kept schtum so we will seek clarification on that". SAY SOMETHING. Sew seeds. Create a narrative.
None of the other tier 1 coaches and captains are playing fair on and off the field. The refs are getting harangued. Our stoicism in the face of any perceived shafting is getting us nowhere.
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@Duluth said in All Blacks vs Springboks - Twickenham:
@Steve said in All Blacks vs Springboks - Twickenham:
similarly Vermuelen was slapping the head off Jacobsen
It was his back. Stop being a sore loser
We were out played
The third one 100% clatters him on the head.
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Not the be all and end all but playing with 7 Forwards against the Boks forward pack did not help it made the Job a lot tougher, that was One of many factors.
Both hookers could not throw straight.
We couldn't hold there scrum with 7 forwards
Passive clean outs at ruck and maul time Scott Barrett really the only one who did that and he missed his target and got carded.
Lack of aggression in our carries.
Our Captain looked shell shocked.We look like we were going though the motions to be honest, a real lack of intent,I have seen that before during the last 3 years.
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Agree with all of that
In general I just don't think our pack is that good. It's competitive but we struggle when the game is dragged into an arm wrestle. We only have one style of play
I think the core problem is SR. The game is refereed differently at that level therefore what works at that level doesn't always apply to Test level.
For instance one of the higher rated forwards in NZ almost never enters through the gate. In SR the attacking team is given so much leeway so he never gets called. When he's in the Test side he concedes a lot of penalties and NZ fans complain about pedantic refs
The positives of SR are there too. If we do manage to get quick ball we play pretty rugby and run away with matches. It's just a lot harder to get quick ball because of the higher quality opposition and refs that enforce the laws
At least it's a long tournament so we might be able to adjust. Otherwise it will be feast or famine from week to week. As it has been for years
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Yep spot on,We are not conditioned for that hard Grind arm wrestle type game.
SR has to change then but I can not see that happening.
Maybe a global Club championship may help some what, even it is only 2 or 3 of our SR teams qualify for it. -
We’re in a bit of a bind, then. We stuck in an ever narrowing competition with Australia, which needs pretty, free-flowing rugby with lots of tries to compete in a crowded winter sports market. Northern Hemisphere-style grindfests, with the referee blowing the pea out of the whistle, won’t sell in this television dominated market. And without the South African teams offering a point of difference anymore, the NZ teams are locked into that style. The Silver Lake cash will run out eventually and in the meantime the brand will be gradually destroyed. But in the nature of private equity investment, they will extract every drop of remaining value before they inevitably pull out. Sad, but true.
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Mix up the refs. Some NH ones come down, we send some of ours north for a few weeks
5 teams run from the top down doesn’t encourage innovation. It’s great if the style being imposed from the top is the right choice
More independence for the SR sides would be good. Let’s have a NZ team playing like the Boks
Maybe more than 5 teams too…
Getting way off topic now
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@Duluth said in All Blacks vs Springboks - Twickenham:
For instance one of the higher rated forwards in NZ almost never enters through the gate. In SR the attacking team is given so much leeway so he never gets called. When he's in the Test side he concedes a lot of penalties and NZ fans complain about pedantic refs
Who are you talking about there?
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Gregor Paul has a go at over-zealous officiating.
Gregor Paul: Rugby World Cup looks set to be hijacked by pedantry, fakery and group-think
Opinion: The biggest loser on Saturday was potentially the global rugby fraternity.
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Plenty of things can go wrong by agreeing to play our biggest nemesis as a warm up match. Or go right, if you get it right.... But we didn't get this one right
Still prone to brain snaps under pressure
Roigard probably best number two, but will sit behind the ginger unless injury occurs.
Hoping Lomax heals quickly from that nasty gash, wonder if he will be called hermy in camp?
Is the balance of the squad right? Still not sure.A timely reminder you're only as good as your last game and players need to keep their head in the game, just can they correct it in time?. We all know that they can, but we have also seen at times they tend to double down on stupid plays even when they know they shouldn't.
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@bayimports said in All Blacks vs Springboks - Twickenham:
Roigard probably best number two, but will sit behind the ginger unless injury occurs.
Even Foster isn't that dumb - is he?
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I think a lot has to do with what the referee focuses on early and we are caught out by starting with what works in super rugby when others play NH style with an NH ref.
The slowing down of the game and the cunning way the Boks played the ref meant that we hardly got a look in by trying super rugby tactics.I thought our defence under the constant pressure was very good indeed. Missing an easy penalty would have been a confidence drainer as would yielding intercepts to retreating players.
I wonder if Will Jordan could run closer to inside players to make it harder for defenders to disrupt our chain moves?Looks to me like squad balance is very wrong now. Telea is a lock in with his tackle breaking ability. And we may need a bench player who has strong clearing kicks much more than another power winger.
Far more need for another 6 or lock or both now. Unless we address this I can see France Boks and Ireland with a 6 2 bench against overpowering us.
Maybe we will have learned enough from this loss to make some radical changes needed for the challenges ahead. I hope so.
