Scotland v All Blacks
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Across every test I watched this morning - and it was all of them, every team dropped high balls that were contested and dropped - Boks, French , Ireland even against Japan, Aussies and Italy both and us and Scotland were no different.
It’s a tactic to just sky it and create contested ball and a little bit of territory in the process.
The way it’s contested these days is even different from say 10-15 years ago.
Kick is only as good as your chase. And both our kick + chase is shit.
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@Chris-B what was good to see though is a bit of straight running. Take that DMac miracle try, when Fainga’anuku got the ball some centres would’ve tried to go out wide and outflank the defender, but the fact he ran straight and gave the offload still with space bought a few extra vital seconds for DMac to work his magic.
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I can understand those who say DMac should stay at 23 because he can impact the game best there. However.... BB offers nothing at 10. As IIRC Nepia said, anyone could play 10 the way BB is playing it right now, he just offers no variation, no attacking threat with kicks or with ball in hand, and he's not putting his outsides into space any more than someone else could if they were instructed to shuffle it on. Aren't we braver than this? DMac to start, Love in as 23 for 10/15 cover next week, to see what he can do. Our lack of courage in selection is a fucking disgrace
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@hikastags in reality you can only chase and contest a kick that’s actually contestable!
If the kick is too deep it won’t matter. Our chase has been pretty good on attacking box kicks, it’s often thr Beaudie pop kicks that don’t give us much of chance no matter the chase.
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@ACT-Crusader said in Scotland v All Blacks:
@hikastags in reality you can only chase and contest a kick that’s actually contestable!
If the kick is too deep it won’t matter. Our chase has been pretty good on attacking box kicks, it’s often thr Beaudie pop kicks that don’t give us much of chance no matter the chase.
The classic example was BB dropping into the pocket, so plenty of time to execute. And he kicked it about 10m too far giving the chase zero opportunity to contest
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@canefan yeah its pretty sad really, as some have said, continuing with this version of BB makes it much easier to give RM a run when he returns, but at the same time he is eating up tests Dmac or Jacomb/Reihana could be developing and forging combinations, it is a real head scratcher.
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@taniwharugby said in Scotland v All Blacks:
@canefan yeah its pretty sad really, as some have said, continuing with this version of BB makes it much easier to give RM a run when he returns, but at the same time he is eating up tests Dmac or Jacomb/Reihana could be developing and forging combinations, it is a real head scratcher.
Is Razor that obtuse and lacking in ideas that he's mailing in selections at 10 until his golden boy returns? Aside from being under orders from on high to play BB (I don't think this), there is no justification for keeping BB as starter based purely on performance
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@ACT-Crusader yep exactly. Starts with the kick (Beauden).
If we're going to have mediocrity at 10... i'd rather those valuable minutes went to DMac/Love. I thought DMac was bloody good when starting on the EOYT last year also.
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@African-Monkey said in Scotland v All Blacks:
@1kiwi said in Scotland v All Blacks:
I can't for the life of me understand why the coaches/selectors are persisting with Beauden.
If he is just the stop gap measure until Richie Mounga returns next year why are they not just giving a young first five a chance? They've really got nothing to lose by trying someone else at 10. Once Richie is back are they really going to have him, BB & McKenzie in the same squad? What sort of message does that give to a player like Love?It was reported by someone that Love and Scott Hansen fell out? Don't know how true that was.
Mo'unga is obviously gonna be the 10 when he's available. We can argue all we like about it, but it's happening, so no point wasting breath on it. The more interesting part for me is, who will be on the bench out of BB and DMac?
On the falling-out, probably 98.5 percent chance it's bullshit.
Rueben's not getting the 10 jersey, because he's a rookie 10 at Super level and even DMac hasn't been able to dislodge BB.
He's not getting the 15 jersey, because Will Jordan has that - but, that's Reuben's actual position in this team.
He's not getting the 23 jersey - and even less after this morning - because that's DMac's.
He's got to bide his time and wait for an injury, or maybe Wales.
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@restofit said in Scotland v All Blacks:
I predicted last week the Scotland test would be harder than vastly overrated Ireland and nobody on here agreed with me.
Given some of the predictions on here, maybe that is a good thing?
I recall several posters saying Scotland could be quite competitive and they have in the past. -
The story I heard was that last year Love and Papali’i were rooming together and after Dalton head butt Razor, Love was seen in the corner of the room taking video footage. Fast forward to the French series this year and after Love questioned a training move, he remembered the words of his 2024 roomie, “just hit them between the eyes”, Love lined up Hansen with a head butt.
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@hikastags said in Scotland v All Blacks:
Leicester & Tupaea don't work in the midfield as they're both carriers. Like the loose forwards, you need balance.
The carrier should be at 12 with a direct channel to carry and a smaller channel to defend, than at 13.
Leicester at 12 and either Proctor/Rieko at 13 IMO.
It might be a hackneyed thing to say but I feel like todays game was one where Jordies contribution was missed.
He's good for at least one big play on defence per game (cover tackle, try saver, holding up a grounding), he will grab a high ball or two and then he brings a little bit of craft and guile on attack. Something different, like, for example that grubber (and header!) that led to one of Quinns tries in Perth.
Like you say, the midfield today was just a bit one dimensional. Two big physical lads taking it into contact, a tad predictable.
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Gregor Paul (NZ Herald): "Scotland didn't get the result they wanted, but they did at least have the satisfaction of knowing that they reduced the All Blacks to nervous wrecks – spooked beyond recognition of their true selves and locked into a spiral of ill-discipline, unforced errors and no ideas..."
is that a long straw I see him grasping at?
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@ploughboy said in Scotland v All Blacks:
most pleasing part of game for me was the performance as a group of the locks. ranked as our 4,5 and 6th locks and none of them looked out of place
I think we always knew we had good depth at lock even after losing Sam W and BBBR.
That, prop and hooker really. But I didn’t expect all that depth to be tested.
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@Chris-B said in Scotland v All Blacks:
@ACT-Crusader said in Scotland v All Blacks:
The most costly of dropped kicks was Lakai’s in my view. We were on the back foot in our own half.
Yeah - and that's the thing.
I don't really recall us dropping a high ball all season that was uncontested - i.e. like a goober drop in cricket. We probably have, but they're not common.
But, a well-directed box kick that's contestable is going to get dropped more often than it's caught, because you've got someone else's arms shoulders and impact in your space. The Jaapies quite often just send a guy up with one arm to make sure they disrupt the catch.
I don't think the Scots caught any of the ones we missed today.
It's a chaos maker - that's why it's used extensively by most teams. If we seem like we're more vulnerable to it, I'm inclined to think it's as much because other teams' box-kicking is more accurate than ours.
Interestingly, I think the Scots went away from ball in hand once they drew level and resorted to the box kick. Which was quite helpful, because it gave us possession, which we'd been starved of for 20 odd minutes.
Lakai's miss gave the Scots the momentum. Exiting after restarts is the side's Achilles' heel and has been a major problem since Foster. Pop kicks, failure to secure the restarts, poor box kicks, BB and AS chippies, they'll find a way to put pressure on themselves......super frustrating. Sort that out and there will be a major shift in game momentum shifts.
ABs are poorer than other teams at taking the high ball or recovering the box kicks because the players seem to leave it to one or two players. I watched ABs jog slowly back or just stare at the action during the game while they leave DMac/Jordan, etc. to recover the ball. Nobody is getting into recovery positions. Watch the Boks in contrast, they always seem to have a number of players covering all bases. Again, frustrating and squarely on the coaching I think (I gave Foster shit for this but it hasn't improved at all).
This sounds a bit negative, but previously, during for example the Henry era, they seemed to deal with the obvious problems (high ball, lineout woes, etc). These problem areas have been going on for years.
Some really good things happening, too. This doen't seem to be the platform for that, though.
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@Old-Samurai-Jack It was very frustrating, because we'd been pretty good in the first half and if you'd told me at half time (17-0 up) that one team was going to score the next 17 points, I'd have bet a fair bit of cash that we were going to be 34-0 up.
But, we just gifted them possession, territory and numerical advantage through bone headed plays - cards, penalties, unforced errors, soft turnovers whenever we got our hands on the ball, and poor clearances. For a good 20 minutes, every time we had a chance to relieve pressure we immediately fucked it up.
