The Silver Fern

I'm gutted about the Sititi injury, mainly because I finally had hope this year that we would get a loose forward trio consisting of players at 6,7 & 8 that will actually play as 6, 7 or 8.
With Sititi gone they'll probably panic and put Savea back to 8, then we have a Finau, Kirifi, Savea combo...

@Donsteppa For many years just having Shane Warne in the team was scary enough let alone anyone else

31-0 for the Crusaders playing at home in the finals and winning, as they say records are made to be broken but the Chiefs will need a slice of luck to win I think.

Very pleased for SA and their long suffering fans to see them finally get 1 on the board. In odd game in that an unplayable pitch on days 1 and 2 turned into a featherbed on day 3 but that's cricket for you. Fantastic innings by Makram as usually it has been the SA batters that have folded on the big stage and not so their bowling attack.

Always nice seeing history being played out.

Are there more natural born kiwi's and Australian's in this Lions squad than Welsh players?

@Bovidae I meant my confidence isn't high, no reflection on the players - I would certainly hope they are highly confident!!

@mariner4life said in All Blacks - loosie selections in recent years:

@brodean said in All Blacks - loosie selections in recent years:

@mariner4life

Against France the pattern seemed very similar to the Crusaders style. There was a lot of ball movement to the wider channels. The same approach was used against England in the first tests.

It's a high speed, high mobility game plan.

see, you say that with such confidence, and then you look at the team sheet.

Pick two poor distributors in the midfield and play them flat and tight. Drop your best passer at 10 and put in an instinctive run-first player who kicks a LOT.

The plan, and the players selected, do not match up

Whcih makes it really hard for the casual observer to see what the game-plan actually is...

Obviously it's all part of the coaching genuis - after all if we don't know what the game plan there's no way the opposition will know the game plan therefore they be completly incapbable of countering it!! It has shades of Blackadder (the TV series - not the player).

@gt12 said in All Blacks - loosie selections in recent years:

@reprobate said in All Blacks - loosie selections in recent years:

@gt12 said in All Blacks - loosie selections in recent years:

@Bovidae said in All Blacks - loosie selections in recent years:

@Mr-Fish said in All Blacks - loosie selections in recent years:

Luke Jacobson has never been given a proper starting run for the All Blacks

Also, he hasn't started that often in his better positions (8 or 7). I don't think LJ is a 6, and he never plays there for the Chiefs.

As you know, given the way the Chiefs play and our options I think he’s clearly the best 7 we have, and at international level the ABs don’t really attack the ball at the breakdown, so he’s arguably a good Cane replacement. Paps and Blackadder are pretty similar players.

He's undoubtedly the best Cane replacement we have, but I'm not at all sure that like for like is our best option.

It really depends on what kind of game we’ll play. If we want to replicate the Chiefs quick ball , high movement game plan then we should pick players who meet those needs. Right now I honestly cant really say with any confidence what Razor et al are trying to do out there, which seems to be half the problem.

Set game plan, pick accordingly.

The problem is our high-temp game seems to be to pick "quick and busy" loose forwards so we can win the race to the breakdown (hence our love of 7.5's) but that detracts from our ability to carry the ball into contact with heavy runners hence we endlessly recycle the ball going sideways across the field if we encounter stout defence and then our playmakers give away possession with a stupid kick or hail Mary pass.

If we don't get go-forward our back up or play or territory plays are quite simply stupid and fustrating, pull the forwards together and pick and go, or slow things down, set a chase line and kick and chase a contestable kick but more than often we hail mary, silly chip kick, or put up a high ball with only 1 person chasing or contesting....

The above has been my endless fustration with the AB team for years, as it was under Fozzie and now as it is under Razor, nothing really appers to have changed.

@antipodean I certainly hope so, having Tupea back will make a big difference and hoepfully give our backline some more go-forward on attack.

Confidence not overly high for this one unfortunately, lacked kiler instinct last week and it's not a good look for finals footy.

I don't think it's the straight financials that hang over Robinson, there was the whole "shall we get rid of Foster or not" saga which was handeled terribly and make somewhat a mockery of Razor's appointment (in terms of the process - only 1 person meets the criteria apparently so the job goes to him). There was the silverlake deal that struggled to get argreement to the point where the players union had to step in to finalize it and then the NZRU report and following will we or wont we do it fall-out.

I appreciate the role can be like herding geese but at times it felt like the geese were running the show, not the CEO...

@Dan54 said in NZR CEO Mark Robinson Resigns:

Let's face it, we just await the nest appointment, so we can say how hopeless he is and we all could/would do better. Never saw any any positive posts about Tew before Robertson came along.

It's kind of natural on forums, same with RA, when the last CEO was there, he was hopeless etc, and then when Phil Waugh came into job, he's seen as a NSW lapdog etc.
I think we all have to remember the CEOs really only do boards' bidding, and don't actually have a huge inflence.

I think the main issue for the lack of enthuasium about Tew was that he was replacing Jock Hobbs, who was excellent. It's always hard to replace someone who's been good in their role and live up to those expectations.

My lasting impression is that he was a guy who never seemed quite in control, he never seemed to quite get buy-in for his ideas and the problems that were forced upon him never seemed to result in a unianimous conclusion.

Sure there were some real tricky pieces of work there but he never seemed to be able to get everyone moving in the same direction, any decision seemed marred by a lot of in-fighting.

@brodean said in AB Blindside - past, present & future:

@Windows97 said in AB Blindside - past, present & future:

@Frank said in AB Blindside - past, present & future:

Secondly, because a blind man can see Parker is stronger in contact and this frees up Sititi and Savea to do their thing.

That would be a dream, I'd even be happy with Finau, Savea, Sititi combo. Please! Can we break this endless cycle of 7.5's in the loose forward trio!!

Well wasn't that the combo named to start in the last French test?

It was, they finally shifted Savea to 7 and put Sititi at 8.

However check the unavaliable due to injury list...

Unavailable due to injury: Sam Cane (concussion), Mark Tele’a (hand), Sam Darry (knee), Ethan Blackadder (calf), Luke Jacobson (fractured thumb) and Dalton Papali'i (upper hamstring).

@Frank said in AB Blindside - past, present & future:

Secondly, because a blind man can see Parker is stronger in contact and this frees up Sititi and Savea to do their thing.

That would be a dream, I'd even be happy with Finau, Savea, Sititi combo. Please! Can we break this endless cycle of 7.5's in the loose forward trio!!

All the home teams to win I reckon, it makes a big difference in playoff's footy.

Looks like the Chiefs are going for the physical bash-em-up from the onset, though having Sititi on the bench is a big call. I'm scratching my head a little there.
Tupaea not playing is quite a loss for the Chiefs, he's been excellent all season and ptting in an untired player in a knock-out game is always a risk.
In saying that it could be a game where the Chiefs run away with it especially if they get early points, I just don't see the Blues having the firepower to score a lot of points in this game or the forward pack to bully the Chiefs if it's a tight match. It's also fair to say that DMac is much better goalkicker than BB if the game does get tight.

So my wildy inaccurate prediction would be for the Chiefs by 12 and under.

@No-Quarter said in All Blacks 2025:

@Windows97 said in All Blacks 2025:

@brodean said in All Blacks 2025:

From what I've seen the Saffas are basically using heavy rotation of their starting line up to keep players fresh. Their players often get rotated at the 35 to 50 mark compared to ours at 60 - 70. The use of our bench was often poor last year. The mindset is completely different.

This nullifies completly the whole "run them off their feet" gameplan which we still persist with and we haven't got a plan B in the back pocket to counter this. It's tactically brilliant (albiet with calculated risk should 2 backs get injured) that we haven't got an answer for.

In short the AB's need to find a way to make space on the field that doesn't rely on players being out of position due to fatigue because when you can basically sub on a whole new forward pack no-one is fatigued.

This isn't the thread for it but I really dislike the rules around the use of the bench in modern footy, allowing teams to substitute an almost entirely new forward pack on for the second 40. It's largely removed one of the most challenging parts of the game - executing your skills in the final 10 minutes when the lungs are burning and the legs feel like jelly to get the win.

I agree with the sentiment and I think we can all tell that the rules weren't designed with the "swap the entire forward pack" in mind, we are witnessing an unintended consquence of rules arond player welfare and safety being exploited.

However by the same token I do admire the tactical nous and am miffed that the AB's weren't smart enough to comeup with this tactic - especially when we employ a run-them-off-their-feet style of game plan which this would suit ideally.

@reprobate said in All Blacks 2025:

@Windows97 said in All Blacks 2025:

@brodean said in All Blacks 2025:

From what I've seen the Saffas are basically using heavy rotation of their starting line up to keep players fresh. Their players often get rotated at the 35 to 50 mark compared to ours at 60 - 70. The use of our bench was often poor last year. The mindset is completely different.

This nullifies completly the whole "run them off their feet" gameplan which we still persist with and we haven't got a plan B in the back pocket to counter this. It's tactically brilliant (albiet with calculated risk should 2 backs get injured) that we haven't got an answer for.

In short the AB's need to find a way to make space on the field that doesn't rely on players being out of position due to fatigue because when you can basically sub on a whole new forward pack no-one is fatigued.

It is good tactics, but it's hardly new. That's the disturbing part for me: it takes us about a decade to adapt to fucking anything new. We're still talking about it as something to solve now, when they started it in fucking 2019!

I feel your pain...

And given it's still the same problem under the innovative, fresh thinking and innovative Robertson it's only become more annoying.

@canefan said in All Blacks 2025:

The Chiefs did it very well against MP on the weekend. Targeted certain players to run the ball at, took them out of the turnover zone and cleaned out aggressively. They went more direct and things opened up. I still think this is the key as opposed to running wide early and often

I woud much prefer a slower and more targetted approach to creating space (then moving at pace to exploit that space) rather than move the ball fast and wide at every oppertunity and hope space appears somewhere.