The Silver Fern

@antipodean said in B&I Lions 2017:

Why Haskell as a replacement? He doesn't play any of the backrow positions well enough.

Barring injury it's pretty obvious that the Lions will have Stander, Warburton and Faletau as their backrow.

He did well enough at openside last year. Grandslam winner, man of the series against Australia, outplayed Pooper and all of his direct Lions competition.

Billy is an enormous loss. I can only imagine that anyone who doesn't rate him hasn't watched him properly for the last couple of years.

Have to say I hate the 'jump to take a pass/into a tackle' and agree the final penalty was bollocks. What is a tackler meant to do, step aside and let him through the line? It's entirely different to jumping to take a high ball.

I always thought from my playing days that jumping into a tackle was illegal, but I don't think I've ever seen it penalised in the pro game.

The Lions are also facing much stronger opposition than they have in previous tours, which I don't mind at all.

The whole tour is more fun if all the games are competitive, and tight defeats to Super Rugby sides is much better preparation for the Tests than comfortable wins over club teams.

It was a pearl of a Test match, and also produced possibly the most beautiful scrum of all time.

Forwards, tissues at the ready:

Fuck me, the Lions did everything they could to lose that game in the third quarter. Brainless play to continuously give away the pill and a succession of penalties when it looked like all they had to do was keep their composure and they were bound to win.

Got there in the end though, and there were some good performances along the way. Some on here were questioning the Itoje hype earlier in the tour, well I thought he was the best player on the park today. Up against the consensus best lock pairing in the world, he was fantastic. Faletau and Murray excellent too, and the extra width of the Sexton-Farrell pairing helped exploit the man advantage, although it remains to be seen if it would work against 15.

@jegga said in Blues v BI Lions:

Just rewatching the game, a pommy mate of mine was talking up Itoje before the tour. Is Itoje known for being a bit of an excitable dickhead or is he just pumped to be part of this tour?

Yeah, he's known for the clapping and whooping.

He is a very good player with heaps of potential given his age (21-22) but has basically had it all his own way so far in his career. Under-20 World Cup winner, part of dominant Saracens and England teams in Europe. This tour is likely to be the making or breaking of him, based on how he responds to adversity.

@mimic it's unlikely to make much of an impact on media trolls like Stephen Jones, and I don't think many serious NH fans have any lack of respect for Super Rugby - certainly not the New Zealand teams. Most of know only the very best teams in Europe would be competitive against them.

There are of course the usual stereotypes - SH types criticise the skills and attack of the NH teams, NH hacks point to poor tackling and defence in Super Rugby as what makes it so open. So far, I don't think the tour has done much to dispell these: the Lions have struggled to find an attacking edge and finish off their chances, but have been (mostly) able to stifle the SR teams' offence in a way they're not used to.

If you look at what the Lions did to the Crusaders, you'd have to think a team like Saracens would have a good chance of pulling off the same thing.

@NTA said in Wallaby EOYT 2016:

@SimonAdd_2 said in Wallaby EOYT 2016:

the Austin back line

Are they playing at Twickers or are you going to Texas?

Posting from my phone, it doesn't like Aussie.

Can't say I blame it.

@rotated said in Blues v BI Lions:

The body language from the Lions in the last 20 minutes tells me many of these guys are going to struggle taking everyone's best shot game after game.

Mentally you can only be switched on for so long. Who knows if they will lose the remaining fixtures - but they will certainly be in a dog fight just to get a win every minute of this tour. These guys need to get out to a good start in a couple of these games or they will be mentally fried by the first test, let a lone the third.

Unless Gats is keeping some powder dry similar to Hansen at the last RWC where the game plan was restricted the test series is as good as over. The only question mark for me is who gets released/injured in the lead up to Canes and Chiefs and whether the Maori can gel and have the same motivation if the Lions have already lost a couple on the trot.

I wish this was the case. I mean it couldn't be more restricted. Stand a forward at first receiver, run into the nearest defender, repeat.

Then I remember it's Gatland and Howley in charge of the attack, and all hope evaporates.

Well done Blues. The better team. Lions - oh dear.

Stander was trying to play the Billy V role but without much success. Plenty of carries but for little gain and no threat off the offload etc. Blues 8 comfortably outplayed him.

Toby, please don't get injured.

@Pot-Hale said in NZ Provincial Barbarians v B&I Lions (Whangarei, 3 June 2017):

@Rembrandt said in NZ Provincial Barbarians v B&I Lions (Whangarei, 3 June 2017):

@MiketheSnow Well put. I find it odd the lack of shock from uk pundits on the result, these guys are literally no-names. Jetlag is bad and all but the baabaas aren't even a real team. It might be a very long tour indeed.

The lack of shock?

Lions limp past NZ Barbarians is but one of a number of headlines to stories that don't pull any punches on the shit performance. Jet lag, etc is balanced with acknowledgment that the Baa Bas opposition were made up butchers, bakers, candlestick-makers and how impressive they were as a scratch team.

No one is hiding from what is a shit result and performance. Gatland as coach doesn't get to have the freedom to say that in public. I reckon Sexton and Henderson already know they've pretty much blown their chances of test starting places. Best had a better debut than his last Lions tour which isn't saying much.

According to Gatland, he's planning a new starting XV for next week's match against the Blues so presumably it might look something like this:

McGrath, Owens, Cole, Itoje, Lawes, Stander, O'B'rien/Tipuric, Haskell
Murray, Biggar, Williams, Henshaw, Davies, North, Halfpenny
Reps: George, Marler, Furlong, Kruis, O'Mahony, Webb, Sexton, Payne/Nowell

The Blues game is on Wednesday, isn't it? So it is likely to be a completely different XV but you'd imagine it won't be full strength, and the shadow Test team will be saved for the Crusaders on the weekend.

So the Blues team is likely to tell us a lot about Gatland's early thinking.

@Tim said in Blues v BI Lions:

That's a red.

😂 Let's not get silly now.

Live by the cross kick, die by the cross kick.

@booboo said in England vs All Blacks:

Of the apparently 16 players missing for Ingalund is it possible to get a list and rank them in terms of their position?

As an example NZ is missing the number one and number three ranked LHPs (Moody, Hames).

Even just a list so we can start trying to work out how badly affected the Poms actually are.

Thanks in anticipation.

Off the top of my head:

Loosehead: M Vunipola, Marler (retired), Mullen, Genge, Obano
Lock: Launchbury, Lawes has recovered to make the bench
Flankers: Robshaw, Curry
Number 8: B Vunipola, Hughes, Simmonds, Clifford, Morgan
Scrum-half: Robson
Centres: Joseph, Tuilagi (unsure if he's still injured or just unselected), Lozowski (banned)
Back 3: Watson

Of those, I'd say Vunipola, Launchbury, Robshaw, Curry and Watson would have been likely starters, and Joseph/Lozowski would have been pushing Slade hard.

But the bigger problem than missing starters (which we're used to) is how far down the depth chart we're having to go at loosehead and 8. Moon is a journeyman prop who used to play in the Championship (one league below the premiership) and Wilson is a jack-of-all-trades 6 being played out of position at the base of the scrum.

YC the right decision. Clear difference between that and SBW's last week.

@MiketheSnow said in All Blacks v BI Lions Test #3:

Jonathan Davies deservedly named Man of the Series for the Lions.

And after the dust has settled and thoughts turn to pre-season training and Autumn Internationals, were the omitted and injured missed?

It was unfortunate that Hogg was injured out of the series, but to be fair he wasn't playing well prior to his departure. Would Brown have offered anything better than Williams? I don't think so.

Would the Gray brothers and Launchbury have made the Test side? Maybe Launchbury.

When the Lions went away from 'Warrenball' to 'Eddieball' I think we would have been better served having the original - Ford - not the imitation - Sexton.

And what we really missed was an out and out speedster like Christian Wade or Johnnie May who could have finished some of the chances we created.

But overall the squad selection seems to have been close to spot on.

I've never been a fan, but Davies was truly excellent all tour and well deserving of the reward - what a turnaround from the Six Nations. Warburton and AWJ both also more than justified their selection. Ahead of the tour I thought Gatland's selection of his favourites regardless of form would come back to bite him, but he made a great job of differentiating those who could raise their game from those who weren't ready for the challenge (Halfpenny, North).

Launchbury was hugely unlucky, but all of the Lions locks on tour played extremely well and with hindsight it's difficult to say any of them shouldn't have been there.

The most interesting non-tourist would have been Billy Vunipola. Faletau was one of the best players on tour - could Billy have pushed him to the bench? Or, like CJ Stander, would he have found he was getting less change than usual from his carries and not have a plan B? I think he's a better carrier than Stander with better footwork in traffic, and his game would translate better against Kiwi defences, but I guess we'll have to wait until 2018 to see.

I think Youngs would have been a huge upgrade on Laidlaw for the midweek side, but probably wouldn't have troubled the selectors for the Tests.

@Tordah said in Blues v BI Lions:

Liam Williams looks like a Ghoul.

Nah....

Im getting very worried about this game. Billy V's carrying game has been vital to the way England have played under Jones so far, and with Itoje and Haskell out we're missing our two best ruck clearers. Pooper could do a number on us like they did in the World Cup.

Add to that that our defence has looked brittle at times this November and the Austin back line is still very very good given quick ball, plus they'll have been targeting this match for 6 months. If Australia get their tails up it could even turn nasty for England.

Well done New Zealand, fantastic display of up-the guts rugby. Direct through the middle with some lovely smuggling of the ball to support runners to keep the momentum going. The Lions made so many tackles and never got the chance to get their line speed going.

For the men in red, they created some good chances but just failed to take them. The worrying thing is that I'm not sure where they can go selection-wise; most of the contentious calls were probably the correct ones, and most of the subs, particularly in the backs, weakened the side in the second half rather than providing impact.

For next week I'd probably keep the back line as it was, maybe add North to the bench in place of Halfpenny. The tight five needs to improve - I'd swap AWJ for Itoje. I'd also be really tempted to start Sinkler: Furlong looked like a force of nature back in November but he's been subdued on this tour. Sinkler by contrast seems to make metres with every carry, and more surprisingly the scrum has looked rock solid with him anchoring it. Give the boy a shot.

The back row went well although Faletau was a bit quiet compared to previous performances. O'Mahony looked injured coming off - if that's the case you'd assume it's Warburton into the starting XV and Stander to the bench, which might again add some more pop in the second half.