All Blacks 2024
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@Kiwiwomble said in All Blacks 2024 - looking forward:
are we happy with nailing Taylor on to start, every week? i dont want a captain that isn;t a clear favourite for his position
That's why Jordie or Scott should be captain, most disparity between them and the next best options. Jordie is 4 years younger so I'd go for him.
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@Kiwiwomble said in All Blacks 2024 - looking forward:
i know im in the minority...but i wouldn't be too critical of a couple of losses this season if i could just see that they were trying to achieve something new, teething problems to implementing new gameplans or blooding new players
Thing is, I expect him to be a gun selector. He did that consistently for Crusaders - has an eye for talent. He can be really brave, and I expect he'll surprise us all with his squad - in a good way.
I'm wanting him to push the boat out a little, develop players to deliver a deeper squad than we have now and take a longer term view than we've had in the past as he has that luxury. And if there's a few losses on the way, then that's a price we'll have to pay.
I expect a pretty conservative first few Test squads but like @nzzp hope he'll bring in and persevere with players he thinks have a future - which why I find the Mo'unga and Havili stuff bloody puzzling.
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@Victor-Meldrew said in All Blacks 2024 - looking forward:
@Kiwiwomble said in All Blacks 2024 - looking forward:
i know im in the minority...but i wouldn't be too critical of a couple of losses this season if i could just see that they were trying to achieve something new, teething problems to implementing new gameplans or blooding new players
Thing is, I expect him to be a gun selector. He did that consistently for Crusaders - has an eye for talent. He can be really brave, and I expect he'll surprise us all with his squad - in a good way.
I'm wanting him to push the boat out a little, develop players to deliver a deeper squad than we have now and take a longer term view than we've had in the past as he has that luxury. And if there's a few losses on the way, then that's a price we'll have to pay.
I expect a pretty conservative first few Test squads but like @nzzp hope he'll bring in and persevere with players he thinks have a future - which why I find the Mo'unga and Havili stuff bloody puzzling.
I think it is you that has mentioned conservative a few times now and suggested his selections won't be far off last year. Obviously they weren't his selections, so we don't really know who he sees fitting into the way he wants to play and how he rates the incumbents. Maybe with Ryan being around we have an indication in the forwards (not taking into account how much influence Ryan actually had last year selection wise and game plan wise) but the backs are a different story. We don't know what he thinks of Christie and the other halfbacks, what he is looking for in his wingers, where he sees RI fitting in...
I guess what I am trying to say is, I reckon it's hard to know what is a conservative selection for Razor because we don't have a starting point.
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@Bones said in All Blacks 2024 - looking forward:
Yeah Richie taking off when he's basically being handed the keys, just as "his guy" is becoming coach was a tad bizarre.
On top of that, if Razor thought these guys were that important, why didn't he fight hammer and tongs last year? If he really is pursuing them then it must be panic after seeing SR....
I think the short and simple answer is that they both signed months before Razor was made coach.
They were announced as signings in Dec 2022, and he wasn't confirmed as coach until March 2023. I think it was clear that he would get the job though.
Ryan is on record explaining that he thinks Frizell didn't even want to go, but Mo'unga made it clear that it was all about the money.
I guess he was unclear about his position and what he would stand to earn and took his chance to leave.
This approach would be basically guaranteeing him to be the highest paid AB, so my feeling is that the discussion should be whether we should be using a lot of resources to get him out of contract and back here.
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@Crazy-Horse said in All Blacks 2024 - looking forward:
@Duluth said in All Blacks 2024 - looking forward:
'Stop talking about things I don't like'
Serious question, is the rest of NZ and other sections of social media expressing the same sentiments? I am not on social media so I wouldn't know.
Nah, serious grumpy old man vibes around here.
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If @Chris is right about Razor favoring players with really high work rates, to the point he would pick some fairly average ones above higher impact players, then it's going to be interesting to see how our pack goes with that line of thinking. Someone like Blackadder has a work rate that approaches McCaw, however unlike McCaw he has looked busy but ineffective the next level up (McCaw really was a God out there).
Someone like Finau is much more likely to affect the outcome of a test match. Kaino used to do it every game. You need players like that in the modern game. Akira is another that has shown the power to do it the next level up.
I think back to Razor's day as a player and he was very much a workhorse. I have memories of always wanting a bigger player selected at 8 for the ABs when he got the jersey.
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@No-Quarter Finau and Kaino are/were workhorses. Didn't Ryan say that about Finau last year?
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There is a difference between a player with high work rates than a work horse
Finau is a high work rate player.
Players who donāt drift in games are high work rate players.They certainly have an impact due to being in the game more than a player who drifts in and out.
Sotutu,Lakai have high work rates,Jacobsen ,Lilo-Willie ,DP are all high work rate players.I
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Finau would be in my squad but the thing he needs to improve is his workrate. It's the only real criticism of him. His number of involvements per game is low. His involvements are very good but not (yet) frequent enough
Take the Bledisloe game he played last year and he barely did anything in the first half before having a very good second half. It's an area he needs to improve and I'm sure he will
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Israel Dagg's comments on Cane relinquishing the captaincy. He just said the obvious thing but I haven't seen any other media commentators say this. Seems very likely that Cane was given the word
āI get a sense that this was forced. I get a sense that there was a shoulder tap from the one and only saying, āGāDay son, I think the writing is on the wall in terms of where you are seen in New Zealand rugby, Scott Barrett is going to take over the captaincyā. āI think this was forced to be completely honest. Theyāve been having conversations about it online, but the reality is he was shoulder tapped and told to make that next step and his next step is getting the Yen over in Japan.ā -
@gt12 said in All Blacks 2024 - looking forward:
@pakman said in All Blacks 2024 - looking forward:
@gt12 said in All Blacks 2024 - looking forward:
@mariner4life said in All Blacks 2024 - looking forward:
@DaGrubster said in All Blacks 2024 - looking forward:
It was his first game in 2 months and people expected him to be playing the house down after watching Savea play for 2 months straight
and this is where our current season structure just sucks. Once super rugby finishes, these guys don't get to play high level rugby unless they are in the test team.
There could be an interesting idea there to build an NZ specific model to allow that focused on what NZR really cares about - the AB brand.
It would require cooperation from Oz and SA though, so I don't like the chances, however, if SANZAAR allowed two teams from the Pacific Nations Cup to come up to the Rugby Championship (likely Fiji and Japan who could play off with the other nations to allow movement between the competitions), we could add the ABXV or Maori AB team to that competition (likely alongside Australia A). If OZ didn't or couldn't participate, we could have two teams in the competition.
We could then have at least one of our second teams competing against Samoa, Tonga, USA, and Canada. Whether the level of that competition is stronger or weaker than NPC is a separate question, but it would allow for collaboration across the two squads and have guys in the next tier playing if and when injuries strike.
Feel free to bag this, I'm not wedded to it, just putting it up for discussion.
Or a second tier championship with islands, AB XV and Oz XV, and maybe Japan?
Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Japan, USA, Canada make up the Pacific Nations Cup, hence move two of those to Rugby Championship to add our two teams (or perhaps one from Oz).
Maybe you could move one to TRC. But would also be good to see AB XV and Oz VX in Pacific Nations Cup.
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@African-Monkey said in All Blacks 2024 - looking forward:
@Bovidae Yeah and England of all teams ran in 3 tries in that period.
Frizell ought to have been subbed, leaving backline defence intact.
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@Dan54 said in All Blacks 2024 - looking forward:
I not sure if Cane had been shoulder tapped, if he was going to do that wouldn't he of done it earlier, and not had Cane involved in leadership meetings this year
I don't see how the sequence says he wasn't tapped. They could've always had a plan to discuss his future in April/May and both sides could've been aware of that
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Blues back 'warrior' Papaliāi over Cane to fill All Blacks' No 7 jersey
The 26-year-old is the leading contender to don the iconic jersey.
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@Tim said in All Blacks 2024 - looking forward:
Blues back 'warrior' Papaliāi over Cane to fill All Blacks' No 7 jersey
The 26-year-old is the leading contender to don the iconic jersey.
Fair enough, too.
He's earned it.
Would be kind of funny if a Super Rugby coach randomly backed someone else though.
"Vern Cotter Endorses Peter Lakai - Dalton WTF????" -
@African-Monkey Scott Hamilton
