The Silver Fern

The pressure of playing in a World Cup semi final really showed in both matches more so in this one I thought.

Canada have played an expansive game throughout the tournament and you could see they wanted to do it but fluffed several opportunities. Some paid off, but there were more chances.

England have used a narrow attacking pattern and love the forward drive but they too made a hash of several opportunities and then their defensive alignment was found wanting.

A couple of impressive tries in the match and well done to England. Really looking forward to the final.

So which NRL club will he be playing for next year….

@Bones said in Pundits & ex-players all time XVs:

@antipodean said in Pundits & ex-players all time XVs:

Smit, Skinstad, du Preez, Fourie and Nudungane aren't in the discussion.

Isn't saying that about the bold, like saying Richie isn't in the conversation because of Jones?

Fair comment - still parochial.

@antipodean said in Mea Culpae:

Yes, plural.

Time to acknowledge that certain players I've written off have improved over their careers or their impact is much better than I expected. To that end, apologies to:

Ofa Tu'ungafasi - Couldn't scrum, gave away dumb penalties, slow to get off the ground. Today was the type of game I hope he could take into the All Blacks.

Alex Hodgman - Couldn't scrum for shit. Now not a concern, big impact around the ground which is a clear concern for the All Blacks.

Christie Finlay - Couldn't scrum, still can't. His inclusion into the All Blacks must've been last years success story. HIs option taking and speed of service at the breakdown is vastly improved to the point the ginger migrant is IMO the second best halfback in New Zealand. His improvement in the last 18 months is immense.

Luke Romano - Have to admit he's playing like he has something to prove and in doing so, his tight work and experience is benefitting the Blues. Much better than I thought he'd be.

I reserve the right to add more to this thread.

I also should've said I reserve the right to edit this thread.

Christie I was right about all along. Last year was a clear aberration.

Ofa back to being the dumb fluffybunny we all know. And with the added bonus he's forgotten how to scrum.

Well he's pretty mcuh got the champs sewn up now, outside of a couple of real disasters - he just needs to stay in the top few and he wins

@dogmeat The moment the Manchester Police gave out details of the accused person's occupation and age, then this sort of thing would inevitably follow.

@antipodean said in Dark theme constantly resets:

As per title, I use the dark theme and it constantly resets to the light theme without rhyme nor apparent reason. All tsf cookies are enabled and I'm using Opera. Anyone else experience this disturbance in the force?

Hmm, no recent changes

The plugin that does the css switch hasn't been updated for 3 years. The core forum app hasn't been updated on the tsf server for a few months

All that is happening is that button sets a key/value in the browsers local storage. So something else must be clearing it out?

@Duluth oh great, for once my memory works and it's for vague, trivial information.

@MN5 said in NZPRT vs Some old blokes:

@Bones said in NZPRT vs Some old blokes:

@MN5 said in NZPRT vs Some old blokes:

@Bones said in NZPRT vs Some old blokes:

@antipodean said in NZPRT vs Some old blokes:

Richard Watt (Poneke)

Only just realised it was 24 years ago that I was in the centurions playing against him. Over two decades ago. Fuuuuuck

He was a great rubbish collector back in the day

Ironic as he talked rubbish non stop on the field.

Had a mullet before they became ironic too if memory serves.

I had no idea they were ironic! What does that even mean?

Five of the standout stars from round two of Super Rugby Aotearoa Five of the standout stars from round two of Super Rugby Aotearoa

The Blues have kept their place at the top of the table, and the Crusaders returned in emphatic fashion - but who were the five best players in round two of Super Rugby Aotearoa?

@barbarian said in AFL 2021:

I think that Geelong win in the last round was enormous for their momentum.

My favourite game of the whole season. The smugness of Geelong bought down several pegs.

@KiwiMurph said in Waratahs vs Hurricanes:

@Bones said in Waratahs vs Hurricanes:

@ShadowTrooper said in Waratahs vs Hurricanes:

@Canes4life Yep agree with all the changes suggested fro next week.
Was impressed the Canes stayed in the fight though, and that (plus Jordie's boot) is what got them over the line. Compare and contrast that with tghe Chiefs who had the bloody game there for the taking ,and let it slip from right under their noses to a much hungrier Landers side.

Soooo....Canes won, but Chiefs lost huh? As opposed to NSW lost, and landers won....

Perhaps it has something to do with the Highlanders being down to 14 men for the last 13 minutes of the game......

Ok

@antipodean said in Springboks vs All Blacks - Newlands:

Vaea Fifita, Ngani Laumape, Waisake Naholo, Luke Romano and Ardie Savea.

I'm annoyed Naholo isn't getting another shot, thought he was no worse (and probably) a tad better than NMS. SBW had his best game all season, but I would have also liked Laumape to get some more game time.

Let's be honest, this has nothing to do with giving frontline players a balanced workload to keep them fresh for November, this is just sending the fringe players back home (Savea excepted).

@Calf Nicely spotted...

Porsche win their 18th title.

@mariner4life said in Former president of Central Queensland Rugby Union charged with fraud:

Rocky is a quick 13 hour drive down the coast.

My main question is, where the fuck did CQU get that much money? You would have to steal from FNQ for a fucking long time to make it worthwhile.

What he said (which is what I said ...).

@antipodean said in Moneyball Rugby:

@Frye said in Moneyball Rugby:

Quality/Effectiveness is obviously a key metric missing from the raw stats.

The other one is ruck and maul involvements. It's quite incomprehensible that this still isn't included by almost any stat provider. (Is Haka still the only one who does it?). And it quickly makes an exercise like this pretty redundant (sorry antipodean). At least for forwards it does.

Agreed. All this shows is the relative impact of loose forwards who secure possession from set piece and attack with the ball.

I've no doubt that the order would be very different if I could include breakdown work (the core role IMO). It seems that Tracey at haka.co.nz stopped doing them after the Wales series, I can't find them anywhere else.

A while back Ben Strang on Stuff presented an analysis of stats amongst Cane, Savea and Todd (height of the Savea vs Cane debate). Included numbers on dominant tackles, rucks attended and participated in etc in Super rugby. So someone is collecting those stats but I couldn't find a public source. Which makes this a pretty useless post.....

It's also really confusing for supermarket and retail enthusiasts. I mean, sometimes I confuse Dane Coles / Dan Cole for Coles supermarkets in Australia, and Kohl's department stores in the US.

<p>Haha I'm as keen for it as you.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Waratahs had a few bright moments there, but it was slim pickings beyond that sadly.</p>

Interesting saga<br><br>
So do we have clearly defined goodies and baddies?<br><br>
First media impressions were that Jones was the no good boss, but the media is like that<br><br>
Credit to him for standing up for himself