Barnes autobiography
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I don’t think 2011 squad was stronger than 2007.
It was the best squad that we had ever taken to a World Cup before.
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Nothing more enjoyable than reading a book about someone who had a life of privilege and then complains about how hard it all was at the end.
Of course the death threats are inexcusable, but he absolutely 100% would have known that any top-level referee would have got abuse and death threats, yet acts shocked, mortified, amazed that it happened to him.
If he'd wanted a life of anonymity then pick a career that gives you that.
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@DaGrubster Opinion. I think the '11 squad was more experienced, had more players in their prime and some of the new players were better than the options that we had in 07.
I also think the 95 squad is at least as good.
2015 is next level.
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Yeah it is probably splitting hairs comparing them.
I just thought 2007 was a very good squad with no real weaknesses and was the best squad we had taken to a World Cup to date.
As I told Will Carling the year before, it’s a squad of world class ‘young veterans’ - players with 50-60 caps that were still in their prime. He liked that ‘young veterans’ description!
Of course 1995 was great but it had Mehrtens and Kronfeld in key positions with 1 test each. Also that side was made at the World Cup.
2007 squad were outstanding for 2 years beforehand
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2007 the best squad ever, but not the best 15/23. That 2007 squad had an incredible spread of talent, and a ready made replacement for every position. But in hindsight the top side had a few weak points, and the "even spread of talent" meant far more selection tinkering than ideal.
2015 obviously the best team, just ahead of 1995 (the combination of those two is basically my all time AB team)
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@mariner4life said in Barnes autobiography:
@Catogrande said in Barnes autobiography:
who, funnily enough hardly get called out on an individual basis
i have far more bones to pick with the touchies than Wayne. The forward pass should have been picked up by the Touchie. There was the most blatant hands in the fuck penalty right in front of the touchie (Wayne was on the other side) that they just ignored. The three of them just put their whistle away that day. Weird.
Apt
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@mariner4life said in Barnes autobiography:
2007 the best squad ever, but not the best 15/23. That 2007 squad had an incredible spread of talent, and a ready made replacement for every position. But in hindsight the top side had a few weak points, and the "even spread of talent" meant far more selection tinkering than ideal.
2015 obviously the best team, just ahead of 1995 (the combination of those two is basically my all time AB team)
Sean Fitzpatrick wouldn't pick a single player from 1995 in his 2015 squad ...
... except himself.
Let's try a XV.
- Dowd (Woody old and crocked, Moody noob replacement)
- Fitzy
- Brown (Franks goes close)
- Retallick
- Whitelock
- Kaino (I mean Brewer?)
- God
- Read (maybe controversial to some but yeah)
- Smith
- DC
- Can't remember his name. Big Tongan chap.
- Nonu
- Smith
- Wilson
- Smith
10-5 split. More 95 than my gut feel thought would be.
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@mariner4life said in Barnes autobiography:
@Catogrande said in Barnes autobiography:
who, funnily enough hardly get called out on an individual basis
i have far more bones to pick with the touchies than Wayne. The forward pass should have been picked up by the Touchie. There was the most blatant hands in the fuck penalty right in front of the touchie (Wayne was on the other side) that they just ignored. The three of them just put their whistle away that day. Weird.
What if they did and Wayne ignored them as he's prone to do (you often hear him saying things like "no I saw it and it's ok").
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@Catogrande said in Barnes autobiography:
@booboo said in Barnes autobiography:
@Catogrande said in Barnes autobiography:
You could be right. Who do you think was paid not to take a drop goal?
That's an irrelevant argument, the whole "we had our chances" thing.
We didn't have all the chances we should have had.
It’s our right dammit. OUR RIGHT!
Yeah, you didn’t get the breaks. Everyone knows that. Just like everyone knows that sometimes not getting the breaks is just sport. You didn’t get some of (ok well quite a few) that maybe you should have, but you still had chances; that is not irrelevant.
There are many times when you guys have got the breaks. That’s sport too.
The thing here though is we all tend to fix on the breaks we don’t get, it’s just that some of us don’t dwell on it that long.
Oh and Deans did score! 😀
I'm bored so I'll have another crack at this 😜
Don't agree at all when it comes to this match, it's an absolutely massive statistical outlier at every level of the game. That the IRB refused to even investigate is fishy as well. Why would they not even look at a game like that when so much money is on the line?
The talk about the forward pass from the media and fair weather fans after the match really helped take the focus away from those numbers Henry talks about in his book. I truly, 100% never gave a flying fuck about that pass, forward passes are missed all the time.
However, a team that is getting so completely dominated that they had to make 333 tackles will give away penalties every single time. It's not actually possible to be "disciplined" in that scenario unless you are OK with the other team easily racking up 50+ points. That's just the nature of the game, you get caught offside, coming in from the side, trying to slow the ball down etc because your team is on the back foot all game. Dominance like that leads to penalties or tries. The French were never going to just let us run up a score so they used every trick in the book and the ref turned a blind eye to it for sixty minutes. Sixty fucking minutes he didn't penalise the team getting completely fucked up in every area even once.
You just can't say with a straight face that game is just about "getting breaks". In cricket, games like that are investigated and they often find match fixing and black market betting at play. Why is everyone so certain rugby is immune to corruption?! Why would people not want that game to be properly investigated? It's never sat right with me.
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We talked about 2007 being the best squad to go to a World Cup.
87, like 95, was fully of young players yet to make a mark on international rugby. 2007 were dominant for 2 years prior.
87 was the most dominant side at a World Cup. No team got within 20 points of them. And they ushered in modern rugby👍
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@DaGrubster said in Barnes autobiography:
Actually just found it.
https://www.rugbydatabase.co.nz/team/refereeList.php?teamId=3
That is a fabulous table - especially if you sort by Win percentage.
I didn't realise what a fabulous referee Wayne Ericson was - he's become my all time favourite.
And Romain Poite - it just shows how one poor decision can tarnish a man's name!
I knew Kerry Fitzgerald was good. Stu Dickinson, Alan Lewis, Tony Spreadbury - marvellous referees.
And at the other end of the spectrum a gallery of dodgy Jaapies. Ralph Burmeister, Eddie Hoffmeyr, Piet Robbertse, Oom Gert Bezuidenhout. Fuck ém. They deserved to lose the cricket.
We should never have let Wayne near that whistle in the final. We should have insisted the French roll out Romain - especially knowing how much he owed us.
I could have lived with Angus Gardner - who keeps saying he's crap!!!
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@sparky said in Barnes autobiography:
I don’t think he had a bad game in the final by the way.
Bigger issues were the outstanding South African defence and goalkicking and the All Blacks not quite being able to take their chances.
Im thankful that he's retired
His reffing in the final (in part due to his dreadful assistants) was so bad I stopped watching the test. For the first time ever.
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Listening to various pods featuring Barnes flogging his book, the impression is that he isn't bitter, got some things wrong and is a bit of a self promoter. Now getting rich off his book. Fair play to him, he hasn't let the haters get to him. Somehow I expected more "depth" of character.
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@W32 said in Barnes autobiography:
Listening to various pods featuring Barnes flogging his book, the impression is that he isn't bitter, got some things wrong and is a bit of a self promoter. Now getting rich off his book. Fair play to him, he hasn't let the haters get to him. Somehow I expected more "depth" of character.
might be a little harsh to judge someone as a self promoter...based of what you heard from them on a literal publicity tour for their book...thats kind of what anyone would come across like in that situation
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@Kiwiwomble I suppose that's true. Maybe I should read the book
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@DaGrubster said in Barnes autobiography:
We talked about 2007 being the best squad to go to a World Cup.
87, like 95, was fully of young players yet to make a mark on international rugby. 2007 were dominant for 2 years prior.
87 was the most dominant side at a World Cup. No team got within 20 points of them. And they ushered in modern rugby👍
Was never sure if we had a great team or the rest of world was pretty crap Grubs. I wandered up to Playford Park and watched Wales who were having a training run on way to Wellington. Some of the local boys put up some oppsition for scrum practice etc, including a couple of Wanerers front rowers and Athletic 'B's hooker, Quinnel who was coaching the Welsh forwards actually told them to lay off a bit as they were starting to give them grief. World rugby was pretty poor late 80s, ABs just turned up and trotted out and won as a matter of course.
Did have some good refs then though, Fitzgerald from Aus I always thought was good, Norling, Hawke etc were all good refs. Mind you we didn't have constant replays etc to ruin games. -
@W32 said in Barnes autobiography:
@Kiwiwomble I suppose that's true. Maybe I should read the book
jeez...dont think i would go that far
