All Blacks 2025
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@nzzp said in All Blacks 2025:
This is damning with faint praise, but his defence has been very good for some time. He's more of a safe pair of experience to close out a game.
It has to be, he does nothing for our attack.
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@antipodean said in All Blacks 2025:
How the fuck did combover win so many SR titles?
Four of the loose forwards are effectively carbon copies of each other.
Richie McCaw. Dan Carter.
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It could be worse, I guess.
I'm relieved that Ethan Blackadder and David Havili aren't there.
Luke Jacobson is the new coaches' favourite and lives a charmed life for someone who is made of glass and hardly world class. God knows, what Dalton Papalii has done to piss them off?
Those injury cover selections are a bit baffling, aren't they? Tevito Mafileo would be no where that high on my prop depth chart and why isn't he named as a new cap?
Finley Christie's continued selection is troubling. Kyle Preston offers something different, I guess but Folau Fakatava and Xavier Roe are better players. Weird that Josh Lord (who is injured) gets picked ahead of Sam Darry who isn't.
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@sparky said in All Blacks 2025:
It could be worse, I guess.
I'm relieved that Todd Blackadder and David Havili aren't there.
Luke Jacobson is the new coaches' favourite and lives a charmed life for someone who is made of glass and hardly world class. God knows, what Dalton Papalii has done to piss them off?
Those injury cover selections are a bit baffling, aren't they? Tevito Mafileo would be no where that high on my prop depth chart and why isn't he named as a new cap.
Finley Christie's continued selection is troubling. Kyle Preston offers something different, I guess but Folau Fakatava and Xavier Roe are better players. Weird that Josh Lord (who is injured) gets picked ahead of Sam Darry who isn't.
Todd Blackadder's selection would have been a serious shock
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@African-Monkey said in All Blacks 2025:
@nzzp said in All Blacks 2025:
Dalts dropped? Wild
Look who he plays for......
Same team as Christie?
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@Crazy-Horse said in All Blacks 2025:
@African-Monkey said in All Blacks 2025:
@nzzp said in All Blacks 2025:
Dalts dropped? Wild
Look who he plays for......
Same team as Christie?
Don't spoil the narrative!!!
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@Crazy-Horse said in All Blacks 2025:
@African-Monkey said in All Blacks 2025:
@nzzp said in All Blacks 2025:
Dalts dropped? Wild
Look who he plays for......
Same team as Christie?
There's really no alternative to Christie. Faktava has played 2 tests.
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What I struggle with, is a couple of years ago we had a loose trio that spent an entire season bitch slapping every other trio around in Super Rugby, in a style akin to test footy. They also did exactly that in the finals, the matches that are most akin to test footy at that level.
Since then, our biggest problem with the ABs has been our loosies, and these guys have been barely sighted. Akira gave up and went to Japan. Hoskins to his credit has stuck around but has been forced to watch players like Lio-Willie be brought in ahead of him, and Dalton has been kept at arms length and now dropped despite his strong form in SR and recently against France.
My point here isn't that we need to draft Akira, Dalton and Hoskins into the starting side right now (though that wouldn't hurt). My point is that the loose forward selections and tactics from these coaches have been an absolute mess from the get-go. Ignoring form, selecting undersized trios, favouring ineffective workhorses over players that can have an impact, none of it makes any sense and I think it's going to be the undoing of this AB side.
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@Crazy-Horse said in All Blacks 2025:
@African-Monkey said in All Blacks 2025:
@nzzp said in All Blacks 2025:
Dalts dropped? Wild
Look who he plays for......
Same team as Christie?
He's just there to prove Aucklanders shouldn't be selected.
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if we accept that Vaai will continue at 6, then they have selected Finau and Parker to fight over the same bench minutes.
However what happens when Barrett is fit given the form of Patty T and Holland? They don't seem overly willing to go the 6-2 route, so you imagine that both Finau and Parker will become redundant at that point.The whole thing seems a but muddled
